Mike....sda was divided into 4 os's Mandrake, Peanut (linux), Win98 & Winnt.
After the event I booted up on Win98 and used Partition Magic 5.0 to check
out all partitions on sda. sda7 (/ for my Mandrake installation) was the
only one where an error was detected and PM5 classified the error as
critical (critical means PM can't fix it). So I set up my mail client on my
NT box (a different computer) and sent the message you're replying to now.
After that I decided I could delete the NT partition on the multiple boot
machine and make that an ext2. Then I could install Mandrake on it and have
a full blown system to boot to while trying to recover sda7. sda5 was the
/boot & sda6 was the swap of my original mandrake installation so I used
them in my new Mandrake installation. It consists of sda4 as / sda5 as
/boot & sda6 as swap. So that's now my platform for trying to recover sda7.
PM5 on Win98 and Mandrake 6.1. Anyway, the answer to your question:
"Can you boot off a floppy and do
fdisk [device]
and print out (to console) the starting and ending points of the partition?
Then quit fdisk _without_ _modifying_ _any_ _partition_.
Are the values returned by this invocation of fdisk correct?"
...is yes (or I could do it from either the new Madrake installation or from
Peanut). But the question I have is, Have I already screwed something up by
modifying the old NT partition (sda4) and installing Mandrake on it and
using sda5 & sda6 as well? Also, isn't my PM5 attempt at fixing sda7
answering the same questionas you ask, and that is the partition is still
there and identified as an ext2 by PM5, but not readable or fixable?
Anyhow I'll do that fdisk thing and get back with you. I'd sure like to be
able to recover some of the data off of sda7.
Alan
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Fieschko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Saturday, January 08, 2000 9:54 AM
Subject: [expert] can't mount root filesystem and can't fix it
>>>> "Alan" == Alan Shoemaker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
>[snip]
>
> Alan> The superblock could not be read or does not describe a
> Alan> correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid and it
> Alan> really contains an ext2 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or
> Alan> something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you
> Alan> might try running e2fsk with an alternate superblock: e2fsk
> Alan> -b 8193 <device>
>
>[snip]
>
>Can you boot off a floppy and do
>
>fdisk [device]
>
>and print out (to console) the starting and ending points of the
>partition?
>
>Then quit fdisk _without_ _modifying_ _any_ _partition_.
>
>Are the values returned by this invocation of fdisk correct?
>
>--
>Mike Fieschko, West Orange, NJ, USA
>X-Mailer: XEmacs 21.1, VM 6.75 and random-sig.el
>Kernel 2.2.14-15mdk
>http://www.viconet.com/fieschko/home.htm
>Jan 8 St Severin
>
