Re: How can sarge survive a Windows reinstall?

[elton <ealgera@tiscali.nl>]

On Tue, Mar 01, 2005 at 09:20:58PM -0500, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 01, 2005 at 09:17:44PM -0500, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 01, 2005 at 12:24:44PM -0500, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> > > On Tue, Mar 01, 2005 at 04:37:51PM +0000, Colin Watson wrote:
> > > > On Tue, Mar 01, 2005 at 11:33:23AM -0500, Justin Pryzby wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > sarge does not have a rescue mode. I've written one, but it's still a
> > > > bit experimental and came too late for sarge.
> > > > 
> > > > -- 
> > > > Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson@debian.org]
> > > 
> > > Thanks. Colin.  That message will saved me a lot of futile tries.
> > > 
> > > Now I have two questions.  First, an earlier one,
> > > 
> > > How do I make a sarge boot floppy?  I don't think I had that option
> > > when I originally installed sarge long long ago.
> > 
> > I managed to use mkboot to make a boot floppy.  Unfortunately. it doesn't work.
> > I gather from the kernel panic that it can't read my root partition.
> > HGowever, the root partition is perfectly readablw when I boot form the BMR
> Of course, I meant MBR                                                    ^^^
> 
> > on my hard disk.
> > 
> > This is ridiculous.  Is it really impossible boot a sarge system after the MBR
> > has been clobbered -- without a complete reinstall?
> > Everything I've tried so far has failed.
> > 
> > -- hendrik
> > 
> > 
> > -- 
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> > 
> 
> 
> -- 
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> 


Hi,

Maybe you can try a gentoo live cd, get it from:

http://trumpetti.atm.tut.fi/gentoo/releases/x86/2004.3/livecd/install-x86-minimal-2004.3-r1.iso

boot it.

Mount the root partition, and the boot partition, if you have one:

mkdir /mnt/debian
mount /dev/hda3 /mnt/debian    <--- replace hda3 with your root part.
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/debian/boot   <---- only if you have a separate
boot part. replace hda1 with the boot part.

now chroot into debian:

	chroot /mnt/debian

now reinstall grub:

	grub
	root (hd0,0) <---- replace this with the partition where your
	kernel images reside. This is for hda1 (hd0,1) is for hda2, etc.
	setup (hd0)  
	quit

now remember to add a stanza in /boot/grub/menu.lst for windows.

Something like:

	title         Windows 95/98/NT/2000
	root          (hd0,3) <---- replace with your windows partition 
	makeactive
	chainloader   +1

for examples on the grub disk designation see:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~lennartb/bootloaders/node7.html


now exit from the chroot and reboot: 
	exit
	reboot

and remove the disk.

Now you should have grub in the mbr.

good luck,

Elton