undo rm deleteing /etc very urgent
Jeremy Brown
jeremy at cadre5.com
Sat May 8 08:31:12 UTC 2004
issa rabba' wrote:
>Dear all:
>
>Please I need help, by mistake I delete /etc directory and I don't how can I
>undo deleting /etc, I still has connection to the server, please if any one
>can help me....
>
>Note: I don't have backup 4 /etc direcoty
>
>
I'll go ahead and respond to your post with my very generic and
unhelpful response, since you're probably on a time constraint and no
one else seems to be answering (probably most are asleep).
My understanding is that when you delete files on most Linux
filesystems, they aren't actually deleted, just unlinked. It's possible
to restore some or all of these files by restoring only the links (a
semi-trivial process, maybe). But once you start writing data back to
the drive, there's probably little or no guarantee that you won't
overwrite some or all of the space that /etc occupied. So my first
suggestion would be to try to find an undelete utility for whatever
filesystem /etc was stored on. After a quick google I found this one
for ext2:
http://twerner.debian.net/
I make no claims as to whether or not this utility will work. I've
never used it before.
If you use reiserfs or some other filesystem, you'd need to google and
find a different utility (assuming one exists for your FS of choice).
My other suggestion is to do what I did in the sole situation where I
clobbered the /etc directory of a major production machine (by
accidentally running "etc-update" on a Gentoo box I was supposed to help
administer). And that is to grab the FC install CDs, and install and
configure as quickly as possible as you can on an alternative machine.
Most processes only read configuration files in /etc on startup, so your
machine with trashed /etc might even be able to stay alive while you get
another one together. It's not a pretty solution, but it'll hopefully
minimize the damage done.
Hope this helps.
Jeremy
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