how do i get my bootloader back?

obscure-shadow · 08-22-2006, 04:28 PM

i have suse 10.1 installed on my computer but i dont have the disk anymore,
i had to reinstall windows and that broke the bootloader, (grub)
its all on one hard drive, i think it's windows, boot, swap, linux... on how the partitions are arranged,but i might have the boot and swap swiched, i dont quite recall. anyways,
i'm trying to use knoppix to get my bootloader back, but i can't figure out how..

tuxrules · 08-22-2006, 04:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by obscure-shadow

i have suse 10.1 installed on my computer but i dont have the disk anymore,
i had to reinstall windows and that broke the bootloader, (grub)
its all on one hard drive, i think it's windows, boot, swap, linux... on how the partitions are arranged,but i might have the boot and swap swiched, i dont quite recall. anyways,
i'm trying to use knoppix to get my bootloader back, but i can't figure out how..

You can boot up with Knoppix. Once you arrive at the desktop, open up terminal and mount your linux / partition. You may have to do

Code:

fdisk -l

to see which is your / partition. Knoppix will most likely mount your linux partitions automatically. If not then you may have to manually mount it. I don't exactly remember since I haven't used a boot disk in a long time.

Code:

chroot /path/to/root/partition

Code:

grub-install /dev/hda

Change hda to whatever your drive is.

Tux,

obscure-shadow · 08-22-2006, 11:12 PM

okay, so i put in chroot mnt/hda4 and it says :

Quote:

chroot : cannot run commant '/bin/bash/' : Exec format error

what do i do now?
doesnt look like tthat was the correct response...

tuxrules · 08-23-2006, 09:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by obscure-shadow

okay, so i put in chroot mnt/hda4 and it says :
what do i do now?
doesnt look like tthat was the correct response...

So did you mount the root partition to hda4 or was it mounted automatically as hda4. Give some more information on what you did.

obscure-shadow · 08-23-2006, 02:50 PM

fdisk -l shows that hda4 is the root linux partition...

so then i did

mount dev/hda4

then

chroot mnt/hda4

and get the error message

tuxrules · 08-23-2006, 03:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by obscure-shadow

fdisk -l shows that hda4 is the root linux partition...

so then i did

mount dev/hda4

then

chroot mnt/hda4

and get the error message

So did you check if hda4 was really mounted because from what I see, it should give you an error as you did not specify any file system type or mount point with the mount command.

BTW, you may have to use the / before both the mount and chroot command.

obscure-shadow · 08-24-2006, 12:20 AM

i would suspect that it is because if i umount /dev/hda4 it doesnt say "dev/hda4 is not mounted" like it normally would..