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Old 07-10-2006, 10:54 PM   #1
greenberet
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Comp Not Booting.quick Help Required.


WELL YOU SEE. what happened was.

i had a primary windows partition (c fst32
a logical partition (d fat32
a ext3 partition for fc5
a swap partition
a ext2 partition for /boot
and a reiserfs partition for Suse 9.1 personal.

I decided that i no longer need fc5, so i deleted the partition using qtparted. Now it seems that the whole partition table has got upset and when i boot, grub waits for me to enterthe commands.

I have tried the basic commands to boot windows i.e.

rootnoverify(hd0,0)
chainloader +1
boot

This just hangs up the comp.

This is the basic layout of my drive hda1 according to puppy-linux whose live-cd i am using currently till i get help.

tmpfs 662376 66420 595956 10% /
/dev/hda1 19421072 14463648 4957424 74% /mnt/home
/dev/loop1 253871 2987 237777 1% /root
/dev/loop0 54208 54208 0 100% /.usr_cram
none 308079 57195 237777 19% /usr
/dev/hda5 11922384 9900528 2021856 83% /mnt/hda5
/dev/hda7 2353396 1956844 396552 83% /mnt/hda7
/dev/hda8 248895 12123 223922 5% /mnt/hda8

i suppose the tmpfs is something which puppy created temporarily.

hda5 is my d: ie fat32
hda1 is my c: also fat32
hda7 is my suse partition.
hda8 is my boot partition where my suse kernel and ramdisk
are kept in /suse/vm* and /suse/init*

i dont know where my swap space went, it is not showing in the table.

Anyway, this is what i tried

root(hd0,7)
kernel /suse/vm*
initrd /suse/init*

and then it starts all that booting and then it says

Kernel panic. Could not enter an init mode. try passing init= to the kernel.

so i end up not being able to boot anything.

Then i had an idea. I thought i will boot the winxp cd and run fixmbr from the recovery console. But the cd boots and says

'setup is inspecting your hardware configuration' and then the pc goes blackout forever.

i changed the hard-disk and the cd boots fine, so there is something wrong with this hard -disk i suppose, with the partition table.

Please tell me first how do i restore windows so that i can correct everything from partition magic.

Please help. If i should write a new mbr please upload the mbr image and give me instructions.
 
Old 07-11-2006, 02:00 AM   #2
JZL240I-U
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I have no Win* but I seem to remember, that the command "fixmbr" changed to "fixboot". You might want to try that (and / or google for both commands)...
 
Old 07-11-2006, 02:48 AM   #3
greenberet
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well, i solved that problem. My hard disk geometry was not correct. I made a new exactly same partition table and used

fdisk /mbr

and now my windows is restored.

Now my suse 9.1 is in one of the partitions. and its kernel and initrd are in another partition and now i would like to boot suse without putting grub. Can you please tell me how this is to be done??

Thanks for replying
 
Old 07-11-2006, 03:05 AM   #4
infestator
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your grab.conf file should contain this entry to boot linux:
Code:
title=linux
  kernel hd(0,7)/<kernel-name> root=/dev/hda7
  [initrd <initrd-name>]
be careful /dev/hda7 in grub interpretation means hd(0,6), and /dev/hda6 if hd(0,5)

for windows:
you should try to use option 'makeactive' in your windows section:
Code:
title windows
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader  +1
if nothing helps then you can try to use 'fixboot' and 'fixmbr' commands (try theme before restoring suse, because 'fixmbr' will replace mbr and grub won't load).

Last edited by infestator; 07-11-2006 at 03:07 AM.
 
Old 07-11-2006, 03:17 AM   #5
greenberet
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as i told you i fixed the mbr and removed grub. Now i want to boot suse from floppy. How do i do that.
 
Old 07-11-2006, 03:29 AM   #6
JZL240I-U
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What Win* do you use? In the more modern versions you could also add an entry to your boot.ini and boot from hard-disk...
 
Old 07-12-2006, 02:20 AM   #7
greenberet
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er i have installed grub in the floppy.

i have hd0,0 - windows
hd0,1 2nd fat32 partition
hd0,5 swap
hd0,6 reiserfs suse
hd0,7 boot partition containing kernel images of suse in /suse/vmlinuz and initrd

so in grub i write
root (hd0,7)
kernel /suse/vmlinuz ro root=/dev/hda7
initrd /suse/initrd
boot

and it says kernel panic and all that
 
Old 07-12-2006, 02:33 AM   #8
JZL240I-U
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Quote:
Originally Posted by greenberet
er i have installed grub in the floppy.
Okay. It'd still be easier to help if you answered questions (for boot.ini use)...

Quote:
Originally Posted by greenberet
i have hd0,0 - windows
hd0,1 2nd fat32 partition
hd0,5 swap
hd0,6 reiserfs suse
hd0,7 boot partition containing kernel images of suse in /suse/vmlinuz and initrd
Oh, oh. So maybe root is hd0,6 reiserfs suse, while boot is hd0,7 boot partition.

So in grub you should perhaps write
root (hd0,6)
kernel /suse/vmlinuz ro root=/dev/hda7
initrd /suse/initrd
boot

and maybe it no more says kernel panic and all that .
 
Old 07-12-2006, 02:37 AM   #9
praveen_2003
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try dis... boot using some microsoft windows boot disk then do x:\fdisk /mbr. dis wud restore ur old windows mbr
 
Old 07-12-2006, 03:47 AM   #10
greenberet
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that did not work
it said file not found vmlinuz in hd0,6
 
Old 07-12-2006, 03:55 AM   #11
JZL240I-U
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Okay, next try .

Quote:
Originally Posted by greenberet
...
kernel /suse/vmlinuz ro root=/dev/hda7
initrd /suse/initrd
...
Usually SuSE installs the kernel and initrd somwhere below /boot/grub. Did you change that, or are you possibly trying to load from non-existing directories? No slander intended, I just never had a /suse/ directory and I'm with SuSE since 6.3...
 
Old 07-13-2006, 07:01 AM   #12
greenberet
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er no, i put the suse images in that directory and it was booting once upon a time until i deleted the fc5 partition. Anyway now its tries to boot but gives this error

waiting for /dev/hda8 to appear -- ok
/etc/mtab not found
No such file or directory

Kernel panic. No init found. Try passing an init= option to the kernel.


Now you can see that /dev/hda8 is my /boot partition.But now i use grub from floppy and i have nothing to do with that partition, so why does it 'wait for /dev/hda8 to appear'

Remember, now i have put the suse images in /boot in the suse partition itself and grub in the floppy thereby making the boot partition redundant.
 
Old 07-17-2006, 06:45 PM   #13
silencestone
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recovery mode? default root partition?

It sounds like the grub floppy is still configured similar to pre-fc-delete grub, somehow. Is there some kind of recovery/repair mode boot option with Suse CD? So you could just boot into Suse from there and install grub to wherever?

Or...make sure that grub recognizes the hda drive and Suse partition in the way that you're referencing them. So, do a find for /suse/vmlinuz from the grub commandline; see that it's found on (hd0,7). I've got a device.map file in /boot/grub/ on the root partition that neatly shows how grub identifies the drives. This is all it says:

(hd0) /dev/hda
(hd1) /dev/hdb
(hd2) /dev/sda

You may need to make a file like that, then use the commands:

root <suse's-partition-as-named-by-grub>
kernel /suse/vmlinuz ro root=/dev/hda7
initrd /suse/initrd

Last edited by silencestone; 07-17-2006 at 07:09 PM.
 
Old 07-25-2006, 08:06 AM   #14
JZL240I-U
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There certainly is. You just start the CD like you want to install and then it detects the existing installation an asks whether to repair (or to re-install). In the same menu you can also choose to start the existing installation (which is what I'd try first).

If that fails I'd suggest to start a rescue system (from the SuSE-CD) and first use the "fdisk" utility. Search for your original swap partition, there seems to be some discrepancy here.

The most urgent thing then would be to adapt /etc/fstab to the new realities . You ought to print out the actual partition table and keep that handy while you make the appropriate changes.

After that you can decide how to boot in the future in a more relaxed way .

Last edited by JZL240I-U; 07-25-2006 at 08:08 AM.
 
  


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