Linux – How to remove a corrupted file in Linux

You can't create a link to it, but you can get it back. Let's do an experiment:

$ echo blurfl >myfile.txt
$ tail -f myfile.txt &
$ rm myfile.txt

myfile.txt is now gone, but the inode is kept alive by the tail command. To get your file back, first find the PID of the process keeping the inode:

$ ps auxw | grep tail
sunny      409  0.0  0.0   8532   824 pts/5    S    18:07   0:00 tail -f myfile.txt

The PID is 409. chdir to /proc/409/fd/ and list the contents:

dr-x------ 2 sunny sunny  0 2009-07-24 18:07:18 .
dr-xr-xr-x 7 sunny sunny  0 2009-07-24 18:07:17 ..
lrwx------ 1 sunny sunny 64 2009-07-24 18:07:33 0 -> /dev/pts/5
lrwx------ 1 sunny sunny 64 2009-07-24 18:07:33 1 -> /dev/pts/5
lrwx------ 1 sunny sunny 64 2009-07-24 18:07:18 2 -> /dev/pts/5
lr-x------ 1 sunny sunny 64 2009-07-24 18:07:33 3 -> /home/sunny/tmp/myfile.txt (deleted)

The /proc/[PID]/fd/ directories contain symlinks to file descriptors of all files the process uses. In this case the symlink "3" points to the deleted file. So, to restore the file, copy the contents to a new file:

$ cat 3 >/home/mydir/saved_file.txt

Have a look at reptyr, which does exactly that. The github page has all the information.

reptyr - A tool for "re-ptying" programs.

reptyr is a utility for taking an existing running program and attaching it to a new terminal. Started a long-running process over ssh, but have to leave and don't want to interrupt it? Just start a screen, use reptyr to grab it, and then kill the ssh session and head on home.

USAGE

reptyr PID

"reptyr PID" will grab the process with id PID and attach it to your current terminal.

After attaching, the process will take input from and write output to the new terminal, including ^C and ^Z. (Unfortunately, if you background it, you will still have to run "bg" or "fg" in the old terminal. This is likely impossible to fix in a reasonable way without patching your shell.)