As someof you probably know, I am experiencing several woes, most of my own devising.

Most pertinent: While intalling WinXP for a dual-boot system, I accidentally overwrote my /boot partition.

As you have probably guessed, this is making it difficult to boot my computer. But that's not the real problem.

The real problem is that I had my entire HD backed up on my mail server, and foolishly downloaded the files before I installed XP, so they are now inaccessible! They are still in e-mail format, lingering in my Kmail inbox...

I've tried several rescue CD's (Knoppix, PHLAK), but when I mounted my /partition, and tried to start Kmail, it gave me an error, sying that libXhtml.so.something could not be found, so there was no succor in that direction!

So, here are my two ideas:

1) Since my root partition is fine, I just need to install a new /boot. I have a partition set up for this; does anybody know a way to get the slackware 9.1 installation program/CD to install only to /boot? Is such a thing even possible?
I was thinking that I should just set my existing / partition to root, and not format it, but I'm hesitant as to whether that would preserve the integrity of the partition. I'm also a little worries about whcih software packages I would need to install; obviously the kernel, but what else?



2) I have the files that Kmail generates in my ~/Mail folder. Is it possible to move them into a new ~/Mail folder? I tried it, but for some reason (Spite, no doubt) Kmail refuses to acknowledge their existence... Am I doing something wrong?
I guess what I'm asking is, are those e-mails saved anywhere where I could just move them, as files, to a new partition, a working partition, and thus save my precious, precious e-mails that way?


Thank you in advance!

Is the new /boot partition physically located in the same place as the old one? ie, if it was at /dev/hda1 before is it still at /dev/hda1? If so probably the easiest thing to do would be to copy the bare.i kernel (or another one) off the Slackware Install CD (or floppy) onto the new /boot partition. But you can't simply copy bare.i from the CD to /boot as it is an image. You need to mount image on a loop device and copy it from there, else grab it off a floppy. You should probably take a look at /etc/lilo.conf to see what the kernel was named, taking care to name it the same way and where it was booting from though. The kernel is all you should need until you can get things booted back up. Not sure how lilo will act if a file like boot.msg is missing as well, so might check that to and just create an empty file if it references one. After you're back up and going, you'd want to rebuild your kernel or get a copy of the system.map file for the kernel you used and put it in /boot as well.

If the /boot partition has moved, then you have more work to do to recover. You'll need to copy the kernel to /boot and then edit lilo.conf to reflect the new location and then chroot (chroot /wherever/you/mounted/slackware) into the slackware install and rerun lilo.

As far as coping the Mail directory goes. Yes, you should be able to do that as well. Kmail should pick it up so long as the permissions are correct, I'd think. I guess is that the reason you get the error when trying to run Kmail as you describe above, is because you didn't chroot into the slackware parition first and Kmail can not find the required lib on the system you're trying to run it under.


BTW, you can mount the image from the CD to a loop device like so:

cd /mnt/cdrom/slackware/bootdisks
mkdir /mnt/image
mount bare.i /mnt/image -o loop

The kernel itself will be named vmlinuz

cp /mnt/image/vmlinuz /mnt/boot

Assuming you mounted the /boot parition under /mnt/boot


PS...If you made a custom bootdisk for the Slackware install when you installed it (The installion suggests that you do) then you should be able to use that to boot into your system and restore /boot as well. Good luck.

Here's an idea that I have never tried, but may work for you. Try booting with the install CD and use pkgtool to install all of the "kernel" packages. If you had a stock setup, I believe that this will give you bacl most of the contents of /boot. The only other thing to do is run /sbin/lilo. You may need to edit up /etc/lilo.conf a bit first, though.

I would think that this would solve your problems. Anyone else feel free to comment.

Whenever I try to get it to work with my bootdisk, it gives a kernel panic that it cannot open initial console, etc.

Any ideas?

EDIT:

I lied. It no longer gives me that error; instead, it says something about being unable to load a superblock, or something along those lines...
It also says that the superblock apears to be corrupted. Might this have anything to do with the fact that /dev/hda1, which was formerly my /boot partition, is now harbouring WinXP?

When you recreated the /boot parition, did you format it as well? Is lilo installed to the superblock or MBR?

YES! I finally got it to work!

Thank you guys so much. I owe you big time!

How did you fix the problem?

Here's how I fixed the problem:
1) Deleted windows partition at the beginning of drive, changed type to 83 (Linux), and toggled the bootable flag.

2) Ran the Slackware 9.1 install CD, went straight to "Setup target partitions," selected /dev/hda3 (Former root, with all vital files on it) as the root partition, selected "No format" when prompted.

3) Selected /dev/hda1 (Former windows partition) as /boot

4) Selected to install only the kernel sources

5) Selected "Newbie: Full install" from menu; it installed only the Kernel sources. In hindsight, I probably didn't even need the kernel sources.

6) Went through configuration, choosing basically all the defaul options. Installed the basic bare.i kernel from the Slackware disk; I can recompile it later.

7) Booted up my system. Tragically, LILO failed to intall/be read, so I used the bootdisk, as so:
mount root=/dev/hda3 ro vga=792

8) Logged in as the already existing user. I now know that my old / partition is up and running

9) Type 'startx' to get into xfce; get weird error message about DCOP servers failing, and being unable to access .ICEauthority

10) Logout, and back in as root.
#cd /home/gillibiabtiag (My home)
#chmod a+wrx .ICEauthority (To cover all my bases)

11) Login as me again; everything works! HOORAY!


Thanks again, everybody!