Chasecreek Systemhouse wrote:
On 2/17/06, Mike McCarty <mike.mccarty@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Over on the Debian lists is a guy who clobbered his partitions
last night, late. I spent a few hours poring over his information
His partition table/disk label is destroyed most likely.
Is this a dual boot or linux only laptop? Can he just try restoring
grub using grub-install off a recovery CD? I'm at a loss for helping
because I have no idea what you tried thus far or what the actual
events were leading up to this situation.
Of course you are at a complete loss, since I provided no
concrete information. First, I wanted to see whether there
were a volunteer helper. We can take this off-list, unless
you think that the others on Fedora might benefit enough.
I don't see any reason cfdisk needed to write to his /home
partition, even to rewrite the geometry information.
Here are the relevant dumps of his PT...
Here's my partition table now, in a couple different formats:
cfdisk 2.11u
Disk Drive: /dev/hda
Size: 30005821440 bytes, 30.0 GB
Heads: 15 Sectors per Track: 63 Cylinders: 62016
Name Flags Part Type FS Type [Label] Size (MB)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
hda5 Boot Logical Linux 4702.45*
hda6 Boot Logical Linux 1000.10*
hda7 NC Logical Linux ext3 [/home] 14999.98*
hda8 Logical Linux swap 511.91
hda2 Boot Primary Linux ext3 [/] 5000.01
hda1 Boot Primary Win95 FAT32 (LBA) 3790.89
Primary Free Space 0.49
Partition Table for /dev/hda
First Last
# Type Sector Sector Offset Length Filesystem Type (ID) Flags
-- ------- -------- --------- ------ --------- ---------------------- ---------
3 Primary 0 41434469 63 41434470 Extended (05) None (00)
5 Logical 63* 9184516* 63 9184454* Linux (83) Boot (80)
6 Logical 9184517*11137831* 63 1953315 Linux (83) Boot (80)
7 Logical 11137832*40434659 1#29296828* Linux (83) None (00)
8 Logical 40434660 41434469 63 999810 Linux swap (82) None (00)
2 Primary 41434470 51200099 0 9765630 Linux (83) Boot (80)
1 Primary 51200100 58604174 0 7404075 Win95 FAT32 (LBA) (0C) Boot (80)
Primary 58604175 58605119 0 945 Free Space None (00)
I didn't print the partition table before the changes, but it would
have looked like this, gotten by deleting the two new partitions in
cfdisk (without saving the changes):
cfdisk 2.11u
Disk Drive: /dev/hda
Size: 30005821440 bytes, 30.0 GB
Heads: 15 Sectors per Track: 63 Cylinders: 62016
Name Flags Part Type FS Type [Label] Size (MB)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pri/Log Free Space 5702.57*
hda5 NC Logical Linux ext3 [/home] 14999.98*
hda6 Logical Linux swap 511.91
hda2 Boot Primary Linux ext3 [/] 5000.01
hda1 Boot Primary Win95 FAT32 (LBA) 3790.89
Primary Free Space 0.49
Partition Table for /dev/hda
First Last
# Type Sector Sector Offset Length Filesystem Type (ID) Flags
-- ------- -------- --------- ------ --------- ---------------------- ---------
Pri/Log 0 11137831* 0#11137832* Free Space None (00)
3 Primary 11137832*41434469 0 30296638* Extended (05) None (00)
5 Logical 11137832*40434659 1#29296828* Linux (83) None (00)
6 Logical 40434660 41434469 63 999810 Linux swap (82) None (00)
2 Primary 41434470 51200099 0 9765630 Linux (83) Boot (80)
1 Primary 51200100 58604174 0 7404075 Win95 FAT32 (LBA) (0C) Boot (80)
Primary 58604175 58605119 0 945 Free Space None (00)
Well, you are the one who did things. Did you keep a written
log of your actions and what happened?
The exact actions I took were to run boot into knoppix, then:
cfdisk /dev/hda
move cursor onto unused space
n (new partition)
l (logical)
Size (in MB): 1000
e (end)
move cursor onto unused space
n (new partition)
l (logical)
Size (in MB): 4702.47 (all the remaining space)
e (end)
I mounted the root partition and changed hda5 and hda6 to hda7 and
hda8, and ran update-grub while chrooted into the root partition
(which I later realized was unnecessary, since the root partition
didn't change).
One thing I noticed is that the home partition now has the flag "NC"
which I don't think it had before. Also, I got a warning that since I
had more than one bootable partition (I now have four), DOS MBR could
not read this. I didn't worry about it, since I'm using GRUB.
I recommend that you not exit Knoppix until either you are
reasonably satisfied that you are fixed up, or until
you give up in despair. Hopefully, with a little help,
you can get back where you were.
We're here to help, if we can.
THANK you. I will remain in knoppix until said conditions.
===============================================================
Here is the output of fdisk -u and fdisk -u -l:
knoppix@ttyp0[knoppix]$ sudo fdisk -l
Disk /dev/hda: 15 heads, 63 sectors, 62016 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 945 * 512 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 54181 62015 3702037+ c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda2 * 43847 54180 4882815 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 1 43846 20717203+ 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 * 1 9720 4592195+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 * 9720 11787 976626 83 Linux
/dev/hda7 11787 42788 14648413+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda8 42789 43846 499873+ 82 Linux swap
Partition table entries are not in disk order
knoppix@ttyp0[knoppix]$ sudo fdisk -u -l
Disk /dev/hda: 15 heads, 63 sectors, 62016 cylinders
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 51200100 58604174 3702037+ c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda2 * 41434470 51200099 4882815 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 63 41434469 20717203+ 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 * 126 9184516 4592195+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 * 9184580 11137831 976626 83 Linux
/dev/hda7 11137833 40434659 14648413+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda8 40434723 41434469 499873+ 82 Linux swap
Partition table entries are not in disk order
knoppix@ttyp0[knoppix]$
(I'm including Mike's last message below for the archives, as it has
some useful info in it)
2006/2/17, Mike McCarty <mike.mccarty@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
Levi Waldron wrote:
> 2006/2/17, Mike McCarty <mike.mccarty@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>
>>First step before messing with partitions: do a backup.
>>Second step before messing with partitions: save your MBR on a floppy.
>>Third step before messing with partitions: save the first sector
>>of each partition on a floppy.
>
>
> I have backups at home of everything important on the home partition,
> but I'm on the road right now and it will be very annoying if I have
> to resort to that... more info than needed though :) . Point taken,
> backup backup backup. The MBR didn't seem like a big deal to me
> because I don't have a floppy, and figured I could always rebuild it
> from Knoppix. I didn't know about saving the first sector of each
> partition - thank you an I will in the future.
The first sector of each partition is the Boot Record
for that partition, sometimes also called the BPB,
though that's rather dated and not actually applicable
for non-MSDOS partitions.
First thing I did with my machine after I got it home
was add a floppy disc drive. Dunno why they don't come
with 'em any more.
>>I dunno what you have in your MBR for boot code, but
>>I don't see how you created two more if you have a
>>"normal" setup. With a normal setup, you can only
>>have up to four partitions, one of which can be
>>"extended" and have logical partitions in it.
>>You already had three partitions, so how did you
>>add two more? I suppose that hda5 and hda6 are inside
>>of an extended partition you created before. Or are
>>you using LVM? If you use LVM, I can't help you much
>>if at all.
>>
>>What does fdisk say?
>>What were the start/end addresses before you changed the PT?
The stuff to look at is the start/end disc addresses for the
partitions, and the types. What I see here does not indicate
that you simply moved some partitions down, unless cfdisk
actually copied a bunch of data. That would have taken a
significant amount of time. E.g. to copy /home to hda7 would
require copying 15 GB which would take several minutes.
I hope you understand that I'm sitting here reading this stuff
and trying to make some sense of it. I know you are on
tenterhooks, but I haven't gone away.
Anyway, it'll take a little while to figure out what is likely
to have happened. I'm not real familiar with cfdisk.
Also, there may be others out there more familiar with cfdisk
who can help.
Hang in there. As Red Green says, "We're all in this together,
and I'm pullin' for you."
Anyway, just sent this note so you wouldn't feel abandoned
or lost, at least not just yet.
Mike
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