Re: undelete

[Jeremiah Foster <jeremiannika@attbi.com>]

I have foolishly deleted a file I did not want to.
It was created this morning, so it is not backed up.

is there an undelete util ?

thanks

Matt

Matt,

There is not an "undelete" utility as you might find under a proprietary
operating system. However, if you were editing that file, in Emacs for
example, there may have been an automatic back-up made. Emacs does this
to whatever file you are editing, (unless you tell it not to,) and
creates a file of the same name that you were editing. It names it file~
(file with a tilde.) Other editors do this as well I believe. 

The file is not gone even if you deleted it, it has just been
"unlinked." This means the bits of the file are still in the file
system, you just have destroyed the pointer to it. It is now non-trivial
to retrieve it unfortunately. If you used the command shred to delete
the file it has been overwritten and even the FBI should be unable to
retrieve it.

There are ways to get the file back, but they often require advanced
knowledge and sometimes money to buy data-recovery services or software.

Cheers,

Jeremiah