Help: Screwed up Partition + - Won't boot
Hi,
Been pretty stupid I'm afraid.
The computer:-
Gateway 5150 Notebook, PII-233, 64MB RAM, IBM DKLA 4.6 GB HDD
Background-:
Came with Win98.
Split and loaded RH6.0, then Debian 2.2r0
Dumped RH
Dumped Win98
Loaded NT4.0 (SP6)
The latter made it necessary to boot off floppy as I have yet to find a
way to make it boot through the NT loader.
I have updated/upgraded regularly (last on 26th) . Decided to upgrade my
Helix-Gnome 1.2 to the latest Ximian 1.4.
This is where the problems started - I ran out of disk space during the
install. Freed up some space bu the installer would not run. Used dpkg
to install the packages which had not been completed and capt and
apt-get update/upgrade were happy.
This is where old habits got me. I have in the past had success in using
a floppy boot of Win98 and Partition Magic 4.0. I thought I would add
more space for Deb - there was free space from the dump of RH.
When all was done the machine would not boot. At this point I went into
panic. I reasoned that I could re-install the kernel (2.2.17 unchanged
from the original installation) off the CD.
It's downhill all the way from here. At one point I was able to run
using "rescue root=/dev/hda2" and got a basic boot but with vast
quantities of:
modprobe: can't open dependencies file /lib/modules/2.2.17/modules.dep
(no such file or directory).
I was able to log on as root - no password.
Having booted off the CD and mounting /dev/hda2 on /target I found
/target/lib/modules -> /target/lib/modules/
I found that there was a modules.old and reasoned that changing modules
to module -> modules.old might fix the problem.
I can't boot it at all now.
At this point I decided that I had better seek advice.
The partition table:
PM
Primary NTFS 996.6
Extended 1085.3
Logical NTFS 502
Free 583.2
Free 110.7
Prim Linux Swap 132.9
Prim Linux ext2 1801.4
Cfdisk /dev/hda
hda1 Boot primary NTFS 1045.1
hda5 Logical NTFS 526.42
Logical free 727.70
hda4 Primary Lin Sw 139.35
hda2 Primary Lin ext2 1888.02
I have been using Comminicator 4.76 for mail and news and, at a minimum,
I would hope to rescue the mail.
Naturally I'm hoping that you guys will be able to help me rescue this
mess.
I'll accept the flames but please offer some usefull advise.
More in hope than expectation,
Tim Wood
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