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Recovering Lost Files With flost and unrm

Cathy Kozlowski

flost is now available on the ECN Solaris systems. It is used to report lost files that need to be restored from system backups. Your request is then forwarded to the appropriate ECN Site Specialist.

To use flost type flost from any ECN Solaris connection and follow the instructions. You will be prompted for such information as

the machine where the file was located
the filename(s)
the full pathname
the date/time when the file was lost
the date/time when the file was created

The more information you can accurately supply, the more likely your file can be restored from the system backups. Note that the information in square brackets ([]) after some of the prompts are default answers. To accept a default answer, press return\ For more information on flost type man flost".

There are several items to keep in mind about what flos can and can't do for you.

Files Existing Less Than 24 Hours:

If you just lost the file, you may be able to recover it yourself with unrm. To see what unrm can restore for you, type unrm. If the file you need is there, type unrm filename to get the file back, substituting the name of your file for filename. For more information on unrm, type man unr .

If the file you lost was created (or modified) very recently, unrm may be the only way to get it back with all its changes. flost is helpful only if a new (or modified) file has been on the system long enough to be backed up. Backups are usually run each day very early in the morning. So, for example, if you created a file at 9:23am and lost it at 3:30pm on the same day, flost will not help you but unrm will.

Files Existing Longer Than A Day

There are also times when only flost will help you recover a file. Normally files recoverable by unrm must have been lost within the last 24 hours; files lost for longer than that time period are removed from the cache of files available to unrm. In that case, your only method of recovery is flost.. For example, say you created a file on Thursday and noticed on Saturday that it is missing, unrm will not be able to recover the file but flost probably can. However you must keep in mind that even flost cannot always recover very old files. Usually files lost within the last month can be recovered. Files older than one month may or may not be recoverable since each ECN site maintains a different backup scheme for older files. However, just because the file is old does not mean you should not use flost, only that the success rate will be lower.

In summary, use unrm and flost to recover lost files. unrm is best for files lost within the last 24 hours. flost is best for files lost more than 24 hours ago. When using flost, supply as much information as you can when responding to each of the questions asked.

Many thanks to PUCC for making their version of flost available to the Engineering Computer Network.

webmaster@ecn.purdue.edu

Last modified: Thursday, 02-Oct-97 20:26:21 EST

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