i just did a rm -rf /*r as root!!!

[Michael Hennebry]

On Thu, 21 Apr 2005, bruce wrote:
> i stupidly just did a 'rm -rf /*r' and i understand that there's no way to
> redo/undo this command.. it seems to have blown away my /usr/bin dir..
> although, for all i know, i may have screwed up a lot more...
>
> my question, is there someway that i can reinstall the /usr/bin dir.. or am
> i pretty much f*ed up. i have fedora core 2.
>
> this is a critical system that i was putting alot of things on.. i haven't
> done anything else to the box after my mistake..

Whatever else you do, do backups now.  Apparently you didn't before.
The most straight-forward thing to do is to reinstall and then copy
data from the backups.
As others have noted, if your data is in a partition separate from
/usr and /var,  you should be able to do a reinstall without destroying
your data.  Back up anyway.

If you data are among the victims and were not backed up,
you have a problem.  You will need to try undeletion.
Check the result carefully.
Back it up.  Proceed as before.

BTW /var might still there, but that doesn't mean that it is intact.

-- 
Mike   hennebry at web.cs.ndsu.NoDak.edu
"I AM DEATH, NOT TAXES.  *I* ONLY TURN UP ONCE."  --  Death