GRUB error: No such partition Fedora 16
 

I tried to boot into Fedora 16 this morning and I got this error:

GRUB error: No such partition

I think I MAY have deleted a partition using fdisk to test hard drives yesterday. I could really use help on how to restore files, fix the feodra installation, any recovery tips, but I cannot format the hard drive before getting certain files off of the hard drive. I am typing this from a fedora 16 Live CD.

I run a computer store off this computer and need the help ASAP.

Hi,

Okay, let's see now. What can you mount? If anything, is it your data? If so, copy that to a safe place (a USB stick, an external hard drive, an FTP server internally, dunnow) and re-install.
That is ONE option, the other one is to re-instate the lost partition with Fdisk, as long as no formatting happened, I think you're fine. Just make sure all the setting are the same as before.

Of course: I'd welcome any second opinion before jumping to it, if I were you...

And...good luck

I'll be watchin' this threat from up close!

Thor

PS - there is a trick to keep me from messing up my harddrive: I play some music on the "main" system while I tinker on the other one...

Preferably I would like to recreate the lost partition but I have no idea of how to do that.

I can mount the hard drive but no files are popping up in the home directory, it's just blank. And it's not just showing a "160GB Hard drive" as it should, it's two "_Fedora-16-x86_6" one that I can mount and one that I cannot mount, and "16mb filesystem" which after I try to mount dissapears, and a "8.2 KB Filesystem" that I can mount and it has a file named "OSMIN" inside of it.

If you could, walk me through the process of creating the needed partition.

And thanks a lot for the quick response!

Oooopps!
May I tell you that it is not good to accidentally delete partitions? - Ok, you already know that...
(Sorry, just had to.. :p )
Now to the actual problem:
fdisk is a very good tool, one thing that is extremely good with fdisk is that it doesn't do anything more than you tell it to.
This means that if you delete a partition fdisk only writes the change in the partition table - no
data on disk is touched!
So if you know how the disk was partitioned before your accidental delete, simply run fdisk again and recreate the original partitions. I have tried this several times, always worked like a charm every time.
BUT!
To be on the safe side first take a copy of the disk, then you can fiddle around with the copy not risking to destroy anything on physical disk.
There are several ways to copy a disk, I prefer "dd_rescue".
Boot from a live-CD, install dd_rescue (the package might be called "ddrescue") and run it:
# dd_rescue if=/dev/sda of=/someplace/mydiskimage.iso

Sure, but, please take pingu's advice at heart: take (if possible) a backup...okay, here goes:

open a console
enter fdisk -l to list what's on the box, typically, you'd see something like this

This one's on one of my boxes. See the /dev/sda1? Well, sda is the name of the whole disk, this one is chopped up in four pieces, you'll have one missing.

Okay, now issue this : fdisk /dev/sda - no number, just the name
Once in fdisk, let's see what there is to see, hit "p" and enter. See? That's what fdisk sees
Okay, well, I assume that the lost partition was a primary one, so here goes,
hit "n" - new partition
hit "p" - primary
enter a number (1-4)
then, fdisk should suggest the right start and stop block. Just check with what you noted after fdisk -l

Good luck

Thor

I used fdisk to view all of the partitions and I have ZERO partitions! I can't believe that I deleted ALL of the partitions! This sounds like a disaster...

I tried to make a .ISO of the hard drive using just dd and here's what happened:

# dd if=/dev/sda of=/home/liveuser/Documents

and then my computer crashed.

well, you've just tried to copy the whole hard disc, including unused space, deleted files, everything, on to something that is very much smaller. Don't know how big a live disc's ~/Documents is, or where it lives (RAM? swap?) but it obviously can't be big.
I'd suggest rebooting, then post the output of
(little L, not one).

Here is the output of fdisk -l

"[root@localhost liveuser]# fdisk -l

WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sda'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.


Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312581808 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

Disk /dev/mapper/live-rw: 4294 MB, 4294967296 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 522 cylinders, total 8388608 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/mapper/live-rw doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/mapper/live-osimg-min: 4294 MB, 4294967296 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 522 cylinders, total 8388608 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/mapper/live-osimg-min doesn't contain a valid partition table
[root@localhost liveuser]# "

maybe, just maybe??? This or that?

As far as titanic-size disaters go, you've got one right there :(

Now what are you doing???
If you used fdisk before on that disk, then how can it suddenly have a GPT partition table?
How many disks do you have in this computer, are you sure you're messing with the right one?

Go back to the beginning.
Tell us what you know about the state of your disk before this started.
Exactly how many partitions did you have, primary / logical?
What did you do when you accidentally deleted a partition?
Did you use some other partitioning tool afterwards?

Please, let this take a little time and most important: don't do anything before you are sure it is the right thing to do! No trying out "just-in-case, maybe it works..."

Tell us,step by step, exactly what you had and what you did. Command by command, and pray be precise as to details!

First thing to do, make a copy:
Get a usb hard drive same size or bigger than the faulty one.
Then boot from live-cd, mount the usb drive, install ddrescue and copy the entire disk to an image on the usb-drive.
It will take time - don't know how big the drive is but we're definitely talking several hours with modern disk sizes.
If you don't take a copy to work with, then every tried-but-failed-fix will render your disk even more ruined...

I really haven't altered the drive at all. I have tried to view my files on the drive, but I haven't tried to alter it in any way shape or form since it has been messing up. I'm going to make a copy of the drive following pingu's advice and then I will try Thor 2.0's advice and do the ubuntu Rescue me method. I will keep you all updated.

Once again, thank you all for helping me through this disaster.

But you must have done something?
In your first post you said "I think I MAY have deleted a partition using fdisk" - so you did do something!
Anyway, you're doing the right thing now according to your latest post.
Just one thing: Thor_2.0:s disk layout contains only primary partitions. If you have logical volumes (and thus an extended partition) the numbering could be different. Logical volumes are always numbered from 5 and up and always in sequel whereas primary partitions don't have to be in sequel, so you could have like "sda1, sda3, sda5, sda6".

And a final tip on how to handle the copy:
1) To be able to try several things, take a copy of the copy - then if a fix doesn't work take a new copy of the copy etc.
This takes more time of course, but you only have to copy from real drive once which is very good!
2) You can mount the copy with
#mount -o loop /my-copy-of-disk.iso /mnt/mountpoint
3) If I remember correctly you should be able to use fdisk on the image itself. (Like #fdisk /my-copy-of-disk.iso )

Hey, no sweat, this is what this site is for...but, you've got us glued to the screen :D , for sure! Take pingu's wise words as advice: proceed with caution.

Lookin' at ya!

Thor

"I think I MAY have deleted a partition using fdisk" was referring to what caused the problem, but after I messed the partitions up I haven't altered it. Sorry about the misleading information.

I ran testdisk on my rescue remix cd and this is the output that I got:

TestDisk 6.11, Data Recovery Utility, April 2009
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org>
http://www.cgsecurity.org

Disk /dev/sda - 160 GB / 149 GiB - CHS 19458 255 63
Partition Start End Size in sectors
D Linux 0 64 63 63 253 1024000
D Linux 0 65 2 63 253 1024000
D Linux LVM 63 253 63 19457 53 311552000
D Linux Swap 64 31 32 317 11 4063216
D Linux 317 12 16 12926 142 202571776
D Linux 6599 190 56 19209 65 202571776
D Linux 6605 26 14 19214 156 202571776
D Linux 6605 253 49 19215 128 202571776
D Linux 6613 34 14 19222 164 202571776
D Linux 6615 76 54 19224 206 202571776
D Linux 12926 142 17 19453 163 104857600 [_Fedora-16-x86_6]










Structure: Ok. Use Up/Down Arrow keys to select partition.
Use Left/Right Arrow keys to select partition characteristics:
*=Primary bootable P=Primary L=Logical E=Extended D=Deleted
Keys A: add partition, L: load backup, T: change type, P: List files,
Enter: to continue
EXT4 Large file Sparse Superblock, 53 GB / 50 GiB

What do I do from here?

@Clarence-Adams

I've just noticed Distribution: Ubuntu/Fedora
Is the Ubuntu on the same machine? Can you boot into it? That would save a bit of time.

No, this is only a full Fedora 16 Hard drive.

After messing the partitions up - but I'm asking you to write down the exact steps that led to the unfortunate deletion, as well as the partition layout before this accident!
It is extremely important to know this!

Also, now to your latest post:
"D Linux LVM" - are you using LVM?
This is also VERY important to know!

PLEASE try to sit back, think about situation before trouble started.
Then write down everything you can remember, every command every step you took.
Without full knowledge we can all just guess, we have to have knowledge to be able to truly assist you.

One thing is partition table: traditional "DOS" can be handled by fdisk & grub (all versions)
GPT partition table can not be handled by fdisk, and only by Grub2.
LVM is a a bit similar to raid0, can be used with both DOS and GPT, but if LVM was used we have to know. It is more tricky to recover and more important it can't be done with "normal" disk tools.

To be honest I have no idea what LVM is. I can tell you all the steps that led to the incident though.

I was testing IDE 2.5 hard drives on my main machine using a USB adapter and before I issued the smartctl -t short command I used fdisk to delete all of the partitions first. I was not used to testing hard drives on my main system, I usually used a separate bench machine to test hard drives and muscle memory tells me to "fdisk /dev/sda" but on my main system the IDE 2.5 hard drive is /dev/sdc and MY hard drive is /dev/sda. I think my muscle memory typed fdisk /dev/sda instead of fdisk /dev/sdc and I removed all of MY partitions instead of the laptops partitions. It gave me a strange error saying that the new partition table will be used the next time I booted the machine rebooted. So I turned off my machine right before I left the shop and when I booted it up this morning I think it used the "new" partition table I created/destroyed.

I'm not familiar with testdisk.
I think there may be a bit of premature panicking going on here.
Going back to your first post:
If you can mount these things, they should show up in /etc/mtab
I suspect that you're looking in the wrong place for them.
I'd suggest that you mount them, then run
With a bit of luck amongst the guff you should have something like:
Then run Again with luck, you may see all the top level directories, /bin /boot and so forth. Then
ls -al /mnt/home/<username> should let you see the contents of your home directory.

Well, if that's what happened you can forget my laast post.

That message says it all: you deleted partitions that were mounted by your system.
What did you do after deleting the partitions?
Did you choose to create a new partition table - in fdisk or any other program?
Do you remember how the disk was partitioned from the beginning?
One thing you could try - on a copy, then! - is to simply create a new primary partition containing all disk.
If you did add a GPT partition table you could try - again, on a copy - to run fdisk on that disk-image and add a new DOS table.
I'm guessing here, never ever used GPT don't know anything about it.

Anybody out there who knows how Fedora partitions a disk by default?
The disk is 160GB and according to OP "full Fedora 16 Hard drive".

And here is a very wild guess:
Maybe that partition layout reported by testdisk actually is a "normal" DOS label.
But I do find it a bit hard to understand, because if so then there are a whole bunch of partitions that really shouldn't be there.
It also means that LVM definitely was used, meaning you have to recreate partitions and then try to mount something like /dev/md0 /dev/md1 etc instead of /dev/sda1 etc (sorry don't remember, it's been a year since I used LVM).

You could try using testdisk again, notice the tips on the bottom of screen:
"Keys A: add partition, L: load backup, T: change type, P: List files"
So, "D" means a deleted partition. Try hitting "A" and add partition back.

D Linux 0 64 63 63 253 1024000
D Linux 0 65 2 63 253 1024000
D Linux LVM 63 253 63 19457 53 311552000
D Linux Swap 64 31 32 317 11 4063216
D Linux 317 12 16 12926 142 202571776
D Linux 6599 190 56 19209 65 202571776
D Linux 6605 26 14 19214 156 202571776
D Linux 6605 253 49 19215 128 202571776
D Linux 6613 34 14 19222 164 202571776
D Linux 6615 76 54 19224 206 202571776
D Linux 12926 142 17 19453 163 104857600 [_Fedora-16-x86_6]

I'm cloning the hard drive right now using dd. I installed ddrescue and tried to use it but it kept giving me errors so I just used dd. I'll update you all when the cloning is done and I'll try to implement some of these solutions on the cloned hard drives and see where that takes me.

I cannot thank you all enough, I'll update you all as soon as I can, once again, THANK YOU.

Edit: By the way, I did use the default Fedora 16 partition when I installed.

In addition to what's been written if the disk has an EFI GPT then simply select it after you selected the disk, see http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Menu_Analyse . Here's a run-through of partition recovery with pictures: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step and note from the previous link that if you select a partition and change the type from "D" to "L" or "P" testdisk will indicate if it checks out OK (partition overlap, gaps, etc) or not. As for selecting the right partitions I'd first target the ones named "LVM", "Swap" and "_Fedora-16-x86_6" and see if that gets the OK from testdisk. Any other partition you just select and press "p" to see if it contains any files. Finally note partition information is located right after the MBR in the Partition Table so even if you got it wrong an wrote the PT this still doesn't change partition boundaries or file system data. Just try again, you've got a backup.

I've successfully cloned the hard drive and now I'm messing around with testdisk to try and get my partitions back. Hopefully all goes well. I did a [quick search] and tried to write those partitions to the disk but I only ended up with:

GRUB error: Unkown filesystem

So now I'm in the process of doing a [deeper search] to find more appropriate partitions (The ones I found in the first place)

* Note you should run testdisk with the "/debug /log" switches so you'll have a log you could paste, attach or pastebin.

I gave up and considered it a loss (and a lesson). I re-installed Fedora, luckily all my important business information was backed up onto my flash drive. Now that I re-installed I can see the partition layout. The fdisk -p output is this:


WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sda'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.


Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312581808 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 312581807 156290903+ ee GPT

I re-installed Fedora onto a laptop, but the hard drive is the same size and I used the same default partitioning layout. What is the GUID Partition table?