My co-worker deleted /usr/bin by mistake

Question

I know it is my fault to authorize him as a superuser, and I don't have enough knowledge about CentOS 7.

As I wrote in the title, our VPS which runs CentOS 7 lost /usr/bin by mistake. And the server doesn't respond to ping even using its IPv4 address. Unable to access the server in the ways I know, SSH, FTP, HTTPS, SMTP, IMAP.

Are there any ways to fix this problem?

I can create a new instance, but I don't want to lose the data, especially mailboxes, MySQL stored data, web content.

Answer 1

Are there any ways to fix this problem?

No, there is nothing we can do. However, there are some options for you:

1. Restore from backup (this is easy if you have one, if not, next time you know better)
2. Get support from your provider to ...
   • get access to the storage from a new VPS
   • let your provider access and backup your files for you

Answer 2

Had the same issue on RHEL8.6 (advice: never work when you are tired) and tried these high level steps:

1. Launch the systems in rescue mode
2. Launch rescue mode from a bootable USB

Both would not work because there was no shell program on the machine

"solved" with these steps:

3. Created a bootable ubuntu drive

4. Booted from the USB drive

5. Mounted the partition belonging to my self-sabotaged installation

6. Recovered some files I wanted to recover

7. Installed from ground zero