Hard disk now displaying "not a valid block device" when booting in rescue mode

alphasure · 06-03-2003, 06:08 AM

I had a working dual boot Windows/SUSE 8.2 system on /dev/sda3 (SCSI).
I went and put a drive on the IDE when in windows and used Fdisk (dos version)to format it. When I rebooted, I have damaged Lilo as it will not reboot in either windows or Linux.
Used the Suse disk1 to go into rescue mode and can log in as root to another kernel. When I create a mount point and try to mount sda3, it says not a valid block device.

Key objective is to save some files from the linux side.
Anyone any ideas, as pretty much a newbie?

alphasure · 06-03-2003, 06:13 AM

As far as I can tell, the linux and windows partitions are intact, when viewed with partition magic

mad_ady · 06-03-2003, 08:13 AM

Maybe the boot disk you used doesn't support scsi drives, and thus /dev/sda3 would be unavailable...

AnthonyM · 06-03-2003, 08:48 AM

RedHat 7.2 had this as a bug (feature?).
Try typing depmod -ae.

alphasure · 06-05-2003, 07:49 AM

Thanks for your help guys. Anthony, Tried the depmod -ae, but depmod was a command that was unknown, so it looks like mad_ady has it right that the rescue disk is unable to support the scsi drives. I hadn't thought about that, and would explain the issue.
I'll cut the losses and reinstall, thanks for trying.