Life after rm -rf

You just ran rm -rf ... for the ump...zillion...th time in your life and guess what, today you mistyped!!! What to do?

• Identify your OS and see if there are proper recovery tools
• Linux?
  • You're fudge'd! but there is hope ...
  • Do NOT quit your session (bash session, terminal window or remote ssh session), do NOT quit/exit it.
  • Use the history command and recreate your .bash_history file:

    history | cut -c 8- > ~/.bash_history

  • Use your wisdom of the ages to go through the compacted version of your history and recreate whatever you can.

    cp ~/.bash_history ~/.bash_history_backup
    awk ' !x[$0]++' ~/.bash_history > ~/noDuplicates
    mv ~/noDuplicates ~/.bash_history

  • If you were on an AWS image, rejoice! It will at least partially recover the basics of your home (~/) directory.
  • Set up daily snapshots and backup processes into place.
• Mac?
  • There are some decent recovery tools like MacKeeper but chances are that by the time you download it, you'll end up overwriting disk sections that you wanted to recover.
  • Know when to give up on a lost cause, get out your blanky, assume the fetal position, suck on your thumb and cry to momma.