[Nottingham] Re: Maildir on a different partition

[Chris Booth]

Hi Peter,

If you don't already have Partition Magic you will find that a Mandrake Linux boot CD makes a good substitute because it has a very nice FAT/NTFS resize facility - just back up your data before use (though I've never had a problem).

If you have been messing about with Lilo or Grub or Partition Magic or Midnight Commander or similar you might have replaced one or all of the boot sector, the  boot.ini file or the NTLDR boot loader with something similar but different. To fix it is quite easy, you recreate the boot sector with fdisk, you can copy NTLDR from another Windows disk, and you recreate the boot.ini with a text editor, and (if you need to) the boot sector with fdisk.

boot.ini file that looks something like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Which tells the BIOS to load the boot loader from Channel 0 (i.e. the Main ATAPI/IDE channel), Disk 0, LUN 0, Partition 1.  In plain English the first partition on the first disk.


If you need more help just ask.

Chris Booth.




 



>>> peter at petersiepmann.net 13/01/2006 14:51:12 >>>
The problem turns out to be much more fundamental than I originally 
thought: FAT32 does not support Unix-style permission/ownership 
information and hence you cannot use a FAT32 system for your home 
directory as many lock files and the like (.Xauthority being one of the 
most critical!) need the correct owner/permission.

So, either I keep my system how it was (FAT32 partition mounted as a 
subdirectory of my home) or use an ext3 parition to hold my data.  As 
the machine is not dual-boot, I'd prefer to transfer over to ext3.  Just 
as soon, that is, as I work out how to split the VFAT in two and 
reformat the empty half as ext3.  I guess Partition Magic will do that 
for me.  So now I need to get the BIOS to boot from my dusty old floppy 
drive.  At the moment it tells me that NTLDR is missing.  Anyone had 
that one before?!

Peter

This message has been checked for viruses but the contents of an attachment
may still contain software viruses, which could damage your computer system:
you are advised to perform your own checks. Email communications with the
University of Nottingham may be monitored as permitted by UK legislation.


_______________________________________________
Nottingham mailing list
Nottingham at mailman.lug.org.uk 
http://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/nottingham


This message has been checked for viruses but the contents of an attachment
may still contain software viruses, which could damage your computer system:
you are advised to perform your own checks. Email communications with the
University of Nottingham may be monitored as permitted by UK legislation.