cannot open /proc/partitions
 

Hello,

Yesterday when i opened my home PC, i witnesed that there were no icon on my desktop. This pc is having two OS; 1.RHEL 4 2.Windows XP SP-2. I just ignored that may be something happened and i started to work on it in XP. After working few minutes, i got a blue screen error which generally comes when there is something serious problem in the machine. I simply switched off by PC and then it started to saying loading grub message.

I inserted RHEL 4's 1st CD and then linux rescue...
then chroot /mnt/sysimage
here i suppose that i have to install grub so i gave;
grub-install /dev/hda
it returned me error that no device name something like that (exactly not remembering)
then i gave;
fdisk -l
it returned me
cannot open /proc/partitions

Please guide me how to resolve this issue. I am very new to linux.

Thanks and Regards
Girish Sharma

first of all you never got a blue screen in linux ok. so I can not help you with windows.

??? did you even read the OP's whole post??
the OP is dual boot XP/RHEL
the BSOD was in windows and was just the first symptom of a bigger problem

@ the OP
when booted from the rescue mode do fdisk -l
also try 'dmesg' and see if there are any errors

Thanks Friza for your reply and interest in my problem.
Just now i checked with following that there is no ext3 partition on the machine as i checked from fdisk -l before chroot /mnt/sysimage. I got following list of partitions:
/dev/hda1 * W95 FAT32 c:
/dev/hda2 * W95 Extd'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 * W95 FAT32 d:
/dev/hda6 * W95 FAT32 e:
/dev/hda7 * W95 FAT32 f:
/dev/hda8 * W95 FAT32 g:
/dev/hda9 * W95 FAT32 h:
/dev/hda10 * W95 Linux
/dev/hda11 * W95 Linux
/dev/hda12 * W95 Linux Swap

sh-3.00# dmesg
...
...
...
VFS: Can'nt find ext3 filesystem on the dev hda8.

Now please tell me:
1.How to create ext3 partition in my case?
2.Where should i create this partition?

Because i checked that there is something great mis-happening with machine. Earlier there was no drive for F:(2 GB) and G:(17.26 GB) blank parititions.

Thanks & Regards
Girish Sharma

if this was me ...
i would first get ride of the fat partitions and use ntfs ( 1 ntfs partition) ntfs-3g can R/W to win just fine from red hat

also why "Windows XP SP-2" are you not running service pack 3 . there were a mess of security fixes in there .

I don't see anything in OP replies related to problematic FAT partitions that would warrant such advice? I doubt that would fix any of his problems...

Thanks Moderator Sir. I am still trying to start my home PC, even though i searched a lot; but no luck. Since i am having narrow knowledge in Linux, so i do'nt know how to create ext3 parition or convert any FAT32 partition for installing grub. I suppose there was any virus attack or something else happened; by which i am not seeing any ext3 paritition and got 2 empty additional parititions i.e. 2 and 17GBs.

Please help and guide me.
Kind Regards
Girish Sharma

hmm
come ti think of it...
/proc/partitions is a file
it should look something like this
it should be automatically generated
/proc is a virtual filesystem that keeps track of hardware and running process info in the form of either text or binary files.
if you issue the 'mount' command you usually see a line like

so if /proc/partitions is wrong there must be trouble with the procfs or /proc directory.. unfortunatly i don't know how to fix that or even if that's your problem.. but it's a start

Thanks frieza for reply and keeping countine interest in my problem.
What i am asking that is it necessary to have ext3 type parittion on the machine to install grub? If it is mandatory; then next question is how to format / convert any FAT32 paritition into ext3; so that i can install grub and then restart my pc.

Kind Regards
Girish Sharma

You can't simply convert a fat32 partition into ext3. Either hda10 or hda11 are probably already ext3.

The boot strap loader is written to the MBR in the first 240 bytes of the disk. This will load the next stage of the grub loader which is probably located in /boot/grub/ on one of your linux partitions.

Before chroot'ing, look at what is in /mnt/sysimage. Make sure that this is your root partition. Check if the /boot directory contains the kernel and root directory. If not, you may need to mount the boot partition under /mnt/sysimage/boot.

After chrooting, I will run "bash -l" to run root's .profile & .bashrc scripts. This will set up the paths.

Then try mounting /proc.

I think that fedora has a command to repopulate the devices in your new /dev directory but I don't remember what it is. You could copy the files from /dev/* to /mnt/sysimage/dev/ before chrooting.

I don't have RHEL so I don't know if you are using LVM. Perhaps the rescue disk created the Logical volume for you and mounted it under /mnt/sysimage/.