I would really appreciate some help here! I use mandrake 9.2. Here's my problem

I have 4 partitions in my 80 gb hard disk drive
(1) winxp ntfs formatted
(2) a game partition (to install winxp games) in fat32
(3) the linux swap partition
(4) the main linux partition in ext3

I have another disk (40 gb) formated as fat32 with mp3 only

I backup the whole disk with norton ghost 2003(which says it supports ext2/3/ etc). I make my image ok. I then insert my system rescue cd (downloaded from www.sysresccd.org ) and reboot. I mount my mp3 hd in a temp folder and then i grab the mbr of my 80 gb hd with the command dd if=/dev/hda bs=512 count =1 of=/path/to/mp3/disk/mbr.dd.

When i try 2 restore my system i restore it with the image i created pretty fine and quick.BUT when i reboot i c only some 99 99 99 . So i thought norton ghost didn't grab my mbr (although i used the image boot option). I insert the rescue cd , rebooted , mounted the mp3 hd , and restored my mbr with the dd command : dd if=/path/to/mp3/disk/mbr.dd bs=512 count =1 of=/dev/hda) . I reboot and ... the screen with the 99 99 99 again!

Being desperate i inserted the winxp cd and went 2 console mode from where i issued the fixmbr command. Rebooted and my winxp partition worked right. I then inserted my mandrake 9.2 cd and rebooted. I went through the classical installation screens in mandrake and the installation told me 2 upgrade to 9.2. I said yes , finished the installation in a couple of seconds and rebooted. My system then worked right with dual boot etc etc.(What the mandrake did in the upgrade proccess i found out later : it downgraded my updated from mandrake ftp rpm's !)

What am i doin' wrong? Why can't i make an image of my hd properly?What should i do?

Instead of doing all that fuss with the winxp cd's and mandrake etc etc could i just insert my rescue cd mount my 80 gb hd and just issue the /sbin/lilo command 2 write 2 my mbr?

PS1 The whole story happens exactly the same when i use partition magic 8.0 in winxp 2 resize my partitions . ( ihave 2 fixmbr with winxp cd , insert mandrake etc etc as mentioned before)

PS2 My fdisk -l:

[root@localhost george]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/disc: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id S ystem
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1 * 1 791 6353676 7 H PFS/NTFS
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part2 792 2194 11269597+ f W in95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part3 2195 9729 60524887+ 83 L inux
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part5 792 2066 10241406 b W in95 FAT32
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part6 2067 2194 1028128+ 82 L inux swap

Disk /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/disc: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id S ystem
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part1 1 4865 39078081 c W in95 FAT32 (LBA)


PS3 My fstab :

/dev/hda3 / ext3 defaults 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0
/dev/hda5 /mnt/Games vfat umask=0,codepage=869,iocharset=iso8859-7 0 0
/dev/hdb1 /mnt/MP3 vfat umask=0,codepage=869,iocharset=iso8859-7 0 0
none /mnt/cdrom supermount dev=/dev/scd0,fs=udf:iso9660,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-7 0 0
none /mnt/cdrom2 supermount dev=/dev/hdd,fs=udf:iso9660,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-7 0 0
none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=ext2:vfat,--,umask=0,sync,codepage=869,iocharset=iso8859-7 0 0
none /mnt/removable supermount dev=/dev/sda1,fs=ext2:vfat,--,kudzu,codepage=869,iocharset=iso8859-7 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c ntfs umask=0,ro,iocharset=iso8859-7 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda6 swap swap defaults 0 0

Anyone?

I have used Norton Ghost many times to restore NTFS and Linux images with no problem. I do normally boot into Linux with a boot floppy or rescue cd and restore the boot loader. My boot loader of choice happens to be grub but you can restore the lilo as well.

When using Ghost, you don't need to restore the entire mbr which includes the boot loader and the partition table. The only time I restore the entire mbr is before restoring an image with Partimage. That is because Partimage doesn't yet have a feature to create the partitions.

So, in your situation the restore went fine and all you needed to do was get back into Linux and restore the boot loader. If you are using lilo, the command is /sbin/lilo -L

So after the disk restoration i boot with my rescue cd ( or a boot disk ) mount my 80 gb hd to a folder ( let's say /mnt/temp1) and i execute this command : /mnt/temp1/sbin/lilo -l .
Right?

All that you need to mount is the ( / ) root partition of Linux. If that is /dev/hda3 ,as it seems from looking at your /etc/fstab, then you would use the command:
mount /dev/hda3 /mnt/temp1
Then type:
chroot /mnt/temp1
Then type:
cd /mnt/temp1
Then type:
/sbin/lilo -L


That should do it. Reboot and see if your boot loader does it's thing.

Edit: I haven't used lilo for a while. I think that is supposed to be an upper case ( ell ) as in LLama or Lucy.

Thanks a lot homey . I'll give it a try .

BTW what does chroot does?

I love computers and the acronyms! My dad called it alphabet soup. But anywho, I suspect that chroot stands for Change Root. That makes your mounted partition the active root partition so you can run commands which are native to that system. In this case, Lilo.

PS: Don't forget to use the upper case L with the lilo command.

Thanks a lot homey!!!

You're welcome!

Just another thing homey : How do i make a boot disk?

I've tried 2 do it with mandrake control center but during the making of the boot disk process it tells me that there isn't enough free disk space in my floppy . How could that be since it's a 1440 floppy which is just formatted?

The newer kernels are getting too big to fit onto a floppy. I don't know what you could do about that other than using cd#1 to boot into rescue mode.

Also, I have second thoughts about your not needing to restore the entire mbr. Because you have extended partitions, there is a danger of you not recreating them in the correct order or whatnot. Therefore, ignore everything I said about not restoring the partition table and go ahead with doing that.

But after the restore, you would just need to fix the boot loader.

ok. i'l try 2 restore my mbr prior 2 running lilo.

I am having the same problem with partition resizing or when i make a new partition. I mean that when i resize or create a new partition with partition magic 8.0 and when it finishes and reboots i get the 99 99 99 screen. What should i do then? The previously captured mbr doesn't match the new one. What should i do then?

Another thing. I 've just inserted my mandrake cd 1 and went to rescue mode. Then it gave me some options. One was to re install boot loader. Would that do the trick?

Bummer! Norton Ghost allows you to change the size of partitions at the time of restore but if you want to do that DO NOT RESTORE THE PARTITION TABLE FROM THE MBR as that will mess things up real bad.

So what can i do when i resize/create partitions with partition magic ? follow the above mentioned procedur without restoring the mbr?