Usage

Again, there is not that much to explain: The command line switches are few.

Basically, the package consists of three scripts:

• ralf - used to recover a file you know the name and path of (R.A.L.F. stands for Recover A Lost File)
• gabi - used to recover all deleted files possible to undelete on a given partition (Get All Back Immediately)
• ext3undel - the only one you really need to remember (or forget about, if you remember the other two)

All of them support the parameter "—help" in the first place, to display their basic usage.

R.A.L.F.

ralf has one (and only one) mandatory parameter: The name of the file you want to recover. If that name starts with a slash (i.e. it reflects an absolute path, as e.g. /etc/passwd), the name is taken as-is - otherwise it is expected to be relative to the current working directory. ralf will then try to recover the file specified - for details, see here.

You may use wildcards in the file name: ? stands for a single character, * for none, one, or multiple characters (as you are used from the shell). To give an example: r?lf.* would match "ralf.txt", "rolf.doc", etc. - but due to the dot, not "rolf".

If you called R.A.L.F. with a given file name, and it failed to find the iNode, you may try to call it again with the directory name only. Sometimes the iNode itself is reused while the data blocks are still not - and you may be as lucky as have all files of the directory (been) using the same iNode group. It's worth a try; G.A.B.I. (or PhotoRec/foremost themselves) are still available as a last resort, to recover all possible data of the partition.

G.A.B.I.

gabi has no additional parameters - so the only thing you can pass to it is --help.

ext3undel

As for now, it is easy to decide which of the scripts you intended to run: If there is a parameter, it must be the filename - so ext3undel simply calls rolf and passes this parameter. If there is none, you meant gabi, so this will be called. Only exception: There is a parameter, but it is --help - so ext3undel simply displays some basic help.