First of all, we have to check if this hard disk is recognized by the system:

root@localhost ~]# fdisk -l

Let’s say your drive is assigned /dev/sdc. Then we scan for logical volumes so you’ll see something like this:

Disk /dev/sdc: 20.0 GB, 20020396032 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2434 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1   *           1          13      104391   83  Linux
/dev/sdc2              14        1670    13309852+   f  W95 Ext’d (LBA)
/dev/sdc3            1671        2434     6136830   8e  Linux LVM
/dev/sdc5              14          75      497983+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdc6              76        1670    12811806   83  Linux

Next we scan for physical volumes:

root@localhost ~]# pvscan

You’ll get:

PV /dev/sdc3   VG VolGroup00   lvm2 [5.84 GB / 32.00 MB free]
Total: 1 [5.84 GB] / in use: 1 [5.84 GB] / in no VG: 0 [0   ]

Then scan for logical volumes:

root@localhost ~]# lvscan

You’ll get:

inactive            ‘/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00′ [5.31 GB] inherit
inactive          ‘/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01′ [512.00 MB] inherit

Logical volume that we want to access must be active, therefore we type in:

root@localhost ~]# /usr/sbin/lvchange -a y /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00

Then mount to file system:

root@localhost ~]# mount -t ext3 /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 /mnt/

When done, unmount and revert to inactive mode:

root@localhost ~]# /usr/sbin/lvchange -a n /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00

I did this in openSUSE.

It’s as simple as:

root@localhost ~]# ls -a

better yet, use alias if you want to include attributes:

root@localhost ~]# ll

far better with attributes:

root@localhost ~]# l

How cool is that? I didn’t create an alias for it. I accidentally hit hard return after pressing ‘l’. Nice huh.

The answer is, it’s not Thunderbird’s fault but rather it’s Outlook who generated winmail.dat.

Winmail.dat contains formatting information that only Outlook can decipher. And if the sender uses this mail client then his recipient is using something else, there’s a chance that winmail.dat will be the only attachment that the recipient will see.

Fear not!

For Thunderbird, there is an add-on for allowing it to decode metadata. This add-on is called, LookOut.

Yay! After installing LookOut on Thunderbird, you should be able to open/save the used to be missing attachments.