Re: Weird partition arrangements and broken GRUB

On 7/26/07, Hamza Saglam <hamzasaglam@googlemail.com> wrote:

Hi,

After reading dozens of GRUB tutorials for a good few hours and not
getting anywhere, I've decided to post on this mailing list regarding
my problem. If it has been covered before please pardon me, I really
can't see it :(

Now before I start, I'd like to point out that we are both debian
users both due to the nature of our work, we have to have a windows
installation on our machines. Sad but true :(

A friend of mine brought in his laptop after he said he couldn't get
'windows booting', and when I had a look at the partition table using
gparted, I was presented with the following monstrosity:

screenshot:
http://***image.***bayimg.***com/oaeikaabk.jpg
(please get rid of the 9 stars, the mailing list wouldn't accept my
message without these)

(for the text based readers), it looks a bit like:
/dev/sda1    fat32    (boot)
/dev/sda2    extended    (lba)
    /dev/sda5    ntfs    (boot)
    /dev/sda6    linux-swap
/dev/sda3    ext3

The first fat32 partition is the recovery files that came with the
laptop, the rest is a bit of mess really :)

Relevant bits from /boot/grub/menu.lst:

    title        Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.18-4-686
    root        (hd0,2)
    kernel        /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-4-686 root=/dev/sda3 ro
    initrd        /boot/initrd.img- 2.6.18-4-686
    savedefault

    title        Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.18-4-686 (single-user mode)
    root        (hd0,2)
    kernel        /boot/vmlinuz- 2.6.18-4-686 root=/dev/sda3 ro single
    initrd        /boot/initrd.img- 2.6.18-4-686
    savedefault

    title        Microsoft Windows XP
    root        (hd0,3)
    savedefault
    makeactive
    chainloader    +1

    title           Acer eRecovery Management
      root            (hd0,0)
    savedefault
    makeactive
    chainloader     +1

I've tried all the possible combinations for the root directive of the
Windows section, but it doesn't want to load windows.

Is there any way I can address the ntfs partition within that extended
partition, or do I need to modify the structure. (I'd very much prefer
not changing the structure, even though it is quite messy)

I am stuck so any help would be much appreciated.

Many thanks.
Hamza

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