Getting lilo or any bootloader back

e-radix · 01-15-2005, 10:09 AM

Up until recently I had a 2 partition system with one being fedora core 3 and the other win2000. Foulishly enough though I formated the partition where win2000 was and put winxp so the lilo or bootloader has vanished....... Can you help me find a lilo or bootloader and install it ?
Thx a lot
e-RadiX
I need to get my fedora back!

Artanicus · 01-15-2005, 10:22 AM

Your best bet is taking out your boot floppy (you do have one, dont you? (; ) or a livedistro / some other rescue system that you can boot your linux with.. Then just reinstall the bootloader with the command lilo

e-radix · 01-15-2005, 10:46 AM

where can i find such a diskete? Can you give me a link or something plz?

Artanicus · 01-15-2005, 10:56 AM

Knoppix is pretty good as a rescue bootable distro, but a bit large for just that.. Anyways, if you want to try it out, check out http://www.knoppix.org/

I allways thought fedora came with a rescue disk of its own tho, you might want to try booting with the installdisks.. They most likely have an option for system rescue or something similar

reddazz · 01-15-2005, 11:48 AM

You can rescue your system using the Fedora Installation disk (disk 1). When you get the boot prompt do

linux-rescue
chroot /mnt/sysimage
/sbin/lilo

You maybe asked to enter the path of your root partition after tryping in "linux-rescue", so make sure you know where it is.

Travers · 01-15-2005, 12:01 PM

Yeah, Windows thinks it owns the entire MBR. All you need to do is re-install yor bootloder, with your dual-boot setup. Pop in knoppix and do this:

#mount -w /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1 #mounts drive read-write, assuming /dev/hda1 is linux partition
#chroot /mnt/hda1 /bin/bash
#env-update
#source /etc/profile #don't know what this stuff does, but it essentially makes commands work like you were running from linux on your hard drive. For instance, /mnt/hda1 is now /.
#lilo

And that's it. LILO will be installed in your MBR.

e-radix · 01-15-2005, 03:32 PM

I did what you told me about inserting the first fedora disc. Then I went to the point after chroot /mnt/sysimage but there was no lilo file in the sbin directory.

reddazz · 01-15-2005, 03:53 PM

Oh, yeah, sorry Fedora uses grub, so you need to do

linux-rescue
chroot /mnt/sysimage
grub-install /dev/hda

e-radix · 01-16-2005, 04:33 AM

Ok man thx a lot ! I've got my fedora back