Try searching for the hex string "fd1701308201130201010420".
In old wallet files, a 32 byte sequence following the above string will be your private key.
Does this look right?
grep -i -a -B10 -A100 --binary --text --perl-regexp 'fd1701308201130201010420' /dev/sda1
Doing some research I just read a blog that says wallet encryption was not until version 0.4.0 on September 23, 2011?
If that is correct does that mean the wallet.dat before that date are plain text or still Berkerely DB? If it is in Berkerely DB would that mean I could retrieve the entire wallet including all keys by simply using db_dump.py on a found wallet.dat file?
thx
No, that doesn't seem correct.
I recommend dumping an image of the disk drive (you should keep a copy, NEVER do anything on the disk you're trying to recover the data from!)
Then you can use a hex editor such as Okteta to search for the hex string in the dump file.
I have it mounted separately so nothing is going to get written to it since grep is being executed from the boot disk, any temp files or output by grep will be written there.
What about that second part, about the encryption, is it all just unencrypted Berkerely DB prior to 2011? (I do not remember it that way, maybe I am confusing converting it from text to berkerely DB why I thought it was encrypted and mistaken about password encrypted - faulty memory)