dear i have some thing to learn
that i have one hard disk un bootable dew to some mbr prob
i mount this with other linux running system
it mounts it means linux
i mount all partitions saw dmesg
first line
linux version 2.2.19 and and gcc ver and and date so and so
it is still mounted
i want to now what distro is this is this redhat,bsd.or or
how i find out this i search all files with mc it is ext2 it clear with partition kernel is 2.2.19 by dmesg
but what dstro
please need help to solve this

During boot up you should get a tag line somewhere (or a logo or a splash screen) which tells you which distro you're using. Another way is (if you haven't compiled your own kernel) to type uname -r which usually has a clue in it for you.

no there is no boot because of lost mbr
other thing it is mounted in other running system
so think about it again
which partition which file contains destro information
thanks for help
most of i checked already didnt find

Well if you can't boot it then there's no way to tell... Unless you have the installation media around somewhere. Or you can ask the person who installed it.

Sure there is... if the only way to know would be from looking at the boot messages, couldn't one mount /var (of the other system) and open /logs/messages in a text editor, which would contain the last boot messages of that system, which would (hopefully) tell you?

Alternatively, you could perhaps look in /sbin or /usr/sbin and see what you've got there-- if you find drakconf and rpmdrake, well, that's Mandrake; if you find redhat-config and the like, that's RedHat, and if you find YAST or YOU, you've got SuSE, and Apt would indicate Debian.

You might also check /usr/share/docs and see if the distribution help is installed; naturally that will say something about what distribution is installed as well.

Which version? If you haven't upgraded your kernel before this all happened, I'd actually suggest that once you know generally which distro class you're using (Debian, Mandrake, SuSE), I'd go to either DistroWatch or search Google for which version of that particular distribution shipped with kernel 2.2.19.

Hope this helps. If I think of more signifiers that distros use to brand their installs, I'll let you know .

How about looking at /etc/*release? For instance, for Mandrake is it /etc/mandrake-release:

> cat /etc/mandrake-release
Mandrake Linux release 10.0 (Official) for i586

Well if the mbr is corrupt you'd need a live distro for that.

My impression was that tomamodi was already using one (or something):
I understood that tomamodi was booting from either a LiveCD, or a second installed distro on another HDD, and mounting the affected system from that.

Have I misread?

you are right i mount this effected hdd as hdb in live system
today i will check all and inform
may be get some clue
thanks for intrest and help
hope we recover this

now this is all what advised hdb1 mounted
first /var empty
/sbin nothing as you say
/usr/bin/ i find some files as
i386-red~ux-egcs
i386-red~nux-gcc
is this means redhat next step i think to google redhat with 2.2.19 support i think 6.2 may be
the second and most importent q? is if i find the same distro and upgrade the install is it possible without lossing the already installed softwares in this harddisk there is webmin and squid there i want to keep them as it is
i didnt want to lose any of this software in this hard disk only mean to up grade is get boot prompt login
thanks again for helping

please see this what it means that no other distro supports 2.2.19

http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache...++2.2.19&hl=en

there is only "debian" here in information

I would ignore that page. It looks like the information there is very old and questionably accurate.