Ext3 users - Jul 2003 - accidental mke2fs

I know there is no straightforward way to recover deleted files on
an ext3 file system, but is there any way to recover from an 
accidental mke2fs?

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Raines                   email: raines@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu
MGH/MIT/HMS Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging
149 (2301) 13th Street        tel:(617)-724-2369
Charlestown, MA 02129	USA   fax:(617)-726-7422

On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 01:04:36PM -0400, Paul Raines
wrote:
> 
> I know there is no straightforward way to recover deleted files on
> an ext3 file system, but is there any way to recover from an 
> accidental mke2fs?
> 
Not really, no.  The inode table gets complete wiped, so unless you
ran e2image beforehand, there really isn't a way, short of searching
each data block looking for specific files of interest.

I've considered trying to make mke2fs run e2image beforehand, but the
hard part is (a) figuring out where to put e2image file afterwards,
and (b) it would slow down mke2fs significantly.   

However, as more civilians start using Linux, this sort of thing will
probably become painfully more common, so maybe we will need to add
more idiot-proofing to mke2fs...

							- Ted

I think the installer from distros already does things like that.

I guess Paul just type the mke2fs from command line. We might
want to add that to the stander mke2fs. It will be annoying
for "non-civilians" though.

Chris
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Darrell Michaud [mailto:dmichaud@wsi.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 12:07 PM
> To: Theodore Ts'o
> Cc: Paul Raines; ext3-users@redhat.com
> Subject: Re: accidental mke2fs
> 
> 
> Punt it to GUI-land.. The distros can surely come up with a GUI for
> reformatting that includes a safety net. "Are you really sure?"
and
> "keep filesystem snapshot" could be done there.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, 2003-07-30 at 14:48, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 01:04:36PM -0400, Paul Raines wrote:
> > > 
> > > I know there is no straightforward way to recover deleted files
on
> > > an ext3 file system, but is there any way to recover from an 
> > > accidental mke2fs?
> > > 
> > 
> > Not really, no.  The inode table gets complete wiped, so unless you
> > ran e2image beforehand, there really isn't a way, short of
searching
> > each data block looking for specific files of interest.
> > 
> > I've considered trying to make mke2fs run e2image 
> beforehand, but the
> > hard part is (a) figuring out where to put e2image file afterwards,
> > and (b) it would slow down mke2fs significantly.   
> > 
> > However, as more civilians start using Linux, this sort of 
> thing will
> > probably become painfully more common, so maybe we will need to add
> > more idiot-proofing to mke2fs...
> > 
> > 							- Ted
> > 
> > 
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> > Ext3-users@redhat.com
> > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/ext3-users
> 
> 
> 
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