HI Guys,

I still can`t believe this was happening.

I was just about cleaning up my system because of
lack of free space, and I wanted to check the size
of my bin directory in /usr/X11R6.

But instead of doing an du -shx bin I simply did a real
nice rm -r bin... and the job was done

Well, It was already too late when I noticed my fatal
error, I guess I need more coffee... or maybe less... whatever.


My question is if there is any way to make this rm -r not happened to get my binaries back, or what can I do?

I fear to reboot and I don`t know what to do at all now

HELP!

-shad

Nope, they are gone. There's no "Recycle Bin" when doing this.

My suggestion for next time, create an alias that makes the "rm" command move to some folder like ~/.trash . So you create your own recycle bin.


Umm....yeah, they're gona. I guess you should reinstall. Sorry, cant think of any other way.

Just reinstall Xfree if that's all you wacked. Kde Gnome go in other places so they should be independent of whatever X "lower abstraction" program you use.

Mental note about running as root.....

I was also just thinking... you should be able to find that actual directory gziped somewhere on the net assuming you only wacked the .../X11R6/bin directory.

I once deleted something similar and managed to get it back. Some other poor soul did the same thing I did and to back it up he gziped lots of his directories and stored them on the web.

I thought that was funny.

Oooh Oooh!!! I thought of another one.

Download the source the whatever version of XFree you're using and recomile and install it back to where is was.

Or... Install it somewhere safe (ie. /home/myaccount/thissucks/ so you don't go blasting anymore directories. Then move the /safeplace/X11R6/bin directory back to where is belongs. Just make sure you fix the symlinks that live in there. There are only a couple.

I've never seen anything link to the bin directory so you might be able to just move it. hehe

Good Luck

Is there a possibility to just recompile the bin directory of xfree?

I have only dialup connection, dont want to get the whole lot of files I dont really need...

Just reinstall X from the Slackware disc. Its like an 8MB file if you want to download it, but compiling X if a very long drawn process.

hmm... I really dont know if I shouldn`t go and see the doc.

Either I get some more sleep, or I will get myself killed.

You know... well.

I was such a troll and was that much angry about my incompetence that I didnt notice that I didnt actually deleted /usr/X11R6/bin... it was much worse, it was --> /usr/bin <--

well, now I guess I am a total idiot as well as totally screwed :X`

I noticed it when I went to xfree86.org and downloaded the binaries. When I tried to copy it to the bin file, i noticed first that they were all there... first I was really happy about that "miracle"... but I know I deleted some bin directory... and it didnt take much time to find out it was /usr/bin.

That was my end.

HELP

Well, I pretty much guess now I am really in a bad position, because all the programs have been installed there.

Any suggestions now?

PS: Sorry for misleading all of you. I am just a total mess after this incident...

Lesson #1.
Back-ups are your buddies.

Lesson #2.
Depending on what fs type you have, you can sometimes "undelete" a missing inode.

Lesson #3.
We're not talking about a couple inodes. This is /usr/bin. Unless you are really bored and like picking up sand, one seed at a time, its time to make a backup and reinstall.

:/

Well... this is what I am up to right now *sigh*

Backing up the whole wide world and make a new cut.

well, this is going to last some time till the system is up again like I had it right now

Hmmm. /usr/bin/

Anyone out there know what files reside in /usr/bin? For RedHat you'd be completely screwed, "sort of", becuase kde lives in /usr/bin.

Like I said above, search the net. There will probably be a directory listing of a stock Slackware install and you might be able to pull a tar.gz file from it.

/usr/bin contains most of the binaries for the system. You've probobly lost some system files and other stuff you installed, no tarball on the net is going to have that.


Make sure you back up your xf86config file, in case its highly customized, and your preference files. They are usually in your home directory, hidden (with a period in front of them). So you may have to unhide files to be able to burn them to a disc.

Can I add a Lesson #4?

If you had /home in a seperate partition, you wouldn't need to be backing it all up now... and it would prolly be easier keeping /usr on a seperate partition as well.

At the minimum back up your data and any worthy configs.

I am still backing up

Well, right now I got my home directory containing all hidden files, some config files from /etc (including XF86config), my download directory, what else do I need where prefs are stored?

... this is going to be a loooooong night ...

preferences are stored either in home (as hidden) or in /etc. You sound like you got them all, just reinstall and hope for the best.

Dont forget your LILO config if you're dual booting, since Slackware wont add windows automatically, it can save you some time just to replace the config with your old working one.