× NETGEAR will be terminating ReadyCLOUD service by July 1st, 2023. For more details click here.
Orbi WiFi 7 RBE973
Reply

Re: frontview not accessible...made stupid mistake - please

jugalbandi
Aspirant

frontview not accessible...made stupid mistake - please help

Hi,
I made a stupid and potentially very costly mistake.

I logged in as root. Went into an attached USB drive that I use as backup of the NAS shares. Backup was old and I had substantially changed NAS shares and wanted to make a new backup. But wanted to clean the USB. Navigated to the USB drive.
Applied the command rm -rf ; But then instead of typing * I typed /

I got an error saying that this may be dangerous and got the cursor back. Realized my error but damage was done. / folder now had two or three entries showing ??_?? etc
My data still seems to be there but I am not able to do AFP using Admin although I am able to do AFP using guest.
I am able to log into Front view but it is Blank. All the navigation buttons are gone.

Can anyone help me recover from my stupid mistake?

Recently I made a major overhaul in all my machines and the NAS backups in USB were old. I am still able to log in as root into my NAS from terminal, so I am copying all the files from NAS into the USB drive. This is going to take a while, and I hope I can recover everything.

Here is the output from # ls-al on my / folder after logging in through ssh as root into my NAS from terminal

# ls -al
total 23084
drwxr-xr-x 23 root root 4096 Jul 2 08:34 .
drwxr-xr-x 23 root root 4096 Jul 2 08:34 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 37 Feb 8 2014 ?~ ??} ?
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 37 Mar 21 2014 ?} ?
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 37 Sep 12 2013 ?} ??} ?
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Dec 6 2012 backup -> /c/backup
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 26 Jun 16 2013 backup-snap -> /c_2013_06_16_00_00/backup
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Apr 21 05:41 bin
drwxrwxrwx 10 root root 4096 Oct 12 2014 c
drwxr-xr-x 18 root root 4640 Jul 2 08:34 dev
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 Dec 6 2012 Documents -> /c/Documents
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 29 Jun 16 2013 Documents-snap -> /c_2013_06_16_00_00/Documents
drwxr-xr-x 71 root root 4096 Jul 2 08:34 etc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root admin 23500800 Dec 8 2012 files.tar
drwxr-xr-x 6 admin admin 4096 Oct 2 2009 frontview
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Mar 11 2008 home
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 24 Jun 16 2013 homes-snap -> /c_2013_06_16_00_00/home
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 7 2007 initrd
drwxr-xr-x 13 root root 4096 Jan 27 08:25 lib
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 27 08:25 lib64
drwx------ 2 root root 16384 Dec 6 2012 lost+found
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 8 Dec 6 2012 media -> /c/media
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 Jun 16 2013 media-snap -> /c_2013_06_16_00_00/media
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Oct 28 2006 mnt
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Jun 27 2011 opt
dr-xr-xr-x 133 root root 0 Jun 7 07:22 proc
drwxrwxrwt 2 root root 0 Jul 2 08:53 ramfs
-rw------- 1 root root 1024 Nov 24 2013 .rnd
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Jan 27 08:25 root
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 27 08:25 sbin
drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 0 Jun 7 07:22 sys
drwxrwxrwt 5 root root 4096 Jul 2 08:39 tmp
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 37 Mar 26 2014 @? ????U?| ??
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Apr 21 05:04 .update_success
drwxrwxrwt 4 root root 80 Jul 2 08:34 USB
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 Jul 2 08:34 USB_HDD_1 -> /USB/USB_HDD_1
drwxr-xr-x 11 root root 4096 Aug 4 2011 usr
drwxr-xr-x 16 root root 4096 Jan 27 08:25 var
Message 1 of 11
StephenB
Guru

Re: frontview not accessible...made stupid mistake - please

If I remove the share links (and . ..) my pro shows this:

drwxr-xr-x   2 root  root   4096 2015-03-19 20:31 bin
drwxrwxrwx 35 root root 4096 2015-06-04 14:26 c
drwxr-xr-x 18 root root 5060 2015-06-29 04:03 dev
drwxr-xr-x 68 root root 4096 2015-06-29 04:03 etc
drwxr-xr-x 6 admin admin 4096 2009-10-02 19:15 frontview
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2008-03-11 20:56 home
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-09-07 13:53 initrd
drwxr-xr-x 13 root root 12288 2015-03-19 20:32 lib
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2015-03-19 20:32 lib64
drwx------ 2 root root 16384 2011-09-30 13:26 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2006-10-28 10:06 mnt
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2011-06-27 19:20 opt
dr-xr-xr-x 126 root root 0 2015-06-27 21:21 proc
drwxrwxrwt 2 root root 0 2015-07-02 12:08 ramfs
-rw------- 1 root root 1024 2011-09-30 13:32 .rnd
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 2015-03-19 20:32 root
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2015-03-19 20:32 sbin
drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 0 2015-06-27 21:21 sys
drwxrwxrwt 4 root root 20480 2015-06-29 04:03 tmp
drwxrwxrwt 2 root root 40 2015-06-27 21:22 USB
drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 4096 2015-01-28 21:37 usr
drwxr-xr-x 16 root root 4096 2009-09-14 20:57 var


If the USB drive is still mounted, I would first copy /c/ in its entirety to the USB drive.

I would then dismount the USB drive (and confirm I could see the data from a PC).

Then I'd try an OS reinstall - not sure if it would work or not, or if it could preserve the configuration - which is why I am suggesting that you grab the data first.
Message 2 of 11
jugalbandi
Aspirant

Re: frontview not accessible...made stupid mistake - please

Thanks.
I am copying the files as we speak. Don't want to disturb anything right now. Unfortunately the USB drive that I have connected may not have enough space to copy entire c as it is. For example it does not have space to copy all my TM sparse bundles.
After data is copied (hopefully), I will attach another USB drive, hope it mounts and then copy the TM shares to that drive.
Message 3 of 11
jugalbandi
Aspirant

Re: frontview not accessible...made stupid mistake - please

A quick question:
If I use a new USB HDD to copy /c/ which FS should I use
NTFS-3G ? ExFat?

Thanks
Message 4 of 11
StephenB
Guru

Re: frontview not accessible...made stupid mistake - please

jugalbandi wrote:
A quick question:
If I use a new USB HDD to copy /c/ which FS should I use
NTFS-3G ? ExFat?

Thanks
I don't think ExFAT will work at all.

I'd use NTFS, since then I could retrieve the data form windows. EXT would be much faster, but access from non-linux systems would be harder.
Message 5 of 11
jugalbandi
Aspirant

Re: frontview not accessible...made stupid mistake - please

Thanks for the quick reply. I have done EXT from frontview before but I don't have access to it now. NTFS-3G is available in my mac.
Message 6 of 11
jugalbandi
Aspirant

Re: frontview not accessible...made stupid mistake - please

Hi Stephen,
I connected a HDD formatted to NTFS. It is recognized by the system, but I am not able to write to it. Says input/output error when I try to any copy command

Except my time machine shares I have copied everything. I have checked in a windows system that the files can be read. Since drive is formatted EXT3, I used ext2fsd program to view the files.

I am willing to forgo my tm sparse bundles.
What do I need to do to rebuild my system?

Thanks.
Message 7 of 11
jugalbandi
Aspirant

Re: frontview not accessible...made stupid mistake - please

Update:
1) Am able to see front view after rebooting the NAS. Took the risk as all the files in your directory were still in my list as well.
2) Making a /c/ copy into another EXT3 disk.
3) Seems like the system is working normal. All my TM shares are backing up as normal. However the ?? files are there and I am unable to delete them when logged in as root via ssh. So this does not give me a warm fuzzy. Will figure out how to reinitialize the whole system after data is backed up.

Thanks for your help.
Message 8 of 11
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: frontview not accessible...made stupid mistake - please

A factory default wipes the disks and gives you a clean setup. Be sure to backup your data first.
Message 9 of 11
jugalbandi
Aspirant

Re: frontview not accessible...made stupid mistake - please

Update:
/c/ backup to USB drive is successful.

Have not done factory default yet. System seems to be working fine, but I will schedule a factory default soon, when I have a chunk of down time for the system (unless I am forced to).

I presume that I can use the /c/ backup from the USB drive to restore the system and get back all my configurations using the config backup file from Frontview. Have gone through some threads here, but if there is one method that I should be following - please link to the same.

Thanks.
Message 10 of 11
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: frontview not accessible...made stupid mistake - please

If restoring your config backup fails you can always do another factory reset and reconfigure the system manually, but the config backup assuming it was taken before your mistake to attempt to remove everything should work.
Message 11 of 11
Top Contributors
Discussion stats
  • 10 replies
  • 2727 views
  • 0 kudos
  • 3 in conversation
Announcements