[Gllug] The horror, the horror

[Garry Heaton]

>Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 01:22:18 +0000
>From: North London John <northlondonjohn at yahoo.co.uk>
>To: gllug at linux.co.uk
>Subject: [Gllug] The horror, the horror
>Reply-To: gllug at linux.co.uk
>
>Hi,
>
>Again, I spoke too soon. Still, I had 3 and a half weeks of linux - a
>record for me.
>
>(To re capitulate (sick joke) I got Debian woody installed at the
>installfest, following many problems with mandrake, red Hat and
>Knoppix.)
>
>Well, I was dual booting (Win98 / Debian Woody) but had a soft crash
>with windows - not the blue screen of death, it just didn't shut down.
>Press that off button, reboot, "you did not shut down correctly" and
>scan disk.
>
>So far, so M$.
>
>But now, when I try to boot up Deb, I get "file system not found." I've
>tried the rescue options, I've tried Knoppix 3.1, same message. Seems
>like Windows has fscked my partitions.
>
>I guess a reinstall is necessary - but are there any other options?
>
>And frankly, I just keep on reinstalling linux (Knoppix - Mandrake and
>Red Hat stalled on boot) and ending up with corrupt partitions. This is
>well boring, and I'm not learning anything (I already knew windows was
>scheisse).
>
>Where do I look for info on this problem? What do I look for?
>
>John

I have a couple of machines running 1 or 2 versions of Windows alongside
Mandrake Linux. I found that if I put LILO on the mbr it eventually
became corrupted. When this happened the first thing I had to do was
insert the Windows 98 boot floppy and type:

fdsik /mbr

... which restores the Windows mbr.

Assuming you already have a Linux boot disk, use that to re-enter the
Linux partition then get into the habit of putting LILO on the Windows
boot menu. Here's how:

1. Assign Windows boot menu to mbr (see above)
2. Enter Linux system with boot disk
3. Put LILO on the Linux root partition. This will probably be hda5 or
hda6, depending on where you have SWAP.
4. Mount floppy drive with:

mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy

5. Create a linux.bin file on a floppy with:

dd if=/dev/hda5 bs=512 count=1 of=/mnt/floppy/linux.bin

6. Reboot Windows and install the new linux.bin file under C:\
7. Edit C:\boot.ini with:

C:\linux.bin = "Mandrake Linux"

8. Reboot to find Linux on your Windows boot menu.

OK, occasionally you might find Windows corrupts your linux.bin file but
it doesn't happen often and following the same procedure will solve
everything.

Garry Heaton






































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