Recovering Lost Files


Restoring a Backup File

Remember the backup directory only contains a copy of all of your files from the night before. If you need to restore a file that you deleted days ago, or just minutes ago (assuming minutes ago was still today), then you are not going to find the file here.

If it is really important and it was in you account overnight for at least one of these backups than you may be able to have OIT see if they can not recover the file somehow for you. Note that this is only done in the rarest and most dire circumstances.


Example Using Naultalus

In class demo


Example Using Command Line

In Class demo

linux1[24]# ls
291u       bin      grades.gnumeric  oit                  sue
Desktop    courses  images           questionnaire.txt    tmp
Mail       date     notes            sas                  winscp.RND
PUTTY.RND  eve      nsmail           ssh_known_hosts.txt  www
linux1[25]# rm -f questionnaire.txt 
linux1[26]# ls
291u       bin      grades.gnumeric  oit                  tmp
Desktop    courses  images           sas                  winscp.RND
Mail       date     notes            ssh_known_hosts.txt  www
PUTTY.RND  eve      nsmail           sue
linux1[27]# cp ~/../backup/home/questionnaire.txt ~/
linux1[28]# ls
291u       bin      grades.gnumeric  oit                  sue
Desktop    courses  images           questionnaire.txt    tmp
Mail       date     notes            sas                  winscp.RND
PUTTY.RND  eve      nsmail           ssh_known_hosts.txt  www
linux1[29]# 

Daniel J. Hood
Last modified: Tue Jan 7 13:10:13 EST 2003