8

How to restore a file from the trash using command line?

Obviously you can use restore-trash command from the trash-cli package, but this wouldn't list all files inside the trash.

Moreover what about files moved to trash with root permission?

Those are files in trash: enter image description here

Now using restore-trash command: enter image description here

only 4 files are shown.

Maythux
  • 87,123

4 Answers4

6

If you run trash-restore from within a directory, It will only show the trashed files and directories that were trashed from the current directory or its sub-directories

As it appears, you are running trash-restore from your home directory. So, it is only showing files and directories that were trashed from your home directory or its sub-directories.

To restore files trashed from another directory, for example /var, you would need to cd to the /var directory first and then run trash-restore from there.

Alternatively, you can specify the system root directory / after trash-restore like so trash-restore / to make it show all trashed files and directories originating from anywhere in the system.

Notice:

The tool is called trash-restore since 2019 (instead of restore-trash previously) under the latest trash-cli package.

Cadoiz
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Raffa
  • 34,963
3

For listing all files in the trash,

ls -l .local/share/Trash/files/

sudo ls -l /root/.local//share/Trash/files/

should do under Ubuntu (in my case: MATE 16.04). I found those paths here. It also has further explanations of what is in the other folders next to files/. In case you want to code your own restore routine, that should help...

Not sure what you are up to (writing tests to verify delete-to-trash?, ...) but looking at the specific source of the trash npm module (js) might give further insight.

UPDATE: actually, finding the right location of a trashed file can get a whole lot more complicated, e.g. when it's not a delete from /home/someuser/... but other places on same partition (say /usr/share/...) or elsewhere (mounted drives, incl. removables...)

This should be the spec to read: https://specifications.freedesktop.org/trash-spec/trashspec-1.0.html

The trash package mentioned above relies on xdg-trashdir to find the right path.

Frank N
  • 1,430
2

Each volume has it's own trash. While nautilus or nemo shows the trash combined for all mounted volumes, restore-trash shows only the files from the volume you're currently in, unlike trash-list, which shows the trash for all mounted volumes.

pLumo
  • 27,991
0

To list trashed files:

gio trash --list

The output may be:

trash:///file.sh    /home/user/some_dir/file.sh

To restore:

gio trash --restore

For example:

gio trash --restore trash:///file.sh

You can use sudo if you trash the file as root, I suppose.

khatchad
  • 67