e2sbf is a small script to help rescuing damaged ext2 partitions. It has been written in an afternoon to help me recover a friend's partition.
It works by asking mke2fs where it would put backup copies of the superblock on the given partition, and then trying if those sectors contain a valid superblock using e2fsck (an effort was made to use mount -o sb=... but I couldn't make it work as wanted). If no superblock is found, it then tries all the sectors starting from the closest to those indicated by mke2fs. The script terminates when:
WARNING!! This script relies on the -n parameter of mke2fs and on the same parameter of e2fsck. It is not possible for the script to test whenever such parameter is accepted or if it has the intended meaning! Please go on reading this document before using this e2sbf!
You can find the latest version of this document and the mentioned software at http://www.commedia.it/ccontavalli/. If you have troubles/suggestions/corrections feel free to mail me at <ccontavalli at commedia.it>.