[ale] recovering an ext3 drive

[Joe]

Geoffrey <esoteric at 3times25.net> writes:

q> I'll say up front that I think that undelete tools are terribly
> valuable and it would be nice to have one for ext3.  That being said...
> 
> Michael D. Hirsch wrote:
> > I'm sorry, but I've rarely read a post in which I disagreed with
> > nearly every sentence as vehemently as this one.
> > On Monday 20 January 2003 02:34 pm, Geoffrey wrote:
> >
> >>Well I still disagree.  If you choose a program called 'remove' or
> >>'delete' or any thing in the vernacular, then by damn understand what
> >>you're about to do.
> > Why?  All I want is to get rid of it.  Or maybe I'm using another
> > program
> > that removed the file without me knowing it was going to do that.
> > Why should I have to understand the inner guts of every program I
> > use, all I want is my file back.  By your reasoning you'd agree with
> > having an  undelete command if the "rm" command were renamed
> > "movethefilesomewhereelsesoidonthavetothinkaboutitanymore".  (In
> > UNIX tradition we could name the command
> > mvtflsmwrlssidnhvtthkbttnymr.)
> 
> I didn't say you should understand the inner guts of every program you
> use.  You should certainly understand HOW to use it and WHAT it does.
> 
>  From the man page:
> 
> 'rm removes each specified file'
> 
> How much clearer must it be.  Maybe we should change it to rmk
> (remove, kinda).
> 
> >
> >>We all have accidents, but you can't stop everything.  You've got to use
> >>some common sense.
> > That's silly.  Since you can't stop everything, you are arguing to
> > stop nothing.
> 
> No, I'm saying there's a happy medium.
> 
> > I say that whenever practical computers should "do what I mean".
> 
> Well you better build one hell of a AI machine, because 'do what I
> mean' varys quite substantially.  So, would you you like the brakes in
> your car to stop you completely, or slow you down a bit, or hey, maybe
> it should 'break' the axle.  After all, that's what I meant for it to
> do.
> 
> "do what I mean" is impossible, and quite dangerous.
> 
> > Typically when someone removes (tenchincally, unlinks) a file all
> > they really wanted to do was to get the file out of the way so that
> > it would not interfere with whatever they are doing.  When I throw
> > things out I rarely pass them through a shredder, why should a
> > computer be so different? >
> 
> Just the same, I don't intend on dragging out of the garbage
> either. That particular example is not very good either.  Say you
> throw a check in the garbage.  Much like the file system, if you get
> it back quick you might be okay, then again if you wait too late, it's
> covered in tomato sauce and illegible.  The fact that you did not
> shred it, is not really a valid comparison.  Further, what you throw
> away sits around for a while because the garbage goes out once a week.
> I assure you, the reason for that is not so that you might retrieve
> that winning loto you chunked, but just a matter of how often it's
> necessary to haul the trash off.
> 
> >
> >>If the expectation is that you must protect the fool from himself all
> >>the time, systems will get so bogged down with dealing with the loose
> >>screw behind the keyboard, they won't do anything useful.  Think about
> >>it.  The ideal solution is, you remove a file.  What REALLY happens is,
> >>it's copied to a safe place that' not touched.  Just in case the machine
> >>might crash, it's also copied to a tape.  Incrementally to the tape, one
> >>file at a time as they are deleted.  What's wrong with this picture???
> > But no one is saying to prevent everything, just common mistakes.  I
> > think everyone on this list has accidentally deleted a file--maybe
> > even an important file.  If there is a clear solution that would
> > save people lots of angst, why not do it?  Yes, there will still be
> > corner cases it might not catch--so what?
> 
> The solution is backing up the files properly.  People need to
> understand that removing a file means just that.  If you don't like
> it, then create an alias where remove pushes the file off somewhere.
> 
> I don't understand why people want a command to 'kinda' do what it's
> supposed to do.  rm - remove, what's so hard about that???
> 
> Now, understand, I'm not against people creating tools to retrieve
> files that are accidentally removed.  I've used them, I think they're
> great. But for someone to say, Linux sucks cause I removed a file and
> now I can't get it back.  What's with that?
> 
> Damn, the chainsaw said DANGER, but I cut my foot off anyway.
> 
> >
> >>Do people get behind the wheel of a car without learning to drive? No.
> > Wanna bet?  They most certainly do.  And even the ones that do learn
> > to drive don't become a professional driver.  You are asking (no,
> > telling) everyone that they should use a computer with a
> > professional attitude.  That is just wrong.  Computers should be for
> > everyone, not just the elite few.
> 
> No, I'm not.  I'm saying, don't slur the meaning of a command, then
> bitch about it doing what it was damn well designed to do.
> 
> There are protections in place to protect the non-professional in
> computer environments.  Virtually all the latest gui desktops have
> some variation of the 'recycle bin.'
> 
> I agree that computers should be for everyone, but you should get some
> training and understand the device before you use it.  It's all a
> matter of how valuable it is to you.  I knew a guy who went out and
> bought a brand new lawn tractor.  Cranked it up, drove it about 2 feet
> and trashed it because he didn't put oil in it.  So who's at fault?
> RTFM.
> 
> I'm not an auto mechanic, but I check the fluids in all my vehicles on
> a regular basis.
> 
> >
> >>Why aren't all cars encased in big soft bubbles, so that there's no such
> >>thing as an accident?
> > But by your argument we wouldn't have cars with seat belts, roll
> > bars, or crush zones.  "If you drive a car into another car, you
> > must have wanted it to kill you."
> 
> Again, there's a balance here.
> 
> > Everyone should go and read "The Inmates are Running the Asylum" to
> > learn just how far our engineer ideas of a good interface are from
> > the real world.  This is a classic case of the problem.
> > Given the incredible speed and storage of modern computers, I find
> > it hard to believe that one couldn't design a decent filesystem that
> > would have the kind of properties which would make users happy.
> > Journaling is a good start, but undelete is probably just as
> > important, if not more so.
> > The basic rule should be, when an inode is unlinked, it and its disk
> > blocks get moved to a MRU (Most Recently Used) list.  When someone
> > needs to relink (a new syscall?) the MRU can be consulted.  To keep
> > the engineers happy, the MRU could be limited to some reasonable
> > percentage of the file system, or maybe for performance freaks, to a
> > percentage of the unused space.  Or, if the designer felt like
> > getting fancy, some kind of decay functions so that it attempts to
> > keep all files around for an hour, but after that it starts deleting
> > files according to some rule.
> 
> So you're saying that you don't want the file to be removed
> immediately, just some, unspecified time in the future.  Unspecified,
> because all user's needs and wants are different.
> 
> So the file is removed 6 days, 2 hours, 5 minutes, 38 seconds later,
> and damn, I decided that I wanted it 6 days 2 hours 5 minutes and 45
> minutes later.  Now where is it?  This system is really screwed up
> cause I could get the file back last week, but not this week.
> 
> > I imagine this at the filesystem level, not by putting wrappers
> > around "rm".  It shouldn't matter who does the unlinking, the
> > filesystem should just keep track.
> 
> Wrong.  The user should be trained to use an archival device if they
> think they might want that file back.  rm is remove.  I don't see why
> you want to cloud the purpose of the program.
> 
> > (I'm imagining this as open source, so if you want to file off this
> > safety device, you can get a filesystem that will let you shoot
> > yourself in the foot.)
> > If ext3 had this, everyone would have this capability and few would
> > know about it.  Someone like you who never made a mistake would
> > never know it was there.  Neither would ordinary users know--all
> > they would know is that undelete works.
> > --Michael
> >
> 
> -- 
> Until later: Geoffrey		esoteric at 3times25.net
> 
> The latest, most widespread virus?  Microsoft end user agreement.
> Think about it...
> 
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> 

-- 
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   sucks, 'cause I have a lot of Java code to maintain and
   the leg surgery is starting to get expensive." - Me
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