We have a situation in a large dept of programmers where critical accounting data files were deleted. Is there any way in UNIX to trace deletions and or possibly retrieve the deleted file?

Simple: just mount your backup tape and restore the needed file. You do backup your critical files, right?

In general, there is no "undelete" function in Unix. You can also ship the drive off to one of the "data recovery" companies -- but they will charge you an exhorbitant fee and cannot guarantee data retrieval.

Thanks. But of course this is not that easy. Yes we have backups... our problem was with the active data from that day... Thanks anyway.

Some people alias the rm command so that it makes copies of the files to a specified directory and then deletes.... this is common practice by system admins when users tend to delete files with rm. If you alias or replace with a script to create backup copies, life can be easier if you have users who tend to make mistakes.

BTW: I don't do the above ...!!.... I tend to create backup copies manually when editing files or performing trickly delete operations. For example, if working on a file... I first create a file.original backup.... same with directories...... then when the work is complete and tested I delete the original-working files.

Thanks for your input. We also have similar practices set in place, but the renaming does not always take place. I will look into the rm command option. That sounds like something that could prove to be a lifesaver for those who do not carefully execute this command.
I appreciate you input.

There is one other way i think....

but for your problem it is probably too late...

check this out:
http://www.fish.com/tct/help-recovering-file

Thanks for the link to the 'recover-lost-files' page..... the paper (quoted below) mentioned a few utlities like unrm and lazarus. Any idea where to get these tools? I could not find the reference to these tools or a link on the page.

I want to try this .... !!!

Maybe the tools mentioned are in the TCT distro? Link below:

http://www.fish.com/tct/

BTW: Myrkul, thank you very much for the EXCELLENT post !!