Recovering a trashed Linux partition?

Post #2,933 by Yendor 7/27/01 10:07:21 AM Reply	Recovering a trashed Linux partition? Hey, guys...I've done some Bad Things[TM] to my computer over the last week. I started fixing them last night, and I'm getting somewhere, but I'm still not back to a completely great state. My old setup: BIOS from 1997, 8.4GB HD (6GB Win98, 2GB RH 6.2). My setup until last night: BIOS from 2000, 40 GB HD (RH 7.0). It took 10 minutes to boot up (I'm not kidding), and wouldn't recognize both drives at the same time. I could also unhook the 40GB drive and hook up the old 8.4GB HD, and it was running "ok" (not great, but not bad). However, Windows gave me a confusing error message over the past week, and I overwrote my MBR. So, LILO's gone from the old 8.4 drive. Buh-bye RH 6.2 installation. Last night, I unflashed my BIOS back to 1997. Booted into Winders, and the 8.4GB drive was perfect. Shut down, hook up the 40GB drive as the slave to the 8.4's master, and voilá! BIOS recognizes both the IBM 8.4 and the WD 40. Now, granted, since I didn't format the WD as a FAT drive, Windows can't see it. And that's fine. However, with the 8.4 as master, I can't boot into Linux (since I fux0red my LILO). My questions: How do I get LILO back on the 8.4 so that it re-recognizes my old RH 6.2 installation? I'm not truly concerned about saving everything from this, as the plan is just to copy the files that I've accumulated on there over the last 6 months of running RH over to my 7.0 installation, and then clearing it. But I did have some files I wanted... Can I get LILO to have 3 options -- Winders, RH 6.2, and RH 7.0 (which would boot off my second HD?) Eventually (as mentioned above), the plan is to trash the RH 6.2 installation, and just give the 2GB it's using back to Winders. At such time as I get Winders and RH 7.0 playing nice, I'd like to use RH 7.0 as my main system, and then find some program (Win4Lin, VMWare, WINE, etc) to basically "import" my Winders installation so that I can keep it on the 8.4 drive as is, but run it under Linux. What's the best emulation program that can do that for me? TIA, -YendorMike In order to understand recursion, one must understand recursion.
Post #2,934 by addison 7/27/01 10:44:37 AM Reply	Doesn't sound trashed. Sounds like LILO is trashed, sure, but so what? Its just for booting. If you didn't mess with Partition tables, the data's still there, in hdc2, hdc3, etc. Boot RH 7.0 or 7.1 off CD in "rescue" mode, and you should be able to mount those partitions and look at them (recovering file if you want), or fix lilo so it will boot what you want. (That's a tad bit more involved, and I'll have to think on it more) So, LILO's gone from the old 8.4 drive. Buh-bye RH 6.2 installation. Not if you didn't change anything else, its still there, just not bootable. (or make a floppy boot disk, and then set it so it will change over to the hard drive, or use even that util that lets you boot Linux from DOS. Erm. syslinux? I forgot what it it, but there's a tool that will start up DOS if you can get it on a DOS-formatted boot floppy. How do I get LILO back on the 8.4 so that it re-recognizes my old RH 6.2 installation? * Install Linux again, on top of the one you have. * Run the RESCUE boot, which should give you a minimal shell, and enough to get LILO set back up on the MBR (trying to recall what's involved with that, I did it about 2 months ago) plan is just to copy the files that I've accumulated on there over the last 6 months of running RH over to my 7.0 installation, and then clearing it. But I did have some* files I wanted...* If you install 7.0, just mount the other partions. presuming its hda, "fdisk -l /dev/hda" (lists partitions, so you can see what you have "mkdir /mnt/1" (and 2 and so on, or whatever you wan to call them) "mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/1" (and so forth. Now you can copy from /mnt/1/rodneyssecretstuff to whereever you want. Can I get LILO to have 3 options -- Winders, RH 6.2, and RH 7.0 (which would boot off my second HD?) RTFM. :) Yes. Make differing labels, and point them to different places, sure. The only "difference" between this 6.2 and 7.0 to LILO is where the kernel and needed code is. to basically "import" my Winders installation so that I can keep it on the 8.4 drive as is, but run it under Linux. What's the best emulation program that can do that for me? ADMINS! Please move this to "Oh, Pun!" :) Nothing that I'm aware of. Probably WINE is your best bet for that. You can try Win4Lin (its got the advantage of using the native filesystem, and you can try to copy windows on top of it... but both of those will probably Not Do Very Well with that. Addison
Post #3,011 by static 7/30/01 7:51:11 AM Reply	Resurrecting LILO. Use a RedHat CD to boot into Rescue mode. Once you're at a bash prompt, you need to figure out where your old root is and mount it somewhere. Create a directory for it, BTW. You might need to find and mount /boot, too, but do it under your newly mounted root. Once you've mounted it and confirmed that /etc and /boot are where they should be (relative to their proper root), you can do a lilo -r /wherever/you/mounted/root and it will fix it all up. Wade. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
Post #3,180 by bepatient 7/31/01 8:51:01 AM Reply	Couldn't he just... ...boot from the floppy to the hard drive...(or even the cd in rescue) and then get root...and then type "lilo -P fix"....? I just did that last night as a matter of fact. Um...er...well... I have no choice! [link\|mailto:bepatient@aol.com\|BePatient]

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