partition nightmares

[Rick Stevens]

On Thu, 2006-07-27 at 17:29 -0400, jim ruxton wrote:
> > On Wed, 2006-07-26 at 17:45 -0400, jim ruxton wrote:
> > > Hi, I recently reinstalled Fedora (went from 3 to 5) . Rather than doing
> > > an upgrade I did a complete reinstall. Everything went well till I
> > > decided to create a FAT32 partition on my Windows partition . I dual
> > > boot this machine. I was using Partition Magic while trying to create
> > > the FAT32 partition. Next time I booted using Grub into my Windows
> > > partition Windows wouldn't load. My files are still there and I can
> > > mount them using ntfsmount in linux but can't start windows. When I load
> > > the windows systems CD that came with my laptop I can't start Windows
> > > either. I really don't want to wipe my nice new FC5 to reload Windows.
> > > Any thoughts what I can do to get Windows back? Here is the output of
> > > fdisk -l ? Thanks.
> > > 
> > > jim
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Disk /dev/hda: 60.0 GB, 60011642880 bytes
> > > 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7296 cylinders
> > > Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
> > > 
> > >    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> > > /dev/hda1   *        3951        7296    26876713+   7  HPFS/NTFS
> > > /dev/hda2               1          13      104391   83  Linux
> > > /dev/hda3              14        3950    31623952+  8e  Linux LVM
> > > 
> > > Partition table entries are not in disk order
> > > 
> > > Disk /dev/dm-0: 31.2 GB, 31272730624 bytes
> > > 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3802 cylinders
> > > Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
> > > 
> > > Disk /dev/dm-0 doesn't contain a valid partition table
> > > 
> > > Disk /dev/dm-1: 1073 MB, 1073741824 bytes
> > > 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 130 cylinders
> > > Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
> > > 
> > > Disk /dev/dm-1 doesn't contain a valid partition table
> > 
> > Remember that fdisk has no concept of what the internals of LVM are.
> > The "/dev/dm*" stuff is a device mapper creation to allow other tools
> > to have access to a quasi-physical device that happens to be a part
> > of the LVM system.  They appear to be real drives to fdisk, but they're
> > a creation of the "pvcreate" mechanism and aren't real drives or
> > partitions.
> > 
> > Internal LVM stuff is handled by the "pv*" "vg*" and "lv*" commands.
> > See "man lvm" for details.
> 
> Thanks Rick. Do you think the fact I can't boot into Windows has
> anything to do with lvm? My problem came about when I was trying to
> resize my ntfs partition with Partition Magic so I could create a fat32
> partition. Unfortunately PM crashed during the resizing process and I
> could no longer boot Windows. Any thoughts as to what I should try to
> figure out the culprit? I'm using GRUB as the boot loader.

That smells like the NTFS filesystem got corrupted by PM.  I think I
see A Windows "chkdisk" in your future.  I doubt sincerely that LVM has
or had anything to do with it.

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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-   You possess a mind not merely twisted, but actually sprained.    -
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