[plug] deleted/missing files

[Daniel Pittman]

"Jon L. Miller" <jlmiller at mmtnetworks.com.au> writes:

> Got a server Debian Sarge that had some file (quite a large amount)
> that has suddenly disappeared.  The users swear they did not delete
> it.

>From long and painful experience, they are probably technically wrong,
but it also may not be their fault: I have had a number of occasions
when directories were inadvertently moved, deleted or lost because of
user accident[2] or Windows "offline files" deleting things, or...

> Is there a way to search the unit for these missing files and is there
> a way to see what has been deleted?

There are plenty of ways to look for the files, if you know what they
are, such as find(1), locate(1), or just looking.

As to "seeing what has been deleted", probably not, but you would need
to better define how users access the files before we can answer.

> The server has been turned off and moved from up the hill to West
> Perth, would this have any effect on the files?

It certainly could: did it fsck clean before and after the move?

It isn't unknown for rebooting to show up a corrupt filesystem, or even
for moving the hardware to provoke a failure through rough handling or
plain bad luck, so it /could/ be related.


Personally, I would just dig the files out of backups.  It saves time
and trouble.

Regards,
        Daniel

...except I bet they don't have current backups, eh?

Footnotes: 
[2]  It turns out that dragging a folder to a random location in
     Explorer is both trivially easy and sufficiently fast that the user
     may not notice, or may not connect the progress dialog with
     anything to mention later.