Fedora 2 - (KDE 3.2.2-4 Red Hat) Lost Partition?
 

Originally, I had College Linux on one 6gb hd and windows xp on another 40gb drive. I downloaded Fedora because I wanted to try something else out. Red Hat is one of the most popular releases so I thought I would see what they had up their sleeves.

After Installing Linux I thought everything was running smooth. Until a few days later I tried to start Windows. Once selected, It freezes up like it thought it was running windows 95 or something (humor- not serious). Anyway, I restart into linux and try to access the drive but it just doesn't see it. College Linux was able to read the drive. Is that something specific to that release or is something screwed up? In the KDE Help center, the following is displayed under Partition Information:

Partition Information

This page displays information about partitions on your hard drives.

Note

The exact information displayed is system-dependent. On some systems, partition information cannot be displayed yet.

On Linux, this information is read from /proc/partitions, which is only available if the /proc pseudo-filesystem is compiled into the (2.1.x or later) kernal.

The First two columns are the major and minor numbers respectively. The third column is the number of blocks (usually 1 block = 1024 bytes). The fourth column is a label for the device.

The user cannot modify any settings on this page.

[end]

No information is displayed.

Konqueror is showing

Hard Disc [/]
Hard Disc (hdb1) [/]
Hard Disc [var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs]

Im looking for hda1 and hda2 by the way...

Thanks for the help

It looks like your /proc/ filesystem isn't mounted, which is very odd.

Try running "mount /proc/" or, failing that, "mount /proc/ -t procfs" (you will need to be root to do this), and look at the KDE Help Center again.

Running the "mount" command in a terminal should show you which filesystems are mounted, and which devices (if any) they reside on.

Another place to look is the /etc/fstab file; this lists all the filesystems that your computer will try to mount when it starts up. Run "dmesg | less" (that's a pipe, shift+backslash on most keyboards) in a terminal to see any error messages.

If the hda devices still won't mount, try running "less -f /dev/hda" in a terminal (as root). You should see a screenful of either ^@ or just gibberish. If you get a message like "No such device or address" then there's a problem accessing your hard disk. Check the ATA cable and power connector are both in the right way around, that it's set to be a master (not slave) drive and it's plugged into the same ATA cable as hdb. If it's set to "cable select", then make sure the cable is a cable select type (they have some of the wires twisted over I think).

Also, check your BIOS; if it's selected to boot into the slave hard disk, Windows doesn't stand much chance of booting up.

Hope that helps,

— Robert J Lee.

[root@localhost root]# mount /proc/
mount: proc already mounted

[root@localhost root]# mount /proc/ -t procfs
Usage: mount -V : print version
mount -h : print this help
mount : list mounted filesystems
mount -l : idem, including volume labels
So far the informational part. Next the mounting.
The command is `mount [-t fstype] something somewhere'.
Details found in /etc/fstab may be omitted.
mount -a [-t|-O] ... : mount all stuff from /etc/fstab
mount device : mount device at the known place
mount directory : mount known device here
mount -t type dev dir : ordinary mount command
Note that one does not really mount a device, one mounts
a filesystem (of the given type) found on the device.
One can also mount an already visible directory tree elsewhere:
mount --bind olddir newdir
or move a subtree:
mount --move olddir newdir
A device can be given by name, say /dev/hda1 or /dev/cdrom,
or by label, using -L label or by uuid, using -U uuid .
Other options: [-nfFrsvw] [-o options] [-p passwdfd].
For many more details, say man 8 mount .

[root@localhost root]# mount
/dev/hdb1 on / type ext3 (rw)
none on /proc type proc (rw)
none on /sys type sysfs (rw)
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
usbdevfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbdevfs (rw)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
sunrpc on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)

when typing "less -f /dev/hda" I get the screen full of @'s and gibberish

When attempting to go to XP I get the following message:

Booting Windows XP

rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

[end]

That is when it stalls.

Your help is appreciated.

This tells us that your hard-disk is working and the proc filesystem is mounted.
It looks like the problem lies with the Windows chain-loader, or with Windows itself. If you can boot from a Windows bootable floppy, you can run the command:
This will reinstall the Windows bootloader onto C:. You can then boot the Linux system from a rescue disk, and reinstall the Linux boot loader to get Linux back; hopefully that will fix the problem.

after:
sys c:
[end]

I get:
The command is not recognized Type HELP for a list of supported commands.
[end]

I think it was saying some derogatory comments as well, but I can't be positive on that one.

your help is greatly appreciated.

…It's been a while since I've used Windows properly, and this is strictly a Windows (well, DOS) question.

But I think you're missing the sys.com (or sys.exe or whatever it is) executable from your Windows setup. Possibly it's been replaced with something else; you'd be better off asking in a Windows forum how you reinstall just your bootloader. Mention “sys c:” too so that more people know what you're talking about.

— Robert J. Lee

We're having the exact same problem as you can see on my very recent thread...

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=212763