If there would be a way to create a hardlink to that inode you could really recover the file (lsof will show you the inode number).
Is there some arcane unix command that allows you to do that ?
If the file is large enough there may not be enough space to do a copy, so that's why it would be nicer to actually restore that inode...
jam@jam:~$ touch z
jam@jam:~$ tail -f z
^Z
[1]+ Stopped
jam@jam:~$ rm z
jam@jam:~$ lsof | grep /home/jam/z
tail 19192 jam 3r REG 8,17 0 821339 /home/jam/z (deleted)
jam@jam:~$
The 821339 is the inode.