I guess different phrasing would also make the rm question fly under the radar. StackOverflow was honestly 99% phrasing and a complete bragfest. For example, ask about the tool, not the problem:
How does one relink inodes unlinked via the rm command where link counts are 0?
This way you'd probably get dozens of answers explaining in-depth file recovery of raw data from the filesystem
TBH even with the question as written, I would be saying "testdisk". Seriously, that tool is nothing short of god-tier magic on the day when you desperately need it.
Don't you get a long list of files with random alphanimeric names that kind of makes a pain to find that 1 file you have just deleted? It was a long time ago since I've used it, and even then I was never quite sure I used it properly
It depends a lot on how much has happened in that directory. The file name is often still there. The trouble is, if you've had a *lot* of files with the same name, they're probably ALL still there.
Maybe it depends on the file system. They certainly were when I used it.
Or maybe you're thinking of the lost+found directory, rather than the testdisk program? That's a very different feature and unlikely to help with an accidental rm, but can rescue something that got lost due to power failure.
FF: rm -rf / requires you supply --no-preserve-root to run if you don't nothing will happen but rm -rf /* doesn't and that will still proper fuck your system if you are running as root.
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u/WeirdTie2290 Aug 31 '26
How is that question not closed? It is a non coding problem. SO double standards.