HELP: GRUB or Part. Table damaged by QTPARTED!!

[Michael Schwendt]

On Sat, 23 Oct 2004 15:20:07 +0200, Hans Troost wrote:

> I collected everything you asked for to be able to help me, so I send it
> here and I'm very happy that you are willing to support me.
> 
> Having said that, please give the instructions as detailed as possible: to
> illustrate my newbie-level: it took me some hours, trying and rebooting to
> XP (machine only) to search the web to find out how to use a floppy to place
> the requested file on. The mount command I already knew, but really writing
> to a flop...!

The simplest way for Linux newbies is to use mtools:

  mformat A:
  mcopy file A:
  mdir A:

> So my files are here: 
> 
> Grub.conf:

/dev/hda8 = /boot partition = (hd0,7) for GRUB, partition table does
not agree.
 
> fstab:
> 	
> /dev/hda10              swap                    swap    defaults        0 0

Partition table does not agree either.

> Ignore/Cancel? i
> Disk geometry for /dev/hda: 0.000-152627.835 megabytes
> Disk label type: msdos
> Minor    Start       End     Type      Filesystem  Flags
> 1          0.031   1506.093  primary   fat16       boot
> 2       1506.094  11013.310  primary   ntfs        
> 3      11013.311 152625.344  extended              lba
> 5      11013.341  42358.886  logical   ntfs        

> 6      42358.917  42460.861  logical   ext3        
> 7      42460.893  52697.592  logical   ext3        

These two, /dev/hda6 and /dev/hda7, are your /boot and root partitions.
Not /dev/hda8 as in grub.conf.

> 8      52697.624  54690.029  logical   linux-swap  

Here /dev/hda8 is the swap partition, whereas previously it was
/dev/hda10, see fstab. Editing your partition table reordered the
partitions.

> 11     54690.060  85408.066  logical   fat32       lba
> 9     118824.552 149550.402  logical   fat32       
> 10    149550.434 152625.344  logical   fat32       

So, let's see:

  /dev/hda5 : NTFS
  /dev/hda9, 10, 11 : FAT32

  /dev/hda6 : ext3 => /boot partition (due to its small size)
  /dev/hda7 : ext3 => root partition
  /dev/hda8 : Linux swap

1.) You would need to edit /boot/grub/grub.conf and replace (hd0,7)
with (hd0,5) everywhere, so GRUB finds your /boot partition again.
(hd0,5) is /dev/hda6, your /boot partition

2.) You would need to edit /etc/fstab and make the swap partition be
/dev/hda8 instead of /dev/hda10. Take out or correct the entries for
your /mnt/windows partitions, as they are wrong, too.

3.) You would need to reinstall GRUB into your /boot partition.
You can do that within the rescue chroot: grub-install /dev/hda6

In case you edit the copies of these files with Windows XP, be sure to
use a text editor which can edit and save Unix-style files. Else you
would need to process them with dos2unix when you're back in Linux.

[...]

Alternatively, what I would try: boot your XP bootloader, choose
Linux, and at the GRUB command prompt (you mentioned your system
doesn't boot further), enter:

  root (hd0,5)
  kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.8-1.521 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
  initrd /initrd-2.6.8-1.521.img
  boot

That should start your system normally, albeit fail to activate the
swap space. The first thing you would need to do is to fix things 1,
2, 3 as described above.

-- 
Fedora Core release 2 (Tettnang) - Linux 2.6.8-1.541
loadavg: 0.03 0.48 0.78