Reason: Solaris mangled the partition table, the old extended partition is now of the type 1f (unknown type) and fdisk refuses to change that back without deleting. Or do I dare deleting and re-creating the old partition scheme by hand, hoping all will be well then?

run the command fdisk -l and post the results here.

Right now I'm not in front of the crash victim. From memory it looks now like this: (I changed /dev/hda1 back to linux, /dev/hda2 stayed solaris and I changed /dev/hda3 back to FreeBSD)Extended partitions up to and including /dev/hda9 are gone, of course.

testdisk is very good for this sort of thing. I might be inclined to delete the problem partition and run testdisk, and let it sort out what's what. There can be issues if you have deleted other partitions yourself at some time. You'll have to decide what is valid.

Thanks syg00, that's what I would have done, if my simpler scheme would not have worked: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...5/#post3312333

Still, is there a tool out there which can change a primary into an extended partition and vice versa?

jiml8 you complain in the other thread that I didn't answer your suggestion in post #2, but honestly what more could I post? The information from the relevant partition is rendered in "pseudo" code and the rest explained in the text. Exactly what more is in the direct output of fdisk, what I overlooked to mention? Again I'm not home yet, if it's of use I'll try to do it at the weekend.

Personally I would have thought testdisk was quicker/simpler, but it matters not if you have rectified the situation.
Solaris is a problem child when introduced into a (Linux) multiboot environment - simple as that. Real care needs to be taken - in advance.

As for partitions, an extended is a (form of) primary partition. However, because it is basically a container for (multiple, chained) logical partition(s), the internal structure is significantly different to a single primary partition. Hence you can't simply just change one to the other.
Need I add that backups are always a good idea when screwing around with partitions ???.

Hm. How? What needs to be done? Do you have a link to an explanation?

Okay, not from extended to primary without loss of the secondary partitions, understood. But if you know that and maybe get a warning message if you still want to proceed...

What I don't understand is why one can't change primary into extended on the fly. I mean as far as I understand the data in the partition table just get a different meaning, but what the heck, I'm no expert (obviously ).

Hrhrhr. I wouldn't have lost anything out of /home, just a lot of work pertaining to the setup of my box.

Not sure there's a link that has all the issues - but it's well documented in bits and pieces.
- you need a primary partition (for Solaris)
- you can't retain your current boot-loader (mmmmm - it had better not be in a logical either methinks)
- you'd better not have more than one swap partition on the disk
...

Been a while since I bothered - I only install it as a virtual guest now. That way it thinks it is the only kid in town, and doesn't screw all my other systems. And when I decide to get rid of it, it's a simple process.

Done.

Nope. You have to hide everything in GRUB's menu.lst i.e. hide (0,0) up to and including hide (0,3). This means the solaris partition as well. Then you boot it.

Didn't try, I just have one large one.

I installed it to learn. And I use my old 700 Mhz Athlon, no virtual solutions possible there...

@ jiml8 Okay, here it comes: