[solved, sort of] Once again, bookmarks and passwords!

[mr.magoo]

Well, this is wonderful. Back to square one. I shut down, decided to do some more work and my desktop only has "computer" and "home file." My bookmarks are gone and so are my saved passwords and some of them, I don't know! I really am ready to throw this thing in the junk pile. How do I get my stuff back?

This is what I did to lose it all.

[mr.magoo]

This is worse that I thought. I dumped everything. My home folder is empty. Somebody, please help this idiot!

Dammit, about now, I'm thinkin' I need a restore point. Is there any way to back this baby up in time?

[mick55]

Hi mr.magoo

A question.

When you followed the directions to delete your wine folder, did you copy/paste the
command you were given, rm -r ~/.wine or did you type it yourself?

If you typed it yourself and inserted a space between ~/ and .wine then you
have recursively deleted your home directory
(the -r after rm deletes recursively).

[Midnighter]

Hi mr.magoo

A question.

When you followed the directions to delete your wine folder, did you copy/paste the
command you were given, rm -r ~/.wine or did you type it yourself?

If you typed it yourself and inserted a space between ~/ and .wine then you
have recursively deleted your home directory
(the -r after rm deletes recursively).

/facepalm.

THAT would explain it. I was rather confused as to how removing your .wine folder could nuke everything. This seems the most likely culprit.

[mr.magoo]

That's what I did. It looked Like there was a space there. Any remedy?

[vincent]

Uhmmm...yikes, I didn't expect this would happen. I should've told you to open up Nautilus, press CTRL + H, and then delete the .wine folder; it's safer to do things with a GUI rather than mucking up with a terminal command. Sorry.

First of all, to recover your files, we need to know what filesystem you're using at the moment. Probably ext3 or ext4, right? Recovering files from an ext3/4 partition is a difficult process though, from what I've seen, and I have never done it myself, so I have no experience on this issue to share with you. All I can say is that I hope you have a backup of your files...

[mr.magoo]

I have a somewhat old backup on my external HD, and I'm not sure it's complete. As to what file system, I'm afraid I don't know. I clicked on Properties and it gave me no information similar to what you've indicated.I've just looked in the phone book (Mariposa) for any indication of a Linux specialist and none are listed as such. Damn. I wish I didn't live in this cracker box and have the health problems I do. Life is a real PITA at the moment, especially when it seems that all I can do is screw things up.

[Midnighter]

Please open a Terminal and run

Code: Select all

sudo fdisk -ls

and post the results back here, it may shed some light. Also, perhaps something like testdisk would be useful for recovery, it's proven helpful for me in the past, just usually on storage partitions, not active /home.

[Fred]

I know it is a little late now but for what it is worth, I never give a user, especially a relatively new user, a CLI string that uses the "rm" command. This is a command that can easily destroy an install without warning when it contains a very simple mistake. There are almost always other ways of solving the problem.

I am not trying to throw rocks. Just making a point for the more knowledgeable users/helpers for future reference.

Fred

[mick55]

That's what I did. It looked Like there was a space there. Any remedy?

I'm very sorry to hear that Mr.Magoo.

I have not read anything real positive regarding recovering files deleted with the rm command.

However, here is what I do know.

Stop using Mint immediately. If you continue to try and use it you will end up
overwriting the deleted files, making recovery even more unlikely.

In the future always delete files from within Nautilus, that way they will be
sent to the trash, and are therefore recoverable.

When using commands suggested by forum members always copy/paste them into your terminal.
You can use the "select all" button above the code box to copy to the clipboard.

I know all this advice is a day late and a dollar short, but it is something to apply in
the future, and perhaps some of our forum members can learn from your misfortune.

I will continue to explore avenues for recovery of your files.

This command will show your file system type among other things.
Post the output here and perhaps a solution will avail itself.

Code: Select all

sudo blkid

I wish you the best of luck.

mick

[vincent]

I know it is a little late now but for what it is worth, I never give a user, especially a relatively new user, a CLI string that uses the "rm" command. This is a command that can easily destroy an install without warning when it contains a very simple mistake. There are almost always other ways of solving the problem.

I am not trying to throw rocks. Just making a point for the more knowledgeable users/helpers for future reference.

Fred

Good advice Fred, will keep that in mind in the future. That said, sometimes it's just so much easier to give a single Terminal command to a user than to go about explaining in detail how to accomplish the same thing with a GUI, 10 times slower. But you're right, I'm going to try to avoid giving commands with "rm" in the future.

[mr.magoo]

steve@steve-laptop ~ $ sudo fdisk -ls
[sudo] password for steve:

Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xd1b42421

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 23330 187398193+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 23331 24321 7960207+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 23331 24321 7960176 82 Linux swap / Solaris

and...

steve@steve-laptop ~ $ sudo blkid
/dev/sda1: UUID="7364a51b-58ce-4837-a473-fe9baa676514" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sda5: UUID="e8ed3a0d-4ff7-4fac-8d3a-42be5cd68050" TYPE="swap"

And Mint is all I have now.
Now, just tell me what all this means and what do I do with it?
And another thanks to helpful folks.

[vincent]

Alright, so you have your stuff stored onto an ext4 partition. I'm not too optimistic about the chances of you recovering your lost files (I'm really sorry, by the way ), but there are a few tools and utilities you can try:
https://ext4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Undeletion

Note that because ext4 is still a relatively new filesystem compared to ext3, most data recovery tools are still designed solely for ext3, thus reducing the chances of you recovering files from an ext4 partition even more. On top of that, I personally have no experience on recovering deleted files myself.

[Fred]

vincent,

As is usually the case in Linux there is usually more than one way to skin a cat. Example:

sudo mv /home/fred/.wine /.Trash-1000

This puts the folder in the trash can. From which it can be recovered if necessary.

Fred

[mick55]

From the ext4 FAQ.

https://ext4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ ... in_Ext4.3F

[mr.magoo]

Well, I guess I'm SOL. Got this from the wiki page:

Undelete Feature for Ext4

* Primary Developer:
* status: Idea was proposed on the mailing list, still need more thought on the feature.
* Change on-disk format:
* Target Date:
* e2fsprogs changes:
* outstanding issues: Should the kernel be involved with undelete

I guess it's just under consideration for the moment.

So, it's up to the external HD. Sigh...

And there's an ad (or was) for "Undeleter" right under my post... for Windows!

[mr.magoo]

Here's the stuff I got when I plugged in my hard drive:

On the drive -







In Steve-PC, I have backups from 3/31/10 and 4/4/10

OK, sorry for the double image. The duplicates are what's on the HD and the image below is the 4/11 back-up.

[mr.magoo]

OK, I've moved the folder "Backup" and the later backup within along with a folder labeled "IMAGES" to my home folder. And I just noticed I posted that it was a 4/11 backup, it's 4/20.

A screenshot of my home folder:

Well, maybe not. Contents:

/home/steve/2010-04-20-11-img
/home/steve/_Backup
/home/steve/Desktop
/home/steve/Documents
/home/steve/Downloads
/home/steve/IMAGES
/home/steve/Music
/home/steve/Pictures
/home/steve/Public
/home/steve/Templates
/home/steve/Videos

So, where do I go from here? I've refreshed the browser (Firefox) and no bookmarks. I'll try a reboot to see what happens.

Honestly, I've been trying to learn as much as I can, but there's really not a lot of time for me to spend online unless I ignore virtually everything in life. I'm fighting like mad to survive in this crackerbox with my health issues 'til the end of the month. Then, my realtor is going to look for a house on a foundation without a jjungle to hack down and without steps. If I'm lucky it'll have a garage or, at least a carport.

Right, no change on the reboot.

[mr.magoo]

One additional note.

There are two gmail accounts that are quite essential to me, but when I got on the security lick that my crypto friend launched me on, I changed the passwords to some convoluted thing. I've been through three moves since then and have no idea where I recorded the passwords (I now have a "little black book" I've been keeping for some time). What's worse, is that I can't answer the damned security question! I don't know why I'd choose, "Who was your first teacher" unless I was trying to be clever. I don't remember my first teacher's name, though I tried what I thought might be it. As to the clever idea, my Mom taught me to read before kindergarten (I was reading at a 9th grade level in 3rd grade), so I tried every permutation of "Mother" I might use including her name.

The last time I lost this information, I tried everything I could think of to get Google to grant me access to those accounts including "proving" my online identity and alternate security questions I could answer on other accounts, but the whole apparatus is composed of bots. I couldn't get contact with a reasoning human being.

So, if I ultimately lose the stored information on the two accounts, do I have any recourse in regaining access with the tools I have at hand?

[mr.magoo]

I keep trying.

Looked into my previous thread on porting passwords and was provided with a Firefox link. That led me to the files needed for bookmarks and passwords. Consequently, these three files are now in my home folder (steve) but still no luck in manipulating them. I tried navigating to a similar place as noted by elver in that thread with no luck.

/home/steve/bookmarks-2010-06-20.json
/home/steve/key3.db
/home/steve/signons.sqlite

Do I have these in the right place? What others might I need and where should they be placed? Incidentally, I'm currently running Firefox 3.5.9.