Urgent Problem Please Help .... data lost

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Posted by edalily, 12-14-2009, 10:45 PM
Hello , i have VPS node and i have by mistake rm * in / folder in one VPS i have contacted data center and company and they haven't any backup VPS have 72 very important sites ( companies , organizations , NGO's) i have viruozzo and WHM , any one can help us how we can retrive al the deleted files and folders i have access to the node and it have free space please help Urgent
Posted by linuxissues, 12-14-2009, 11:24 PM
Don't think you can get the deleted content. You would have to get a fresh install on a new drive and have your current drive mounted as secondary and restore from there.
Posted by levisbakalinsky, 12-14-2009, 11:41 PM
Sorry bud, but their is no way that you can restore your content after an rm -rf VPS. The only thing you can do is reload the OS and start from scratch. Maybe some of your clients kept backups.
Posted by dyna!, 12-14-2009, 11:44 PM
http://www.xs4all.nl/~carlo17/howto/undelete_ext3.html ???
Posted by levisbakalinsky, 12-14-2009, 11:52 PM
I know about this solution, however, it will not work on a VPS. I can imagine that his VPS is pretty much unusable. Even if he was on a dedicated server it would takes several weeks to do a partial recovery. Sorry for being pessimistic, I'm usually not, but the OP is going to have to start all over.
Posted by DMEHosting, 12-15-2009, 12:06 AM
You are unable to recover any data on the VPS level. Your provider would have to do it and it can be very costly. Your provider will need to make an mirror image of the current HD your VPS is located on (along with other VPS clients) and then run some HD recover utility programs to see if they can recover anything. It will be very hard for you to persuade your provider to make an mirror image of the hard drive since it will pretty much knock of any other VPS on that node/hdd while it's doing that causing hours of downtime...depending how big the HD or the array is. As for you, there is absolutely nothing you can do. It's entirely up to the provider and how deep your pockets are to pay them to do such a task for you.
Posted by njoker555, 12-15-2009, 12:56 AM
Why would you run that command? I realize it was by accident but I don't think you typed it in by accident. If your host doesn't have a backup and if you don't have one, you're basically screwed in this situation. But this thing happens all the time, and this is where you learn the lesson and never do anything like this again.
Posted by levisbakalinsky, 12-15-2009, 12:58 AM
He probably thought he was in another directory. Stuff happens.
Posted by njoker555, 12-15-2009, 01:03 AM
Yeah I know, but I was just thinking, shouldn't it ask you for confirmation when deleting regular files and not delete folders with files in them?
Posted by levisbakalinsky, 12-15-2009, 01:06 AM
Not unless your working with Ubuntu. Normally when you run rm -rf /* it just starts removing everything. Man I really feel sorry for the OP. I just hope he can find some backups for some of his sites.
Posted by njoker555, 12-15-2009, 01:09 AM
He didn't mention the -rf in the command so I'm still left wondering. And I have minimal exp with Ubuntu - most with Fedora and CentOS. And trust me I feel sorry for him too because I wouldn't know what I would do if it happened to me. Out of fear, I proactively have tons of backups.
Posted by The Universes, 12-15-2009, 03:13 AM
He says he "has" the VPS node and only deleted the "/" in 1 VPS on there. So its definitely *possible* to attempt data recovery, but in any case, it would be costly and difficult to do. If he is serious about data recovery, he should turn the drive off immediately to ensure the deleted data isn't overwritten, although it maybe too late for that. Another lesson learned for why backups are necessary.
Posted by levisbakalinsky, 12-15-2009, 03:16 AM
Oh, you're right. I skimmed the post and missed the node part. I need glasses.
Posted by DMEHosting, 12-15-2009, 03:44 AM
I think he means he has a "node" as in a VPS. Some VPS providers sell X amount of resources as 1 node, and you can then add more nodes (resources) as you need them. From the way he is writing it I would think that is what he is meaning.