Hello everyone, I lost a somewhat important file from a software crash in an appvm. Within the VM, I couldn't find a way to recover it. I copied the appvm filesystem containers ('private.img', 'private-cow.img', 'private-cow.img.old'). As I understand it, 'private-cow.img' contains the old version of files that were changed since last appvm startup. However, '-cow.img' files contain no filesystem, but "binary patch" data, thus can't be mounted or read directly or without their corresponding'.img' files. I found only little info online. Qubes documentation [1] says about reverting template 'root-cow.img' changes:
> 1. Ensure that no other VMs uses this template. > 2. Prepare snapshot device with root-cow.img.old instead of root-cow.img > (/etc/xen/scripts/block-snapshot prepare). > 3. Replace snapshot device-mapper target with snapshot-merge, other > parameters (chunk size etc) remains untouched. Now kernel starts merging > changes stored in root-cow.img.old into root.img. d-m device can be used > normally (if needed). > 4. Waits for merge completed: dmsetup status shows used snapshot blocks – > it should be equal to metadata size when completed. > 5. Replace snapshot-merge d-m target back to snapshot. > 6. Cleanup snapshot device (if nobody uses it at the moment). > 7. Move root-cow.img.old to root-cow.img (overriding existing file). I tried to apply these steps to 'private.img' and 'private-cow.img', but already failed with the second step, where I couldn't really figure out how to use the '/etc/xen/scripts/block-snapshot' script. Is there any hope to recover an older version of a changed/deleted file from 'private-cow.img'? Can anyone give me a pointer how to access its content, aka "apply its content as a patch to 'private.ig'"? Thank you in advance, Stickstoff [1] https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/template-implementation/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "qubes-users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to qubes-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qubes-users/8bbce168-ea9c-6ef9-b6b0-a39e037e1ba8%40posteo.de.