On Thursday 09 February 2006 21:10, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > On Thu, 9 Feb 2006, Anne Wilson wrote: > > My main workstation is awaiting its turn to move to FC4, and was running > > Mandriva. I now find that I cannot boot from the primary drive at all. > > It looks as though something desperate has happened to the MBR, where > > lilo lived. > > > > Checking my data backup, I find that I have missed a whole, vitally > > important, directory. I need to get that data to a safe place before > > trying anything in the way of rescue. > > > > I have got knoppix 3.2 up and can see the files. I've got a pen-drive > > mounted as root, but can't copy the files onto it. Trying > > cp /mnt/hde7/anne/Gnucash/ /mnt/sde gets > > cp: omitting directory /mnt/hde7/anne/Gnucash/ > > "cp -a" ?? > Eventually I realised that I could create the directory, then copy files into it. That worked - though I'd like to know why it couldn't create the directory from the cp command. Did it need -R? Anyway, the files are now at least copied to a backup. It would be useful if I could burn a CD or DVD from knoppix, in case I have missed anything else. Now - I really need to get that system up and running for another couple of days. By the weekend I should be ready to change the OS. Does anyone have any idea how I could get lilo working again? The only thing I can think of that I haven't tried is using a windows floppy to re-write the MBR, if it will, then re-try Mandriva's rescue to see if it will write it again. This does make me wonder, though, whether grub is inherently more secure by not being in the MBR (or at least I understand that it isn't). Any comments? Anne
