Re: [SOLVED] (was "Re: Restoring filenames from partly damaged ext4-filesystem")

Re: [SOLVED] (was "Re: Restoring filenames from partly damaged ext4-filesystem")

[Maar, Roberto]

Hi list !

I am the developer of ext4magic

On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 11:47:14AM -0700, Andreas Dilger wrote:
>> Looks interesting and useful...  I wonder if it makes sense to include
>> this into e2fsprogs at some point, so that it is available when users
>> need it most...

Ted Ts'o wrote:
> We'll need to talk to the author about that.  At the very least it
> would be good to translate the ext4magic wiki into English, so that
> people who are doing web searches are more likely to find it.  :-)

I think inside of e2fsprogs is not the place for ext4magic. 
A good optional extension, probably, but a standard tool, never.
There are destroyed, deleted or lost structures and there is a lot of
heuristic function. Installation on a production server is a no go for
any administrator. 
Useable for some small forensic problems and a last chance to recover
some lost files. Nobody needs this regularly.
Everyone has a good backup, and no one destroy its files and file systems.
It is very rarely needed. The users prefer extundelete. This is buggy,
the development sleeps for 2 years, on the mailing list no answers,
but it is easy to use and there are many HOWTOs, and all love it  ;-)

One of the problems of ext4magic, of course, no English documentation.
But at the moment is the one man show, and my English is a disaster. 
The world would laugh at it. I need some help for translation. 
Proofread, for a native speaker with technical understanding a few minutes work,
for me ...
We'll see, I try

Regards,
Roberto Maar
 

Re: [SOLVED] (was "Re: Restoring filenames from partly damaged ext4-filesystem")

[Ted Ts'o]

On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 11:00:21AM +0100, Maar, Roberto wrote:
> Everyone has a good backup, and no one destroy its files and file systems.

If only that were true.  :-)

Of course the developers who can do a good job writing recovery
programs are smart enough to do regular backups.  This is why tools
like extundelete and ext4magic generally don't get a lot of volunteers
to help with documentation and development.

But you'd be amazed how many people contact me, or the ext4 list, or
the ext3-users list, asking for help, and who obviously had _not_ been
doing regular backups.  :-(

> 
> One of the problems of ext4magic, of course, no English documentation.
> But at the moment is the one man show, and my English is a disaster. 
> The world would laugh at it. I need some help for translation. 
> Proofread, for a native speaker with technical understanding a few minutes work,
> for me ...
> We'll see, I try

Well, I can certainly call for help, and see if there are folks who
would be interested in helping you with the translation and
creating/improving the English documentation

And now that I know about it, I'll certainly be pointing people at it.

Thanks for creating it!

						- Ted

Re: [SOLVED] (was "Re: Restoring filenames from partly damaged ext4-filesystem")

[Greg Freemyer]

On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 10:51 AM, Ted Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 11:00:21AM +0100, Maar, Roberto wrote:
>> Everyone has a good backup, and no one destroy its files and file systems.
>
> If only that were true.  :-)
>
> Of course the developers who can do a good job writing recovery
> programs are smart enough to do regular backups.  This is why tools
> like extundelete and ext4magic generally don't get a lot of volunteers
> to help with documentation and development.
>
> But you'd be amazed how many people contact me, or the ext4 list, or
> the ext3-users list, asking for help, and who obviously had _not_ been
> doing regular backups.  :-(
>
>>
>> One of the problems of ext4magic, of course, no English documentation.
>> But at the moment is the one man show, and my English is a disaster.
>> The world would laugh at it. I need some help for translation.
>> Proofread, for a native speaker with technical understanding a few minutes work,
>> for me ...
>> We'll see, I try
>
> Well, I can certainly call for help, and see if there are folks who
> would be interested in helping you with the translation and
> creating/improving the English documentation
>
> And now that I know about it, I'll certainly be pointing people at it.
>
> Thanks for creating it!
>
>                                                - Ted

I took a minute and tried to put together a opensuse package for
ext4magic in my home directory for testing.

https://build.opensuse.org/package/show?package=ext4magic&project=home%3Agregfreemyer%3ATools-for-forensic-boot-cd

I haven't tried to patch the source, but at present it has some
compile errors that keep OBS from publishing it even from a home
directory.

====
I: Program returns random data in a function
E: ext4magic no-return-in-nonvoid-function hard_link_stack.c:87
E: ext4magic no-return-in-nonvoid-function imap_search.c:362
E: ext4magic no-return-in-nonvoid-function magic_block_scan.c:203, 1028, 249

I: A function uses a 'return;' statement, but has actually a value
   to return, like an integer ('return 42;') or similar.
W: ext4magic voidreturn ext4magic.c:888

I: Program is using implicit definitions of functions getting
   pointers or implemented by macros. These functions need to use their
   correct prototypes to allow correct argument passing on e.g. x86_64 .
     - Implicit memory/string functions need #include <string.h>.
     - Implicit *printf functions need #include <stdio.h>.
     - Implicit *printf functions need #include <stdio.h>.
     - Implicit *read* functions need #include <unistd.h>.
     - Implicit *recv* functions need #include <sys/socket.h>.
W: ext4magic implicit-pointer-decl journal.c:754

=====

I think just the E: errors are mandatory to fix for OBS to publish the
package, but I'm not sure about that.

Roberto, if you think you'll come out with a cleaner build in the next
couple weeks, I won't bother to patch up those errors.

Thanks
Greg
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Re: [SOLVED] (was "Re: Restoring filenames from partly damaged ext4-filesystem")

[Andreas Dilger]

On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 11:00:21AM +0100, Maar, Roberto wrote:
> Everyone has a good backup, and no one destroy its files and file systems.

I think this is less true than you think. 

Even if this is a rarely needed tool, having it as part of e2fsprogs with a good man page means that the users who need it will be able to find it more easily.

> One of the problems of ext4magic, of course, no English documentation.
> But at the moment is the one man show, and my English is a disaster.
> The world would laugh at it. I need some help for translation.

I think that your English is likely better than my German.  I'm also always disappointed (but no longer surprised) by the poor quality of writing that native English speakers produce, so I don't think you have anything to worry about. 

Possibly the easiest way to start is to use Google translate to convert the German wiki into English, post it to your site, and then ask for help in fixing it up. 

> Proofread, for a native speaker with technical understanding a few minutes work, for me ...

Exactly. Since you already have a wiki in German, automated translation will hopefully get it to the point where some English writer can fix it up.

Cheers, Andreas

RE: [SOLVED] (was "Re: Restoring filenames from partly damaged ext4-filesystem")

[Maar, Roberto]

On Tuesday, February 14, 2012 1:25 AM, Greg Freemyer wrote:
> I took a minute and tried to put together a opensuse package for
> ext4magic in my home directory for testing.
> I haven't tried to patch the source, but at present it has some
> compile errors that keep OBS from publishing it even from a home
> directory.
> Roberto, if you think you'll come out with a cleaner build in the next
> couple weeks, I won't bother to patch up those errors.

Ops, a little dirty code. Full compiler checking, I've never tried. ;-(
Let me clean up this and one more intensive checking for all sorts of memory problems.
Think then ext4magic is ready to prove whether it is usable and useful.


The proposal to try a translation direct on the wiki is a good idea.

Thank you all for your interest for ext4magic, this gives me new energy 
and positive motivation to work on it.

Regards,
Roberto Maar

Re: [SOLVED] (was "Re: Restoring filenames from partly damaged ext4-filesystem")

[Ted Ts'o]

On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 11:47:14AM -0700, Andreas Dilger wrote:
> 
> Looks interesting and useful...  I wonder if it makes sense to include
> this into e2fsprogs at some point, so that it is available when users
> need it most...

We'll need to talk to the author about that.  At the very least it
would be good to translate the ext4magic wiki into English, so that
people who are doing web searches are more likely to find it.  :-)

       	       	     	 	      - Ted

Re: [SOLVED] (was "Re: Restoring filenames from partly damaged ext4-filesystem")

[Andreas Dilger]

On 2012-02-11, at 11:30 AM, Ted Ts'o wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 05:33:30PM +0000, Rudolf Zran wrote:
>> Hi List!
>> 
>> In an offlist reply someone recommended me ext4magic (see
>> http://developer.berlios.de/projects/ext4magic ).
> 
> I wasn't familiar with ext4magic, so thanks for recommending it.
> After taking a quick look at its wiki page, it looks like worthy
> successor to ext3grep (which only works on ext3 file systems).  It
> appears from their web page (I haven't had a chance to play with it
> yet) that it uses a variety of techniques to recover data, which
> combined should work really well.

Looks interesting and useful...  I wonder if it makes sense to include
this into e2fsprogs at some point, so that it is available when users
need it most...

Cheers, Andreas

Re: [SOLVED] (was "Re: Restoring filenames from partly damaged ext4-filesystem")

[Ted Ts'o]

On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 05:33:30PM +0000, Rudolf Zran wrote:
> Hi List!
> 
> In an offlist reply someone recommended me ext4magic (see
> http://developer.berlios.de/projects/ext4magic ).

I wasn't familiar with ext4magic, so thanks for recommending it.
After taking a quick look at its wiki page, it looks like worthy
successor to ext3grep (which only works on ext3 file systems).  It
appears from their web page (I haven't had a chance to play with it
yet) that it uses a variety of techniques to recover data, which
combined should work really well.

Thanks for reporting back!

						- Ted

[SOLVED] (was "Re: Restoring filenames from partly damaged ext4-filesystem")

[Rudolf Zran]

Hi List!

In an offlist reply someone recommended me ext4magic (see
http://developer.berlios.de/projects/ext4magic ).

Like magic it recovered complete directory hierarchies with filenames,
timestamps, even ownership and permissions for more than 300GB of the
deleted data.

I can recommend this to everybody who accidently destroyed parts of
his filesystem. In contrast to fsck ext4magic doesn't try to repair,
 but just extracts the data completely in read only mode (feelslike
"tar xf" actually :).It's easier to use and understand and way more
effective when it comesto recovery. ext4magic shouldn't be missing
in any good recovery collection.

Thanks to all helping me out in this case.

Have a nice weekend, Rudolf.