How to read files having extension as '.bin'?

[asahublr]

Hi All,

   We have some files in filestorge in UNIX created through Alfresco and we want to move it into windows filesystem folder. Alfresco is now corrupted and we are not using it.

   The files in the filestore are in the format as "2d32a1de-6d01-11dc-881a-a183ccacc562.bin". Can any one please let me know how to convert this file "2d32a1de-6d01-11dc-881a-a183ccacc562.bin" to its original readable format i.e in .pdf or .doc.? We want to read this file from windows through normal documents editor. We are able to identify the file format.

Thank you.
Ashok

[mrogers]

You will need to get alfresco up and running and then export via one of the filesystem projections.

[mikeh]

Just rename it to  either .doc or .pdf (or whatever other extension you've identified the file as) - the file contents itself will be intact.

Thanks,
Mike

[asahublr]

Thank you Mike

[abhinavmishra14]

Hiasahublr _‌

An option would be to fix the alfresco installation and start it and then export the contents. As of now i am not sure about the level of your alfresco corruption. 

Another option could be that, the .bin itself is the real content and you can rename the file if you know the actual content type. I am not sure of a way to figure out which file is which type meaning if a file is named as e.g: acb48436-302c-46cd-9498-5b6cf2cf33b7.bin, you don't know whether its a pdf or doc or jpeg etc. So this could be tricky.

There would be thumbnails and other related files for the same content depending on your configuration. For example if you have uploaded a pdf or a doc file, you would see 2 .bin files (e.g. aa4702be-e728-4cb2-b0a4-ad545e48ea11.bin having size as 6 KB and acb48436-302c-46cd-9498-5b6cf2cf33b7.bin having size as 36 KB) for the same content (pdf, doc, etc). One would be thumbnail (.jpeg) and other would be the actual file (pdf, doc etc.) . So you need to figure out the right one, probably based on file size. 

aa4702be-e728-4cb2-b0a4-ad545e48ea11.bin (6KB) -> aa4702be-e728-4cb2-b0a4-ad545e48ea11.jpeg

 acb48436-302c-46cd-9498-5b6cf2cf33b7.bin (36 KB) -> acb48436-302c-46cd-9498-5b6cf2cf33b7.pdf

At last, Copy the .bin files along with the timestamped folder in a new installation at alf_data folder (Timestamped folders are not maintained if you are using s3 content store), but copying the .bin files to new installation won't simply work. Unless you manually fix the database and create the mapping in the db for the .bin file exactly same way as you upload a new file and alfresco creates one. You can back track the tables and its entries when you upload a new file into new installation, and replicate the same thing for existing file via some script. I am not sure how much effort it would take but this is also an option.