nick lidakis wrote:
I was having trouble with my monowall router running off a compact
flash. I decide to reinstall the monowall boot image onto the CF
card. In the process I must have mistyped and accidentally wrote the
image to my boot partition i.e. /dev/sda1. The machine now boots into
monowall instead of Grub.
Using Google, I can only find articles or HOWTO's on recovering a
corrupt or overwritten master boot record.
It sounds as if you have created a new filesystem on /dev/sda1 which
used to be your root partition, so it's not only an issue with the
MBR. For the rest of my answer, I am assuming this.
> When I did the initial
installation with the latest the net install cd I chose the default
desktop partition scheme, which I believe (if I am not mistaken) was
/, /usr, and a home partitions. / would have my kernels, root
directory and grub.
So my question is, how do I proceed? I can use a rescue CD to boot
into the system and mount /, but how would I reinstall what would
normally be in /? Do I do a reinstall and skip formatting / home?
You could boot from the rescue CD (assuming it's a Debian one) and
mount /dev/sda1 to, say, /mnt/sda1. Then you do 'debootstrap
/mnt/sda1' which will install a Debian System on /mnt/sda1 (your /
partition), then chroot into /mnt/sda1, adjusting your bootloader
config and run the bootloader to install the MBR.
Of course you can keep your /home - just mount it into the new system.
With the partition used as /usr it's going to be a bit more difficult
as it contains system files from your old installation; if you can,
wipe it out and use it as /usr in your new system. So basically you'd
do (from the rescue system):
$ mkdir -p /mnt/sda1
$ mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sda1 # this will destroy your monowall
# installation
$ mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1
$ mkdir /mnt/sda1/home
$ mount /dev/sdaX /mnt/sda1/home # sdaX is the partition where /home
# resides
$ mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sdaY # sdaY is the partition used as /usr
# everything that used to be on /usr will
# be destroyed
$ mkdir /mnt/sda1/usr
$ mount /dev/sdaY /mnt/sda1/usr
$ debootstrap /mnt/sda1
$ chroot /mnt/sda1
[configure your bootloader]
[run bootloader]
[adjust fstab]:
/dev/sda1 / ext3 defaults 0 0
/dev/sdaX /home ext3 defaults 0 0
/dev/sdaY /usr ext3 defaults 0 0
/dev/sdaZ none swap sw 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
$ exit
$ reboot
That should be it. You'll lose your old root-partition (which you
already did, I think, by installing monowall on /dev/sda1) and your
old /usr partition. You should be able to keep /home.
If there's anything important on /usr, you can of course save that as
you can still access this partition with the rescue cd.
Any help at all would be appreciated!
HTH
-- Kilian