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.TH FOREMOST "1" "v0.66 - July 2003" "AFOSI" "United States Air Force"
.SH NAME
foremost \- Recover files using their headers and footers
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B foremost
[\fB-h\fR] [\fB-V\fR] [\fB-vq\fR] [\fB-i\fR <file>] [\fB-o\fR <dir>]
[\fB-c\fR <file>] [\fB-s\fR <num>] [\fIFILES\fR]...
.SH DESCRIPTION
.PP
Recover files from a disk image based on headers and footers specified by the
user.
.TP
\fB\-h\fR
Show a help screen and exit.
.TP
\fB\-V\fR
Show copyright information and exit.
.TP
\fB\-v\fR
Enables verbose mode. This causes more information regarding the current
state of the program to be displayed on the screen, and is highly recommended.
.TP
\fB\-q\fR
Enables quick mode. In quick mode, only the start of each sector is
searched
for matching headers. That is, the header is searched only up to the
length of the longest header. The rest of the sector, usually about 500
bytes, is ignored. This mode makes foremost run considerably faster, but it
may cause you to miss files that are embedded in other files. For example,
using quick mode you will not be able to find JPEG images embedded in
Microsoft Word documents.
.br
.br
Quick mode should not be used when examining NTFS file systems. Because
NTFS will store small files inside the Master File Table, these files will
be missed during quick mode.
.br
.br
Some users have found that certain headers, such as those for MPEG and
Quicktime movies, can be found many times inside MPEG and MOV files. The
result can be several dozen incomplete files
recovered from a single MPEG file.
Using quick mode can help avoid this problem.
.TP
\fB\-i\fR \fIfile\fR
The file \fIfile\fR is used as a list of input files to examine. Each
line is assumed to consist of a single filename.
.TP
\fB-o\fR \fIdirectory\fR
Recovered files are written to the directory
\fIdirectory\fR. As of version 0.64, foremost requires that this directory
is either empty or does not exist. Foremost will create the directory if
necessary.
.TP
\fB-c\fR \fIfile\fR
Sets the configuration file to use. If none is specified, the file
"/etc/foremost.conf" is used. The format for the configuration file
is described in the default configuration file included with this program.
See the \fICONFIGURATION FILE\fR section below for more information.
.TP
\fB-s\fR \fInumber\fR
Skips \fInumber\fR bytes in each input file before beginning the search
for headers.
.PP
.SH CONFIGURATION FILE
The configuration file is used to control what types of files foremost
searches for. A sample configuration file, foremost.conf, is included with
this distribution. For each file type, the configuration file describes
the file's extension, whether the header and footer are case sensitive,
the maximum file size, and the header and footer for the file. The footer
field is optional, but header, size, case sensitivity, and extension are
not!
Any line that begins with a pound sign
is considered a comment and ignored. Thus,
to skip a file type just put a pound sign at the beginning of that line
Headers and footers are decoded before use. To specify a value in
hexadecimal use \\x[0-f][0-f], and for octal use \\[1-9][1-9][1-9]. Spaces
can be represented by \\s. Example: "\\x4F\\123\\I\\sCCI" decodes to "OSI CCI".
To match any single character (aka a wildcard) use a '?'. If you need to
search for the '?' character, you will need to change the 'wildcard' line
*and* every occurrence of the old wildcard character in the configuration
file. Don't forget those hex and octal values! '?' is equal to \\x3f and
\\063.
There is a sample set of headers in the README file.
.SH AUTHORS
Written by Special Agent Kris Kendall and Special Agent Jesse Kornblum of
the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations.
.SH BUGS
When compiling foremost on systems with versions of glibc 2.1.x or older,
you will get some (harmless) compiler warnings regarding the implicit
declaration of fseeko and ftello. You can safely ignore these warnings.
.PP
.SH "REPORTING BUGS"
Because Foremost could be used to obtain evidence for criminal
prosecutions, we
take all bug reports \fIvery\fR seriously. Any bug that jeopardizes the
forensic integrity of this program could have serious consequenses on
people's lives. When submitting a bug report, please include a description
of the problem, how you found it, and your contact information.
.PP
Send bug reports to:
.br
jesse.kornblum@ogn.af.mil
.PP
.SH COPYRIGHT
This program is a work of the US Government. In accordance with 17 USC 105,
copyright protection is not available for any work of the US Government.
.PP
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
There is more information in the README file.
.PP
Foremost was originally designed to imitate the functionality of CarvThis,
a DOS program written by the Defense Computer Forensics Lab in in 1999.
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