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Examples

FileTrove is a command line tool. Therefore all examples are using your local terminal.

Quickstart

First you have to follow the installation instruction https://filetrove.fritz.wtf/docs/install-filetrove/

Index recursively a directory:

 $ ./ftrove -i PATHTODIRECTORY

You will see a progress bar. When it finishes you can export the data to a TSV file that can be imported into Excel or Numbers or read with any text editor.

$ ./ftrove -l

Copy the UUID, you need it for the export:

 $ ./ftrove -t UUID

For more options see ./ftrove -h

Full example

The following example will index all files, print all messages to the log file and the screen and read some EXIF data from jpeg and tiff files. The named archivist is “Max Mustermann” and the project is called after the first hard disk of Max Mustermann. With the d-flag a json file is passed that holds DublinCore metadata that is added to the session in FileTrove’s database.

$ ./ftrove -i /mnt/usbstick -V -e -a "Max Mustermann" -d dublincore.json -p "Max Mustermann Harddisk No. 1"

Resume an aborted session

You can resume an aborted or cancelled session. When a session has been cancelled you see no end date in the listing you get with ftrove -l. You can then resume with the flag -r and the seesion UUID of the aborted run.

 $ ./ftrove -l

Copy the session UUID and pass it to ftrove:

 $ ./ftrove -r SESSIONUUID

Add own entries to NSRL database

It can be handy to add own entries to the NSRL database. For example, some hash sums might be missing or you have files you want to mark as known. You can do that with the following steps.

  1. Download the tool admftrove from https://github.com/steffenfritz/FileTrove/releases for your platform. The file has a suffix, e.g. -linux-amd64. You can rename the file or keep the name. In the following steps the suffix is ommited.

  2. Copy the file to the location where you already have a nsrl.db file (this is important!):

$ cp admftrove DIR_LOCATION_OF_NSRL

Depending on your operating system it might be necessary to make the file executable or allow it in the settings, e.g.

$ chmod +x admftrove

  1. Prepare a text file that has the additional SHA1 hash sums, one per line.

  2. Add the hash sums with the following command:

$ ./admftrove --creatensrl PATH_TO_TEXT_FILE_WITH_HASHES

This will not overwrite the nsrl.db file, it will add your SHA1s to the database file.

Hint: With this as a hack you can remove the NSRL check. Just create a text file with a non SHA1 string, e.g. “deadbeaf” and create a nsrl.db file with admftrove. FileTrove will use that file for the NSRL check. As it will not contain a valid SHA1, all files will be marked as FALSE and the check might get a little bit faster.