hi
i have accidently mv all files into one folder.
im not sure how to reverse the process a because i dont know and b because non of the commands work.
i can cd into the folder which i accidently moved everything into. but cannot move the files back out. any body have any suggestions will be much appreciated.
thanks

What files, which folder, what errors do you see?

copy paste exerpt of command line maybe?

sorry
it started off with the following commands:
[root@puny bin]# mv * databasessl/
mv: cannot move `databasessl' to a subdirectory of itself, `databasessl/databasessl'
[root@puny bin]# mv * databasessl
-bash: /bin/mv: No such file or directory
[root@puny bin]# ls
-bash: /bin/ls: No such file or directory
[root@puny bin]# ls
-bash: /bin/ls: No such file or directory
[root@puny bin]# ls
-bash: /bin/ls: No such file or directory
...
...
as you can see the errors are that no commands are being recognised... realised this must be because i copied the bin folder into the databasessl folder as well. im trying to bring it back to its orignal state meaning copying everything back out. any help wor direction of help will be great

i knew i should have used the damn cp command!

What do you mean you moved all files into one folder? All the files on the system? Do you mean you moved all of your system files as root? Give us some details here.

I'm going to hazard a guess that if the damage is as extensive as it sounds, it may be best to simply reinstall the os. There's no "revert" ability in the basic mv application, after all. Since you now can't seem to access most of the basic commands, it sounds to me like you've moved all of the /bin files at least, including the mv command itself. If you've also move the /usr/bin files or your /usr/lib files, then you've really got a headache on your hands and you probably only still have a working bash shell because because it's remained loaded in memory after your accident, and the second you close the shell you may be out of luck. BTW, that's why you can still use cd--because it's a built-in bash shell command and not a separate /bin binary like mv is.

Until then though, you should be able to at least access most of your commands by giving the full path to them; which in this case means the path to the directory you moved everything into. e.g. "/path/to/mv filea locationb". Whether this will do you any good or not depends on just how badly you've hosed your system.

[Now that I've seen the follow-up posts]:

Ouch. I assume you were in / when you ran that command. You may be in luck. I'm guessing you simply moved the entire / tree into /databasessl as is. If you can run "/databasessl/bin/ls" and get a working directory list, then you should also be able to run "/databasessl/bin/mv" to move everything back out again.

Hi david
thanks for the lengthy reply.
wow!
did as you said and it worked!!:


[root@puny bin]# /bin/databasessl/cp /bin/databasessl/* /bin/
[root@puny bin]# ls
arch cat csr.sh~ dms.ccls.globalsign.revoke.pw
...
...
etc


that was quite close. not sure what the alternative would have been if this didnt work but thanks a bunch for your help david, really appreciated.

Glad to hear you got it all worked out. Yeah, you've got to be very careful with mv (or rm, etc) and wildcards. I came close to nuking all of my home files recently that way myself.

Ditto, I couldn't agree more, Dave!

Even a couple of days ago, I accidentally overwritten an AVI file with the subtitle, not sure how to recover it.... I don't think there is any recovery tool for ext3 filesystem.

It's really a mess, glad it worked out for you fedora_user :P

Cheers,
Henry

you might want to use the -i switch with your mv and rm just to be on the safe side. If you look in the man file it will explain in detail, but basically rm -i <filename> or mv -i ... will cause the shell to promopt for confirmation....think of it as the windows version of "Are you sure you want to do xyz"

you can automate this with an alias:

you can also add it to your config scripts:

.bash_profile
.bashrc

check your shell docs for more information.