Some files recovered, next problem

[Jim Herrmann]

OK, thanks to The Coroner's Toolkit (tct) I have recovered a few files.  
Here's how it went, then I'll describe the next problem.  Thank you for 
bearing with me.

I used the "unrm" program to extract the first 1.9G of unallocated 
space.  It would have done all 29G of unallocated space, but then 
lazarus would have had a problem with too big a file.  I figure if I can 
manage to get the first 2G and do something with it, we'll be happy.  
So, that was pretty quick then I started lazarus on the 2G file last 
night about 11:00 p.m.  I came home and checked it at about 7:00p.m. and 
it was still running.  I checked it again at about 9 and it had 
finished.  29734 files!  The files are in a directory called "blocks".  
It also generates a few HTML files that help navigate the mess.  It 
tries to identify files as text, mail, html, c code, binary, image, and 
some more.  The problem with modern mail is, of course, it's really hard 
to tell the mail from the html and the images.  Be that as it may, if I 
could just get the mail back, it would be a start.

So, I'm trying to run a perl script that comes with tct called rip-mail, 
which tries to make readable mail files out of  the lazarus mess.  When 
I do I get the following:

linux:/home/jim/Downloads/tct-1.14 # perl 
./lazarus/post-processing/rip-mail blocks/*.m.txt
bash: /usr/bin/perl: Argument list too long

Which I'm guessing means there are too many files from the directory.  
rip-mail works when I specify just one or two files.  The thought of 
going through 29,000+ files by hand seems ludicrous to me.  Plus I'm 
sure it's not necessary, if I only knew how to proceed.  I think the 
rip-mail will work best if I run the list of file names, space delimited 
into the script.

Wait, now I see that ls doesn't like this either:

jim at linux:~/Downloads/tct-1.14/blocks> ls *.m.txt
bash: /bin/ls: Argument list too long

This should be an easier problem for you linux gurus to solve.  Why 
can't I list this directory.  Remember that there are 29734 directory 
entries.  I know because I can list the whole thing, but not with a mask.

Thoughts to the list for all to learn, please.  Plus that helps 
eliminate duplicate answers.

Thanks so much,
Jim