Re: possible to restore damaged Lilo in MBR
On Tue, Aug 14, 2001 at 12:37:30PM -0700, Mike Alborn wrote:
> > After reinstalled win2k, I can no longer access
> > my existing Linux installation. Sadly, I didn't create a boot disk.
>
> I don't know if this will work out of w2k, but it's worth a shot. Note this
> will only work if you can boot the machine from a floppy, and if you know
> the location of your root partition (/dev/hda1 etc)
>
> - First, go to a debian mirror site, say
>
> http://mirror.direct.ca/pub/linux/debian/dists/potato/main/disks-i386/2.2.23-2001-04-15/images-1.44/
>
> and get the file called rescue.bin
>
> - Head to mirror.direct.ca/pub/liunx/debian/tools and get rawrite1.zip or
> rawrite2.zip (these are programs to let you do a dd from dos.)
>
> - unpack rawrite and use it to dump the rescue.bin image onto a blank floppy.
> - Reboot the machine from the floppy at the boot: prompt, type
> rescue root=<name of your partition> hit F1/F3 for help.
>
> -Once the machine boots, mount the boot partition (if you have a seperate one),
> set up your /etc/lilo.conf (if needed),invoke /sbin/lilo, and restart the
> machine from the hard disk.
>
> I use a similar method whenever my MBR gets trashed, except I have a Mandrake
> CD lying around, which works along the same lines.
>
> BTW, if you don't know the location of your root partition, and you can find
> a Mandrake CD or something that works similarly, the CD has a self-contained
> installation on it, allowing you to mount filesystems and determine which one's
> the root.
>
> > thanks a lot for any tip.
>
> No prob. Hope this does the trick.
It probably will - I have been through this exact procedure a few
times. However, I recommend having a look at grub. If you create a
grub boot disk, you have a fast and flexible way of booting different
Linux kernels and other OS's, no matter where they reside on your hard
disk(s). Grub will even let you have reiserfs on your root and boot
partitions (don't know if LILO is ready for that yet).
To Benjamin Zhou: I can make a grub bootdisk image and email it to you
if you like (it's 48 kB gzipped).
All the best
Rolf
--
Rolf Heckemann
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