Thanks masand, jomen, marghorp,
I could get it back!! Just a few commands and I'm back again to exactly the same system..
Thanks a lot....

...good!

Could you please tell us, what you actually did to get back to the state where you can (again) boot both of your systems now.
This could help others who have the same or a similar problem - booting issues are asked over and over again here.

!!!make a rescue disk/floppy now !
With it, it is even faster to fix things than the way you did it and YOU will KNOW now - should this ever happen again...

I booted from the fedora core disk 1...
the fedora screen came....
F5 pressed

#linux rescue

#chroot /mnt/sysimage

#/sbin/grub-install /dev/hda

then CTRL+ALT+DEL
taken out the CD

it's done!! GRUB appears in front of me, and i'm rejoiced....

i was just confused abt hda coz i though it cud harm windows... so i gave hda8 which was the linux boot partition. it did not work. so i tried hda...

now how to create bootdisk?
i tried with mkbootdisk command. but it says not enough space. i formated it and saw that it is free.. stil the error. however the files r copied. when i tried to boot from that it's not working..

does it require to have boot floppy? it won't work with CD?

Thanks to all!!

hi bioinfo
definately i will work with the CD, always,
for the floppy u never know when it might work or not

regards
gaurav

I don't know how mkbootdisk is to be used - maybe the manual will help?
I have done it with "mkrescue" - if you have that - or want to install it: look here:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...postid=1098183

- it is a rather long thread but there I described how to use it to make a rescue-CD as well as a rescue-floppy
There are other ways: look for guides or HOWTOs here:
http://www.tuxfinder.com/

you will find almost anything there...

since i don't find any advantage of boot floppy disk over the bootcd, i stll plan to rely on bootcd. whatever it may be the purpose will be solved without much effort. isn't it?
and how many floppys r required? 3-4?? isn't that irritating?

adding to that
floppies are ther most unreliable thing on earth

if u rely on them they will surely fail

1st cd of linux of any distro works(i hope i have tsted this for redhat,mandrake,peanut,fbsd,xandros)
regards

It will not work for LFS - because it has no CDs to install it from - and it might not work for a distribution eighter - when you used it for a while and gradually upgraded it rather than getting a whole new set of CDs to reinstall it from - the then "old" first CD might not work as expected then...I've seen this with Debian.

I was trying to say: you don't really need a boot-disk (or -floppy ...) because you now know, how to fix anything by using the first disk of your install-CDs.

A boot disk will be to use like that: you put it in the drive and just boot it up - you will NOT see any difference compared to the normal booting procedure - it will just work without any interference needed on your part - so you could just as well forget what you have learned here - which might be the case some time from now...

If you can boot from CD it is o.k. to use that method.
If you have a floppy drive - it is good to have a boot floppy too.

I'm not arguing with masand about how reliable floppies are - I've had failures myself... but to completely discard them just because they MIGHT fail on you just the moment you need them is not a good reason to not create boot floppies. If you make one - and test it if it works - it will most probably also work when you need to use it - provided that you do not get it dirty or store it on top of your monitor - where it (...just could...) get erased because of stong magnetic fields...

If you create a CD or a floppy - you need only one of each kind...and the effort and time to make any of them are the same - it's just a slightly modified command - and you get eighter one...
(CDs have lots of space on them - to use it just as a rescue-disk wastes almost all of their capacity - all that is needed for a boot-disk is the kernel and a boot-loader, that is why it will normally fit on one floppy)

Floppies may well be the most unreliable things on earth - but they did their duty for many years...there is a point in having a boot floppy still - I always have one ready - and it never failed me (I might have been lucky - but I have another one just in case...)

hi

i am too not arguing whether floppies should be used or not what i just wanted to say that when CD's are the half the price of floppies (here in india) it is always better for us to keep any data in the security of CD

i myself have used floppies earlier when we did not have he CDs or the cd-writer so common,but the technology is moving very fast
who knows next we will be talking about using DVD's instead of Floppies.

yes,u r right jomen LFS requires floppies, i haven't used debian

by the way jomen,what is cheaper at ur side,floppies or the CD's


regards
gaurav

...I have'nt looked at that from this side - the price...
You are probably right masand!

It has been a while that I have bought floppies - at least 4 years.
I just still have them - so I use them for some things.

It is indeed very likely that CDs are a lot cheaper - I just dont know how much floppies cost now...
A pack of 25 CD-Rs (the cheapest) here is about Euro 5,00 - that might be US$ 6,00 or so.

From that point of view - and with the potential unreliability of floppies in mind - I would also not use floppies any more, if I had to by them.
To boot from CD is a lot faster than from floppy, too.

hi jomen
what areu talking about
is it $6 or $600

the cheapest CD we have here is of 7 Rs ($1~50Rs)

and floppies cost around 15 RS

and i also require some help from you regardsing LFS
i got that packages and i started to look into the manual provided,but can u tell me procedure which will work
also we should shift this thread to another thread, i think so

regards

gaurav

hi masand:

...it was the first one: $6 (maybe up to $10) for 25 CD-Rs

If you got issues regarding LFS it would be best to start a thread in the LFS-forum here - and if I can help I'll be glad to do so.
But: you got the packages and you got the book - If you do it like they suggest there, it WILL work!

Take care!

Thanks to jomen for asking that bioinfo state what he did to fix the prob.

Thanks bioinfo for posting it.
Worked great in correcting my Win98 overwrite of the MBR and not being able to get GRUB to come up and allow me into FC2.

Thanks again.

Hey,

When you all restored GRUB by doing grub-install /dev/hda, does GRUB overwrite the existing /boot/grub/menu.lst ("grub.conf") ?

no

Grub-install only installs the existing grub.conf (not actually) to the harddisks MBR.

To change and update grub.conf and other grub files, you must enter the grub command line and change them from there with the command setup.