Ext4magic: Inode - Directory - Journal - Install - Time_Options - Histogram - Scenarios - Tips&Tricks - Manpage - Expert-Mode

If not available a ready install package for your distribution ( see also ) ext4magic can be compiled from source.
This will work on new or the current versions of the most Linux distributions.

1 Install ext4magic from source

Install ext4magic from source

Attention:

Make sure the partition which should be recovered is not mounted or mounted in read only mode.
Under no circumstances you should install or write some files to the file system, from which you want to restore deleted files.

Tested distributions

ext4magic is available on Linux only. Following distributions are tested right now:

OpenSuse
RedHat
Fedora
Debian
Ubuntu
CentOS

Prerequisites

ext4magic can be installed from source. Following packages have to be installed beforehand:

gcc
make
libext2fs ( >= libext2fs-1.41.9)
file ( >= file-5.03 )
zlib ( only ext4magic >= 0.3.0 )
libbz2 ( only ext4magic >= 0.3.0 )

Except make and gcc these packages are default on any Linux

Depending on the linux distribution you use, you have to download the following development packages:

Develpaketname

openSuse	Debian	Fedora	Ubuntu	CentOS
libext2fs-devel	e2fslibs-dev	e2fsprogs-devel	ext2fs-dev	e2fsprogs-devel.i686
libuuid-devel	uuid-dev	libuuid-devel	uuid-dev	uuid-devel.i686
libblkid-devel	libblkid-dev	libblkid-devel	libblkid-dev	libblkid-devel.i686
file-devel	libmagic-dev	file-devel	libmagic-dev	file-devel.i686

If you use >= ext4magic-0.3.0 then zlib-devel and libbz2-devel are also required.
(eventually, there are also small differences in names between the various distributions zlib1g-dev and libbz2-dev )
The development packages are not default on a default Linux and must be installed if you will install ext4magic from source

Configure, make and install

Download the latest ext4magic tgz from ext4magic download.

Unpack the archive (example for 0.2.4 version)

tar -xzf ext4magic-0.2.4.tar.gz
cd ext4magic-0.2.4

Compile and build ext4magic

./configure
make

Install ext4magic as root

make install

Finally you now should have following files on your system:

/usr/local/sbin/ext4magic
/usr/local/share/man/man8/ext4magic.8

Some of the most common problems at the beginning

Command not found

ext4magic is installed to /usr/local/sbin/
Often this directory is only included in the PATH if you use root as a login shell.
For a full root environment use "su -l" for the user change.
Or use the full path to the binary ext4magic.

Manpage not found

The manpage is installed under /usr/local/*/man/man8/ Check if the MANPATH variable include the following directories.

/usr/local/man /usr/local/share/man

ext4magic nothing works

two possible causes

either you are not root,
or the time options are not set correctly. Only the magical functions automatically search for the best time window, All other options use default time values. If the deletion of files older than 24 hours you cat not found these deleted files with the default time settings. You must specify a time window on the command line. (see examples or the manpage)