/bin/ gets deleted on error

[L A Walsh]

Felipe Vieira wrote:
> Dear cygwin mailing list,
>
> For the second time this week my /bin/ folder gets obliterated on an
> error during normal usage. It is equivalent of doing the infamous "rm
> -rf  /bin" .
>   
----
    That's different.  I take it trying to restore previous copies
from the windows menu was "greyed out" and nothing was in the
recyclebin?  While it isn't likely that files deleted by
cygwin would be in the Recyclebin, you might find it in the
previous versions unless you have system protection turned off
for the disk it was on (its on a tab under "System Properties"
called "System Protection"). 


    (i.e.) in explorer browse to root & right click on /bin (if
it isn't there, create it first, either in explorer or in cmd.exe).

    If you're lucky you should see "Restore previous versions"
as an option -- which can easily allow you to restore entire
directories. (my cygwin bin is < 1GB, so it would easily fit in my 
protection-space setting of 3% (~28G).

    Even if restoring from a restore point doesn't work due to
Winbugs, the "previous versions" feature often will, as it only
targets the directories or files that you've selected and not
all system files.

    A way of, perhaps, saving some grief in the future --
create a 2nd dir "/.bin" and in it create hard-links to all of your
files in /bin.  Only downside is to keep it updated, but if it
happens again, should make restoring /bin easier...(and doesn't
use extra disk space!)






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