Great thanks, Hal and Bob !
Indeed I still have the Norton book; regrettably, it's not verbose on
precisely one salient point here - the location/address of the jump
to the real boot loading progs the MBR points to. (It's more
informative on the FAT but doesn't solve the riddle of how to resore it
either.)
And sure I had done a rescue floppy of that Linux install. This is the
one left to boot up at all by now - I managed to really mess the thing
up, <bg>.
For the history book: I tried the doubtfull advice from "Running Linux"
and rewrote the former/old MBR:
> dd if=/boot/boot.0300 of=/dev/hada bs=446 count=1
As suspected, it conducted straight to Nirvana City. Rebooting gave:
LI_
(and "_" there stayed the cursor.)
Typical sign of a non-existant/non working boot loader.
So much for this. (And another instance showing that this "fundamental"
book is nothing to peg your hope on. Forget it.)
The continuation is more interesting.
I booted up with the DOS floppy which had served to install DOS and the
original partitioning (i.e., a primary DOS, and the rest of the HD
"extended", withouth any logical drives installed - this is where then
the Mandrake Linux was installed.)
Running 'fdisk' from that floppy, it told me immedately that
> Drive C has an ivalis sector size.
> This may be because it isn't formatted.
> Enter Format C: /X to format drive C:
(Which I certainly did _not_ do.)
Next thing, (DOS-)fdisk showed what it saw:
No Drive Start End MB Status Type
-- ----- ------ ----- -------- --- -------
1 C: 0 65 517.6 N PRI DOS
2 -- 66 66 7.8 A Unknown Type 83
3 -- 67 1023 37657.4 N EXT DOS
(The submenu told "No logcal drives defined yet")
So this seems quite correct - astonishingly though, it showed the Linux
"/boot" partition too (I wouldn't have expected this to be shonw at all
in by DOS's fdisk.)
I made partition "1" bootable (the "A switched place from the second
line to the first, "2" got an "N"); and ran "rewrite MBR".
[As there was the Linux-Mdk- rescue disk, this didn't seem a big risk.]
Rebooting gave:
> No operating system
Now comes the intriguing bit: The DOS system files ("ibmbio.com",
"ibmdos.com" and "command.com") _are_ there on "C:\", as intermittent
booting from the Linux rescue disk, and ensuing "df" or "fdisk" there
showed.(*)
So evidently, not only the (DOS-) MBR had gone but even and with it,
the C: drive's FAT (file allocation table) too.
So this would have to be restored too, and not only (whatever
"original" or "genuine" MBR).
It's common wisdom (hmm) that there's a copy of the FAT "somewhere".
Would it be possible (where to find it ?) to re-write it to the right
place (which is which ?)
So this could perhaps indeed make the C: boot DOS again ?
[As said, intermittend nosing from the linux system shows that the
whole "C:" partition and all its files are still there.]
As for the Linux boot, promptly unavailable now too (except with the
rescue disk), and as any attempt to reanimate the old LiLo, or booting
"manually" with inputting root parms etc. failed:
Mandrake is indeed - and quite rightly, Bob - the most friendly
install(**) system even if one does a somewhat "unconventional"
(re-)install: it just leaves already installed partitions and file
systems - and most important: installed progs and their configurations -
peacefully where they are, as long as one doesn't resize/reformat them.
At least I made this experience with earlier bungled installs...
<sigh>So it's just to patiently go through the whole install
again.</sigh>
All this however still does not explain why the original setup of DOS
was destroyed - I never ever had that before with numerous installs of
Linux and Lilo.
// Heimo Claasen // <hammer at revobild dot net> // Brussels 2003-08-03
The WebPlace of ReRead - and much to read ==> http://www.revobild.net
---------
(*) The _original_/former install had the following result from the
_Linux_ 'fdisk', perfectly according to intentions:
Device Boot Start End Block Id System REM: Mounted:
--------------------------------------------------- -------
/dev/hda1 * 67 67 8032+ 83 Linux /boot
/dev/hda2 68 4868 38561197+ 5 Extended -.-
/dev/hda3 1 66 530113 6 FAT16 /dos-c
/dev/hda5 68 385 2554303 83 Linux /
/dev/hda6 386 486 811251 82 Linux swap (sic)
/dev/hda7 487 4868 35195548 83 Linux /home [data only]
Only that -- this Linux-fdisk had made the funny remark,
"Partition table entries are not in disk order"
(On this, below); and
-- DOS was not bootable (via LiLo).
Would anybody know what the "advanced" command in the Linux-"fdisk"
would mean, "fix order of partitions" ?
(_NO_ info available on that in the "man" or elsewhere.)
(**) Mandrake's "upgrade" routine _from the standard CD set_ is
risky/buggy; I had repeated failures with this.
Better to use the "install (new)" fork.
A first part of the re-run of the Mandrake install, however, gave
another astonishment (I interrupted later down because it started to
intall packages I hadn't wanted) - the resulting numbering of the
(unchanged) partitions was conspicuously different from the earlier,
showed as following:
/dev/hda2 [!!!] /dos-c
/dev/had3 /boot
/dev/hda5 / [root, as before]
/dev/hda7 /home [as before]
And "hda1" doesn't appear any more at all - how come ?!
-hc
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