I've got 120Gb of storage space. Originally, I had WindowsXP installed, then I install ed Mandriva on one logical volume. Mandriva was working find. Then I installed Debian on another. I tested Windows and Debian, which were working fine, but when I tried using Mandriva, I got error messages at boot.

The error messages are in French and in English (some in French, some in English). I'll put what is in French in brackets and translate. I'll leave the English as is, of course:

(Vérification du système de fichiers racine) = Verification of root(?) file system
fsck.ext3: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/hda6 /dev/hda6:
The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem (an not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
e2fsck -b 8193 <device>

(*** Une erreur a été détectée lors de la vérification du système de fichiers)
= An error was detected during system verification
(*** Nous vous laissons dans un shell; le système redémarrera(...))
= We will give you a shell; the system will reboot(...))
(*** quand vous quitterez le shell?)
= when you exit/quit the shell?
Give root password for maintenance
(or type Control-D to continue): _

Here are my questions:

1. What happened? Why am I getting this message. It must have happened when I installed Debian. No?
2. Can I repair this without reinstalling Mandriva?
3. If I do reinstall Mandriva (it was the second of three installations), can I just reformat the logical volume which it is on and reinstall? Or will this cause problems with the boot loader (which already things there are three operating systems)?

If you know what is going on, please give me as much information as possible. I'm interested in two things here:

A. Solving the problem; but also...
B. Using this problem to learn more about installation, boot procedures, logical volumes, etc.

Many thanks.

I think your partition table is a little screwed up, but the first thing I would check out is a file system repair tool. I'm assuming you are using ext2 or ext3. Here is a link on how to perform a filesystem repair, using knoppix. Please pay attention to the NOT MOUNTED part of the instructions.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1928203,00.asp

Hopefully this will handle the problem. Repairing your partition table is a little trickier, but can be done without re-installing, sometimes. I've had to do both myself in the very recent past, so if the advice in the above link doesn't work just reply back here and I'll dig up exact instructions on rebuilding your partition table. Back up whatever you can before you even try though, you can really screw some things up when you mess with your partition table.

Good luck...

David

Thanks for the quick reply. Wow, that was fast!

I had a look at the article you sent me (link), but it seems somewhat over my head. I've just installed Mandriva and Debian. Windows was already on the computer. I had about 60Mb of free space, so I made a 30Mb partition (NTFS). I then installed Mandriva on the 'empty space'. It worked fine, it and Windows. I then deleted the NTFS partition that I just mentioned so that Debian would detect it and recognize it as empty space. Debian was successfully installed. Windows works, Debian works, however I can no longer get to my Mandriva OS. Was my strategy for installing the two OS okay?

There is absolutely nothing on the Mandriva and Debian partitions, I just installed the two yesterday, so starting all over wouldn't be a big deal.

However, I wouldn't mind trying out some tools to learn more about what's going on. I've got a KNOPPIX CD as well as the INSERT cd and the KNOPPIX-std cd. I've never used them and would like to give it a go, why not? I'll look on the Net for instructions or a user's guide.

The most important thing is to make sure nothing goes wrong with the Windows partition/installation, I've lost the installation discs...

I'm not at home now, I'll give the KNOPPIX tools a try when I get home tonight or perhaps tomorrow morning if I don't have time tonight. In the meantime, what would be the best thing to do to play it safe and not take any unnecessary risks? Once again, I'd delete the two Linux partitions and start all over, however, I'm afraid that the bootloader might be affected and that I wouldn't be able to access my Windows OS. (And no, I'm not quite ready to "rm -rf windows" yet, it's more a general philosophy than an strict principle, that is, for the time being... (lol))

Thanks again.

I'm just about to go to bed, so I don't have much time at the moment, but I'll post a bit more in the "morning". If you really want to dive into linux, you might want to think about buying a book or two. "Hacking Knoppix" by O'Reilly has saved my bacon bunches of times. One hack in that book is backing up an entire partition. You might want to consider backing up your windows partition, which knoppix makes easy. Partimage is the program I use (Included in the knoppix live cd). It's a good idea to have good backups anyway, but as you have lost the original install disks anyway, it's now a very good idea.

Now that I have a bit more info on your situation, it's much more likely that all that has happened is that you have screwed up your boot loader, which is a much easier problem to solve than a borked partition table, or even a messed up file system. If I remember my mandrake/mandriva days, mandriva still uses lilo, and debian uses grub, which is famous (in my mind at least) for screwing up lilo and the systems that use it.

Now you have a choice to make. You can stick with debian tools and grub and find a way to boot mandriva, or use mandriva tools and lilo and find a way to boot debian.

Grub is considered more modern, but I have more trouble with it, lilo is older, and has always seemed easier to me, perhaps because I started out on Mandrake years ago. During the install debian should have configured grub to boot mandriva for you, but something went wrong. I think the simplest way to fix it (might not work but won't break anything if it doesn't) would be to use the Mandriva install cd in rescue mode, and then reinstall lilo NOT to the MBR, but to the partition that contains mandriva's root filesystem. Then when you boot your computer you will chain load lilo, from grub.

At the boot promp, hit F2 or F3 or whatever it is that takes you to a text prompt, then type rescue. That should bring up a menu. (Going from memory here, but it should be close) Choose reinstall boot loader. It might ask you where your /etc/lilo.conf file is. It will ask you if you want to install to the MBR or your ROOT partition. The default is the MBR, don't use that, choose the partition that contains mandriva's /. Then when you do reboot, in the grub menu, choose the entry for mandriva, and that should bring up lilo, from there you can choose Mandriva.

I've assumed 3 or 4 things here, but I think I'm right. I hope mandiva hasn't switched to grub, or that they haven't removed the resue bit from their install cd, and that you have chosen grub when you installed debian, and that is in fact the cause of your problem. Lots of guesses, but I think I'm right.

Let us know if that worked or not. It's the most likely solution, and it's the lowest risk to your windows partition too.

Good luck...

David

P.S. I have had trouble attempting to reinstall lilo over grub. Often it just won't work. I'm pretty sure the mandriva rescue menu will ask you where to reinstall lilo, but if it doesn't you might screw up grub by installing over it. I don't think you will, but you might. If that does happen you can use knoppix to roll back to your windows boot loader, but you will need to get on the net to here or google to figure out how. I don't think that'll happen, but there is a very small chance it might. If it does, don't freak out, just use the knoppix disk or another computer to get here and we'll figure it out.

Good luck...

David

David,

Thanks a lot. True, the boot loader that I got immediately after the Mandriva installation was completely different from the boot loader I have now. I do get several choices when the computer is started, two or three for Debian, and then a choice between "other OSs", i.e., Mandriva or Windows (they are on the list, Mandriva is indeed on the list).

I'll fiddle with it tonight.

I'm in France. Where are you? There must be one heck of a time difference. It's afternoon here!

Be back in touch with you tomorrow.

Thanks.

David,

After a good deal of looking around and some experimenting, I've got a few more clues which might help us solve this mystery. Here they are:

When booting with the Mandriva DVD, I get the following choices: Boot from Hard Disk, Installation, vgalo, vgahi, vgal6, text, patch, Rescue System, Installation--ACPI disabled, alt0, alt1 and Memory Test.

I tried booting in "Rescue System" mode from the DVD (Mandriva) but it didn't work. I got the original boot loader (choices: linux, linux-nonfb, failsafe, windows... Debian wasn't installed yet when I installed Mandriva and this corresponds exactly to what I had after the original Mandriva installation). I chose 'linux' and all I got was a blank screen with the following written on it: "None supported H:46KHz V:43.3Hz". The screen freezes here. I tried Ctrl.+Alt+Del and Esc... no luck. I had to shut the computer off manually and start all over.

I also tried to "Boot from Hard Disk", which resulted in a change in the boot loader setup or something (not really sure). I now get the boot loader mentioned above (and not the Debian one (by the way, there is no indication as to whether it is grub or lilo)). In other words, I can no longer access my Debian OS now! When I try booting 'linux' (=Mandriva), I get the blue Mandriva screen with 'Free' written on it, and nothing else happens. Once again, I have to manually turn the computer off and start all over.

So, I tried booting from the Debian DVD. When I chose "rescue mode" it went through the installation process. At one point, it asked where I'd like to install, giving me a list of partitions. I couldn't remember what was where and abandoned "installation". I got a warning saying that the installation was non complete and that the system could be unusable. However, at each step along the way, "rescue mode" was written in the top left corner of the screen.

If I try booting Mandriva from 'failsafe', I get: "Can't find ext3 filesystem on dev hda6" and "error 22 mounting ext3" ... "initrd finished, Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!" and a flickering prompt underscore that doesn't accept any commands (everything freezes, once again).

From my Windows OS, I can see how the partitions are divided up, but can no longer remember what is where!!:

58.59Gb NTFS (Windows partition)

The rest is Linux (Mandriva and Debian):
26.17Gb (Debian?)
1.17Gb / 7.81Gb / 3.90Gb and 14.15Gb (Mandriva?)

I do remember that Debian was installed on a single partition (or is there also a swap partition) and that Mandriva was installed on at least three different partitions (or was it four?). I'd delete the Linux partitions and start all over, but I don't know where the boot mechanisms are. I'm afraid that I wouldn't be able to access Windows OS if I did so.

I also did some experimenting with the Knoppix INSERT CD, but I've never used it before and couldn't make heads or tails out of it.

There you have it. Let's hope I didn't mess things up completely!! Actually, I don't really care. I'd like to get everything working, but for me, learning is as important as getting things working. My only concern is the Windows installation. If we do start all over, I'd like to create a backup DVD or rescue media or whatever is possible before messing doing anything else.

I do have a few good books on Linux, but I don't know if they get into these types of problems in detail. I'll have a look.

Thanks a lot for your help!

I'm in the USA, Wisconsin, wishing I was elsewhere. Costa Rica someday soon, anyway. I was just going to bed at around 8 or 9 am here. My daughter is almost 3, and I decided some time ago to make my schedule work around hers, and that's where she's at right now. Anyway, if you don't mind a reinstall....a few thoughts on that....

Having a separate root partition for each distro is necessary, but I've found sharing a /home partition for every distro works out well. You can even use the same login names and passwords across distro's, which works, but can sometimes have weird effects on desktop settings and things of that nature. I just use different login names for each distro, so my /home will have /home/bob and a /home/clippy on the same partition, with bob being used on fedora and clippy used on Kubuntu, if that makes any sense. And all you need to do to access files on /home/bob from /home/clippy you just need to change the permissions on /home/bob. Both would share swap space of course too. If you windows partition is ntfs you might have trouble reading or writing to it without some kung-fu, and some danger of data loss, so many people put a small fat partition after their main windows partition, so they can transfer files between windows and linux with ease. Anyway, that's how I have my box set up.

Hi, we are missing each other it seems. Ok, as for your windows partition. Can you burn to DVD ? Or do you have another computer or hard drive around ? You might have to back up your windows partiton to the same hard drive, which will work, but is dangerous. Knoppix can do the back up for you. the program is called partimage. Do have another computer about with skype or an instant messenger installed ? I use yahoo and skype, so either would work, if you want some real time help. Voice would be better, if it's possible for you. How much data is on your windows partition exactly ? A dvd usually holds only 4.4 GB, about, a dual layer double that. If your windows partition is 60 gigs, you will want to use partimage to back up the whole thing to another hard drive. Throwing another hard drive in the same box is a cheap perfect solution, if you have one around.

Your windows partiton is most likely /dev/hda1 or /dev/sda1 if you use a SATA drive. You can check with a tool called fdisk run from knoppix. Open a terminal in knoppix, type fdisk /dev/hda then I think the m key prints out all your options, and the p key prints out the current partition table, which should list your windows partition, almost certainly /dev/hda1. Anyway, my IM is vagabondgambler for yahoo, and my skype screen name is aegis042404.

Seeing how everything is foobared for you, and you can't remember which goes where, I would just start over. Delete all the linux partitions, and choose a setup that you can keep long term. The more you repartition your hard drive, sooner or later something will get really messed up. I test all new distro's in vmware now, then when I do choose a regular install, I install to a regular DIFFERENT hard drive, and use the bios to change the boot order. I don't need to do that often, as I'm very happy with my current setup. A root partition is needed for each linux distro. 5 to 8 gigs should be fine for most modern distro's. I choose 8, because it's plenty big enough, and I can back the whole thing up to a dual layer DVD. Then you need a swap partition. Most experts say twice your current amount of ram for swap. so if you have 1 gig of ram, you want 2 gigs of swap. I don't think a desktop needs that much swap. I have 2 gigs of ram, and about 2 gigs of swap, and my system flys. If you have your system set up right, and it's fairly modern, you won't even need swap often. If you do you are working hard or something is wrong. Then you need a /home, for the rest of the space. You might want to add a fat partition of about 2 gigs, to transfer files between linux and windows with ease.

If you go with that sort of setup, you want to delete all the linux partitions, then make the fat transfer partition, then the two linux / 8 gig partitons, then the /home then swap. You can do that with the mandriva installer if you want. Put lilo on the mandriva's root partition. Then install debian to the other / partition, and put grub on the MBR. Sounds like you have lilo there now. Over grub, with everything foobared.

The good news is that you learn something new every time you break things.

Good luck, and get a hold of me if you want some real time help/advice.

David

I got some more info with the KNOPPIX INSERT CD:


One screen gave me the following info (I didn't recopy everything here):

1 * HPFS - NTFS
2 E extended LBA
3 P Linux
5 L Linux
X extended
6 L Linux Swap
X extended
7 L Linux
X extended
8 L Linux swap

* = Primary bootable / P = Primary / L = Logical / E = Extended / (D = Deleted)


Then, the following screen divided things up a little differently:

* HPFS - NTFS [SYSTEM] 62GB (Windows)
P Linux EXT3 Large file Sparse superblock, 28GB (Debian?)
L Linux Swap SWAP2 version 1, 1258MB (Debian?)
L Linux EXT3 Sparse superblock, 8381MB (Mandriva?)
L Linux Swap SWAP2 version 1, 4186MB (Mandriva?)
L Linux EXT3 Sparse superblock, 15GB (Mandriva?)

* = Primary bootable / P = Primary / L = Logical


I then did a search for 'hidden' partitions (I think that's what they called them), and got the following results:

* HPFS - NTFS [SYSTEM] 62GB (Windows)
D Linux EXT3 Large file Sparse superblock, 28GB (Debian?)
D HPFS - NTFS, 29GB (???)
D Linux Swap SWAP2 version 1, 1258MB (Debian?)
L Linux EXT3 Sparse superblock, 8381MB (Mandriva?)
L Linux Swap SWAP2 version 1, 4186MB (Mandriva?)
L Linux EXT3 Sparse superblock, 15GB (Mandriva?)


* = Primary bootable / P = Primary / L = Logical / E = Extended / D = Deleted

Boldface was in bright green, the rest in white. Note the "D" for "Deleted". I don't understand why there are two large Deleted partitions... If we add this all up, it comes to much more than 120Gb.


I'm going to dig deeper into the KNOPPIX-INSERT DVD... I'll give more info if I find anything interesting.

The last post (above) was sent before I got your last three messages. You might wait before replying to them. I'm going to read your messages now...

It's counting you extended partiton (which holds all non-primary partitons) a few different times, which is not a big deal. You dont' need 2 swap partitions, and one of them being 4 gigs is a waste of space. and having seperate /home for each version of linux is a waste too. It's not really a good setup. Let us know what you decide to do.

David

David,

Check your email (the Yahoo! Messenger one).

There's one last screen on the KNOPPIX-INSERT CD partition program:

1 * HPFS - NTFS
2 E extended LBA
5 L Linux
6 L Linux Swap
7 L Linux

So in Windows, do I just go to Administrative Tools -> Disk management ... then choose the partitions and delete them? (The terminology might be different that what I've just written. It's in French here)...

Give me a a little time to read over what you've written.

Thanks man!

No, windows won't even see most of your linux partitions, and if you have some tool in windows installed that does see them, I wouldn't trust them. You can do this in knoppix, but it's easier just using the debian or mandriva installer to do it. I use the kubuntu install(live) disk to do most of this type of stuff. Might be easiest to just use the first installer(mandriva) to get rid off all those extra partitions, (NOT your windows partition) and then build the whole thing right then(get all of your partitions set up now, and just install debian, without needing to do more partitioning.), then install mandriva to it's / partition, with a seperate /home defined then. Hope I'm making sense, I'm doing 6 things at once here. (EDIT...sorry this is confusing, do the complete mandriva install first, setting up all the partitioning now, THEN do the debian install, without needing to do any more partitioning.)

Just a thought here, to make things simpler. During the install process while you are partitioning the hard drive, after you delete all the extra stuff, then delete the extended partition, create the fat(transfer) partition(if you choose to use one) as a primary partition, and make the root partitions of both debian and mandriva, and the /home and /swap within an extended partition that takes up the entire rest of the disk. Memember to put mandriva's boot loader NOT on the MBR, but on mandriva's root partition. (EDIT...also, the reason for this is that for historical reasons the hard drive can only find 4 partitions, they are called primary partitions. Modern computers need more. They get around this by creating extra partitions INSIDE one of the primary 4, it's called an extended partition, or a logical partition.)

It does sound like the way you have your extended partitions set up might be screwed up a bit. Like some space is claimed by more than one partition. They overlap in other words. Anyway, a new setup might be best.

Let me know how that goes.....and what you choose to do.....

Good luck....

David

So, I've now deleted my Linux partitions and am ready to start all over, however, my Mandriva boot loader is still working and I'd like to understand how it works to get Windows to boot normally, as it used to before attempting to add Linux to my computer. Windows is working okay, but Mandriva has been removed. Mandriva has been removed!!

I've used Live Knoppix to do some research and here are my findings:

Grub doesn't seem to be installed, but I do get a few debianlilo entries:

root@Knoppix:/# cd boot
root@Knoppix:/boot# ls
System.map debian.bmp sarge.bmp xen-3.0-i386.gz
System.map-2.6.19 debianlilo.bmp sid.bmp
coffee.bmp memtest86+.bin vmlinuz
config-2.6.19 memtest86.bin vmlinuz-2.6.19

root@Knoppix:/# ls
KNOPPIX bin dev home media opt root tftpboot var
KNOPPIX2 boot etc initrd mnt proc sbin tmp vmlinuz
UNIONFS cdrom floppy lib none ramdisk sys usr
root@Knoppix:/# cd tftpboot
bash: cd: tftpboot: No such file or directory
root@Knoppix:/# cd tmp
root@Knoppix:/tmp# cd ..
root@Knoppix:/# cd tftpboot
bash: cd: tftpboot: No such file or directory
root@Knoppix:/#


I couldn't find any lilo(8), lilo.conf(5) or install-mbr(8) in /etc (see further down)
Also, I couldn't find a file that contained the word "mandriva". I must admit, I'm not all that familiar with searching for file names from the terminal (find file or foldername, but how do you search an entire system?).


root@Knoppix:/UNIONFS/usr/share/doc/lilo# ls
INCOMPAT.gz README.common.problems README.volumeID.gz examples
Manual.txt.gz README.disk changelog.Debian.gz
README.Debian README.pseudo changelog.gz
README.bitmaps.gz README.raid1.gz copyright


root@Knoppix:/usr/share/doc/mbr# ls
AUTHORS README changelog.Debian.gz copyright
NEWS README-1st.Debian changelog.gz
root@Knoppix:/usr/share/doc/mbr#


Among the contents of /usr/share/doc:

dds2tar
debconf
debconf-i18n
debconf-utils
debfoster
debhelper
debian-archive-keyring
debian-keyring
debiandoc-sgml
debianutils
debootstrap
deborphan
debsums
defoma
defrag




Here are the contents of the lilo.conf file in /etc (or is this the actual Knoppix /etc/lilo.conf file?):

# /etc/lilo.conf - See: `lilo(8)' and `lilo.conf(5)',
# --------------- `install-mbr(8)', `/usr/share/doc/lilo/',
# and `/usr/share/doc/mbr/'.

# Remove this line when you are done configuring. -KK
"! Please edit /etc/lilo.conf before running lilo!"

# +---------------------------------------------------------------+
# | !! Reminder !! |
# | |
# | Don't forget to run `lilo' after you make changes to this |
# | conffile, `/boot/bootmess.txt', or install a new kernel. The |
# | computer will most likely fail to boot if a kernel-image |
# | post-install script or you don't remember to run `lilo'. |
# | |
# +---------------------------------------------------------------+

# Support LBA for large hard disks.
#
lba32

# Specifies the boot device. This is where Lilo installs its boot
# block. It can be either a partition, or the raw device, in which
# case it installs in the MBR, and will overwrite the current MBR.
#
boot=/dev/hda

# Specifies the device that should be mounted as root. (`/')
#

# Enable map compaction:
# Tries to merge read requests for adjacent sectors into a single
# read request. This drastically reduces load time and keeps the
# map smaller. Using `compact' is especially recommended when
# booting from a floppy disk. It is disabled here by default
# because it doesn't always work.
#
# compact

# Installs the specified file as the new boot sector
#
install=/boot/boot-menu.b
backup=/dev/null

# Specifies the location of the map file
#
map=/boot/map

# You can set a password here, and uncomment the `restricted' lines
# in the image definitions below to make it so that a password must
# be typed to boot anything but a default configuration. If a
# command line is given, other than one specified by an `append'
# statement in `lilo.conf', the password will be required, but a
# standard default boot will not require one.
#
# This will, for instance, prevent anyone with access to the
# console from booting with something like `Linux init=/bin/sh',
# and thus becoming `root' without proper authorization.
#
# Note that if you really need this type of security, you will
# likely also want to use `install-mbr' to reconfigure the MBR
# program, as well as set up your BIOS to disallow booting from
# removable disk or CD-ROM, then put a password on getting into the
# BIOS configuration as well. Please RTFM `install-mbr(8)'.
#
# password=tatercounter2000

# Specifies the number of deciseconds (0.1 seconds) LILO should
# wait before booting the first image.
#
# delay=20
timeout=100

# You can put a customized boot message up if you like. If you use
# `prompt', and this computer may need to reboot unattended, you
# must specify a `timeout', or it will sit there forever waiting
# for a keypress. `single-key' goes with the `alias' lines in the
# `image' configurations below. eg: You can press `1' to boot
# `Linux', `2' to boot `LinuxOLD', if you uncomment the `alias'.

prompt

# message=/boot/bootmess.txt
# prompt
# single-key
# delay=100
# timeout=100

# Specifies the VGA text mode at boot time. (normal, extended, ask, <mode>)
#
# vga=ask
# vga=9
#
vga=791

# Kernel command line options that apply to all installed images go
# here. See: The `boot-prompt-HOWO' and `kernel-parameters.txt' in
# the Linux kernel `Documentation' directory.
#
# append=""

# Boot up Linux by default.
#
default=Knoppix

image=/vmlinuz
append="lang=de apm=power-off quiet BOOT_IMAGE=knoppix"
root=/dev/hda5
label=Knoppix
read-write
# restricted
# alias=1

#image=/vmlinuz.old
# label=Linux-OLD
# read-only
# optional
# restricted
# alias=2

# If you have another OS on this machine to boot, you can uncomment the
# following lines, changing the device name on the `other' line to
# where your other OS' partition is.
#
# other=/dev/hda4
# label=HURD
# restricted
# alias=3


Any ideas on how I might go about getting my WindowsXP OS booting normally without a boot loader, as it did before I started fiddling with Linux installations?