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had to dissect the very unusual boot drive situation we used for much of 2024, and discovered to my delight that, if you have a raw disk image (i.e. dd if=/dev/sda of=foobar.img), then 7-zip on Windows can extract individual partitions and grab files from an ext4 filesystem!
what a wonderful, indispensable piece of software 7-zip is
![Screenshot of a 7-zip window (on Windows 10) showing the path "E:\ex-ExCathedra\ext4.img\Projects\2024\loss32\". Inside this folder, we can see folders named "reactos", "scripts", "wine", "wineprefix-cursed" and "wineprefix-dev", and a file called "curse.sh". The columns show among other things the UNIX mode information, modified/created/accessed dates, inode number, number of links, and user and group IDs.](https://social.noyu.me/fileserver/01K5XEEZF4A486Z2PRS7NHG169/attachment/small/01KCAJE6J4DYC0PTYSV21CPW5M.jpg "Screenshot of a 7-zip window (on Windows 10) showing the path \"E:\ex-ExCathedra\ext4.img\Projects\2024\loss32\\". Inside this folder, we can see folders named \"reactos\", \"scripts\", \"wine\", \"wineprefix-cursed\" and \"wineprefix-dev\", and a file called \"curse.sh\". The columns show among other things the UNIX mode information, modified/created/accessed dates, inode number, number of links, and user and group IDs.")
![Screenshot of a 7-zip window (on Windows 10) showing the path "E:\ex-ExCathedra\ext4.img\Projects\2024\loss32\". Inside this folder, we can see folders named "reactos", "scripts", "wine", "wineprefix-cursed" and "wineprefix-dev", and a file called "curse.sh". The columns show among other things the UNIX mode information, modified/created/accessed dates, inode number, number of links, and user and group IDs.](https://social.noyu.me/fileserver/01K5XEEZF4A486Z2PRS7NHG169/attachment/original/01KCAJE6J4DYC0PTYSV21CPW5M.png "Screenshot of a 7-zip window (on Windows 10) showing the path \"E:\ex-ExCathedra\ext4.img\Projects\2024\loss32\\". Inside this folder, we can see folders named \"reactos\", \"scripts\", \"wine\", \"wineprefix-cursed\" and \"wineprefix-dev\", and a file called \"curse.sh\". The columns show among other things the UNIX mode information, modified/created/accessed dates, inode number, number of links, and user and group IDs.")
lmao I tried to look inside one of the dosdevices files in the wineprefix, named "com1", and it wouldn't open, because of course that's an illegal filename on windows!
In 2024 we used an Ubuntu install on a USB drive. I tried to save it, but alas it was already so corrupted that it couldn't bring up graphical login in VirtualBox. I did manage to ctrl-alt-f6(?) to a text tty to log in, but that fs had nothing of value. Taken from us too soon 🫡
(that ext4.img was on a separate partition... long story)