Some weeks ago, I did an accidental delete of the home directory tree on a Kubuntu 24.04 machine (more on how and what in a subsequent post if that makes sense). Because of an unexpected pattern after this mass deletion, yet I’m going to ask whether a plain rm -r is going on while a deletion via mouse context menu is started or an own (internal) Krusader deletion process does this job. An answer to this question might help in applying an appropriate recovery strategy with the help of the journal.
The curious thing is: virtually the whole directory tree itself is not deleted, but the files. I could say that I only see a skeleton - that once had been a ‘living’ entity with flesh. All the directory entries with deleted files in it have become the date (mtime) of the deletion of the underlying files. Yet shortly after the deletion started, I realized what was going on, and I terminated Krusader just during the process. Shortly thereafter I forced the notebook to power off in order to later save the (separate) home partition using a live USB-stick boot session.
It seems that Krusader separates tree deletion (from a single selected directory node) in two subsequent steps: first the files, then the directory nodes. Related to recovery strategy considerations: can anybody tell me more about that?
