OldFiles: Your Own Backup Directory

What is OldFiles?

OldFiles is a subdirectory in your home directory that contains a complete copy of the full directory tree (that is, all the directories, subdirectories, and files) in your home directory as it appeared sometime within the previous 24 hours. OldFiles is read-only, so it does not count in your quota.

If you want to recover a file that you accidently deleted or changed within the past day, you may be able to retrieve the older copy from the OldFiles directory. The OldFiles directory has the same protections as your home directory.

Note: If more than 24 hours pass before you notice that you deleted the file, a copy of the file will no longer be in OldFiles.

A new copy of OldFiles is made every night approximately between 6 P.M. and 4 A.M. See the backups help file for information on retrieving deleted files that are not in your OldFiles directory.

Using OldFiles

OldFiles is like any directory in that you can copy and list files in it, change to it with the cd command, and so forth. However, OldFiles is read-only, so you cannot make changes to any of its contents. This means you cannot use the move ( mv ) command to place files in your home directory--you must use the copy ( cp ) command instead.

To locate a file in your OldFiles directory,:

1. From your home directory, type cd OldFiles and press Return to change to the OldFiles directory.
2. Type ls and press return to see a listing of the files in OldFiles (or type ls -l to see a long listing of the files, including their dates).
3. Once you have located the file you want, use the cp command to copy back into your home directory.

Example 1

If you accidentally deleted a file called "notes" and you want to copy it from the top level of the OldFiles directory into your home directory, type:

cp OldFiles/notes ~

and press Return.

Example 2

To rename the file "old-notes" while copying it to your home directory, type:

cp ~/OldFiles/notes ~/old-notes

and press Return.

Last Updated: 11/7/05