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

[jugalbandi]

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

[StephenB]

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.

[jugalbandi]

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.

[jugalbandi]

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

Thanks

[StephenB]

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.

[jugalbandi]

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.

[jugalbandi]

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.

[jugalbandi]

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.

[mdgm-ntgr]

A factory default wipes the disks and gives you a clean setup. Be sure to backup your data first.

[jugalbandi]

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.

[mdgm-ntgr]

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.