the usage is:
salvage first-block count-blocks
Salvage tries to salvage files found in blocks starting from first-block and then totally count-block blocks. if count-blocks is 0, or greater than the number of blocks in the file system, it is set to the number of blocks in the fs.
typical use:
cd directory-to-hold-salvaged-files
path/debugfs /dev/damaged-file-system
salvage 1 0
salvage could be useful if you have accidently removed a lot of files in an ext2/ext3 file system like with a "rm -rf /" command, or if you accidently reformatted the file system via an mkfs/mke2fs command, or if your harddisk had severe hardware problems. The filenames will be "ix1-" or "ix2-" followed by the block number of the indirect or double indirect block number that defined the main part of the file. In this way salvage may be used to repair, rescue, recover or undelete files.
If a file already exists in the current directory, and is not writable, salvage will skip writing it. This can be used to skip writing of big files.
less can be used to inspect the files. newer versions of less can detect various file formats, such as gzip, bzip2, tar etc., and display something meaningful.
method: Salvage goes thru all the blocks in the fs, and checks whether this could be indirect or double indirect blocks. If so, it tries to recreate the file in the current directory. There is then involved some guessing about what indirect block is corresponding to a double indirect block, and what initial data blocks are corresponding to an indirect block. The guessing, and the fact that some blocks may have been reused unfortunately means that there may be errors in the salvaged files. So check them afterwards.
The code is alpha and has only been tested on a Linux i386 system
Salvage is an addition to the debugfs program in the e2progs package by Ted Ts'o.
Download: http://www.keldix.com/keld/e2fsprogs-1.38-ks1.tar.gz. Then follow INSTALL instructions.
Author: Keld Simonsen, keld@keldix.com