(Courtesy copy bcc'd to Avdi directly)
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> My name is Avdi, and I'm an idiot.
Ah, be easy on yourself! We all have stories we could tell (I'm pretty sure)
of the 'ohno-second's we've had (like the time I did rm -rf * from a subdir
that just HAPPENED to have my windows partition mounted below it!)
> Specifically, I installed Win98 on a partition I'd cleared for it on my
> Mandrake 7.2 system, *without* checking to make sure my emergency linux boot
> disk actually worked. Naturally, Win98 overwrote my MBR, and now I'm unable to
> boot linux. I can boot the Mandrake install CD, but I can't find a way to
> easily reinstall LILO or GRUB from it. Originally, I had a trouble with the
> lilo on the CD giving my "Unsupported device" errors; after I rebooted and
> tried again for some reason the RAM disk was read-only, where it had been
> writeable the first time I booted from the CD. Too wierd... anyway, I'm able to
> mount my linux partition from the CD boot, but what do I do from there? I can't
> install LILO from the old partiion because LILO expects various files
> (like /boot/boot.b) to be in specific places in the filesystem; and the ramdisk
> is read-only. I can't reinstall GRUB, mainly because I can't figure out it's
> internal documentation and I can't find any external docs.
Well, I've been guru status for a while (according to some, anyway ;-)
(but I don't do windows any more!), but recently someone here on the expert
list put forth a really nifty trick on how to do this.
I'll probably miss a detail, but here's the basic idea:
1a - boot from your install media with the lilo command:
linux root=/dev/hda1 (or wherever your linux root partition is).
(note that 'linux' may not be right either, but I think it is).
if this won't work, try:
1b - boot from the install boot media, using rescue mode.
2a - if 1a worked, just login as root and type 'lilo'
2b - if only 1b worked, then you're going to have to get to the point
where you have / mounted. The really cute thing now is to
cd to /mnt/<wherever_your_root_partition_is> and type
'chroot .' - at that point, you are in a new subshell
with / where your normal root partition was/is. Now just
type 'lilo' and you've set your mbr again. (WARNING -
if you've got more than one partition then you may have
to fiddle a bit to get everything in the right place and
in the right order. Beware that dumping out of a chroot-ed
shell with partitions mounted FROM that chroot-ed shell
may cause weird things to happen! (don't ask ;-) )
Of course if you're using grub, give the grub install
command instead of the lilo one!
rc
Rusty Carruth Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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