I think I missed a step while installing a new kernel and now it will not boot. It hangs immediately after LILO Loading Linux, it makes a series of dots, and the cursor drops down a line and hangs. There are no other messages on the screen.

I tried booting from the CD and using the rescue option. I am able to boot the rescue cd, and I am able to mount the disk that "should" contain the root. But when I mount it, only "lost+found" is shown. I have mounted the drive as ext2 and ext3, and run e2fsck on it.

e2fsck -b 32768 /dev/hda2
tune2fs -j /dev/hda2
mount -t ext3 /dev/hda2 /mnt/hda2

The only thing in /mnt/hda2 is lost+found, and there is nothing in it. I actually mounted both partitions on hda, both had the same result.

I am running on an IBM Laptop with Red-Hat 9.0. I have previously run a custom kernel without any problems.

Running fdisk –l:
/dev/hda1 1 14 105808 83 Linux
dev/hda2 15 4645 35010360 83 Linux
dev/hda3 4646 4783 1043280 82 Linux swap

running e2fsck /dev/hda2:
e2fsck 1.34-WIP (21-May-2003)
/dev/hda2: clean, 11/4382336, 145739, 8752590 blocks

At this point I am stuck, Any ideas before I reinstall?

Thanks,

is /hda1 a boot partition?

how many users do you have on your system?

is /hda2 your /home/ ?

from what i have seen it looks like /hda2 is the home, your getting the lost+found because your looking at root's home. take a look at /hda1 and see if things are there.

drop a line back with your /etc/lilo.conf and we'll see if we can fix it for you.

cheers.

No, the boot partition is hda2. hda1 was an IBM "recovery" disk that I erased after installing (it still worked after this). I mounted and looked at both hda1 and hda2, neither had any data. It seems like the disk got hosed somehow. Is there a utility to verify, beyond e2fcsk?

It is a single user system.

Unfortunately, I don't have a copy of my lilo.conf, but I didn't try anything fancy. If I can get access to the disk, I am pretty sure I can fix it.

hda1 and hda2 not showing any directories is what really has me confused. Any ideas?

aahhhhh, no. sorry.

looks as if you might have rmed the whole system somehow. how i don't know. and the /hda1 still being there after you got rid of it is puzzling in itself. did you write your disk after you removed it? that the only thing that i can think of as to why it's still there.

good luck.