I did a history | grep rm and also on xargs in my user and root.  No joy - didn't happen.

And Sebastian is right in that it almost appears to be a roll back - EXCEPT all the
directories I have created since I installed this version of  Ubuntu are there, just no data!

if it were truly some kind of roll back - wouldn't it have wiped them too?

I would almost suspect some kind of virus/worm but I have never heard of such an
animal on Linux.  AND I don't think a virus/worm running inside of VMWare could do such damage
for a Windows VM.  Besides, my virtual machine was also wiped out.

Dennis


On Thu, 2006-01-05 at 12:51 -0800, Ben Johnson wrote:
is there a possibility you did something like:

rm -rf *

or...

find . -type f | xargs rm -f

in the wrong directory or something like that?  it happens to everyone
eventually, at least once.  Usually because of some cut and paste
maneuver gone horribly wrong or a goofy typo or because you forget to
escape the crazy astarisk, spaces and/or ampersands in a filename.

or, maybe you moved everything accidentally.  try updating your locate
database then use that to find the missing files.

$ su -
# updatedb
# exit
$ locate whatImLookingFor.txt

or, maybe you renamed files or directories so that they start with a
period, making them "invisible" by default.  do -> 'ls -a'

good luck,

- Ben


On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 10:46:01AM -0800, Dennis Bagley wrote:
> I sent this message to the rlug list (unfortunately several times) yesterday
> but got
> -0- feedback from anyone.  I'm still looking for answers because I do NOT want
> to accidentally
> repeat the problem.
> 
> So anyone have answers besides "42"?
> 
> Thanks again
> 
> Dennis
> 
> 
> 
> Came into my office this morning to discover data missing from my PC.
> 
> I am running Ubuntu 5.04
> 
> On Friday everything seemed to be intact and okay.  I have a dual drive system
> and decided to put the newest version of Ubuntu (5.10) on the second drive - it
> seemed to install just fine
> and I was also able to reboot into the older version.  I must admit that I did
> not run any programs
> other than email and the browser before leaving my office for the weekend.
> 
> HOWEVER, this morning when I tried to fire up VMWare - my virtual machine files
> were GONE.  The directory
> where the files should have been was there but the files were not.
> 
> Also missing:
>    all the bookmarks in my browser (Firefox)
>    all the pop3 mail on my system
>    all of the contacts I had in Evolution
>    all the "sent" mail
>    all special email folders I had created that contained data.
> 
> 
> All my other primary files appear to be intact.  Ideas? Have I been hacked? 
> Did the the install
> screw something up?  If so, how?
> 
> (Fortunately I had a backup of the VM and the work data is stored on the
> server.  But I did not have a backup of
> the email and contact info and that kinda torques me.)
> 
> Thanks
> 
> 
> Dennis
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

> _______________________________________________
> RLUG mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://lists.rlug.org/mailman/listinfo/rlug


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