2 Using Fatback

In order to cater to users with a variety of experience levels, Fatback provides two ways of interacting. The first method is called automated mode and input is solely given on the command line. This method is for users who simply want to recover all files (or just deleted files) from a partition and not be bothered by the details. The second method is called interactive mode. In interactive mode, a user interacts with Fatback through a command interpreter which mimics the look and feel of a traditional UNIX shell. Interactive mode is recommended for users that want to do more advanced undeleting.

There is no difference in the undelete technique of the two different modes. When a user runs Fatback in automated mode, it is actually running predefined or canned commands through the fatback interpreter.

The only limitation of the automated mode (as of version 1.3) is that it will only process a single partition.

To run Fatback, type the program name (fatback), then type any options you wish to pass to Fatback. The last argument on the command line should be the name of the input file. Here is the command syntax:

fatback options input-file

The options can either be a letter or a word and may or may not require any arguments. For example, to specify a file to place the audit log into, you may can use the -l flag or the --log flag. These options require an argument. To specify the required argument with the -l option, use -l file. To specify the argument with the --log option, use --log=file.

The input file can be either a device (a file in the /dev directory) or an image of a drive or partition.