Author Topic: I've broken PcLinux! Help!  (Read 1413 times)

Offline Dreamofgilgamesh

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 215
I've broken PcLinux! Help!
« on: September 05, 2009, 09:05:26 AM »
Dear Group, if you look at my previous post you'll see that i've been trying to get my head around how to back my system up.
I booted with my Norton Ghost Corporate floppy disks and tried to do a disk clone to my slave disk which i had formated ext3.

Ghost seemed to be working fine, it made the neccesary partitions and appeared to be ok, in fact it said it had completed.
So, in theory i should have been able to select the slave disk to boot 1st and it should have loaded.

Instead i got,,,
SEARCHING FOR BOOT RECORD
ERROR LOADING OPERATING SYSTEM

No probs thought I, i'll just boot from the master disk,,
SEARCHING FOR BOOT RECORD
ERROR LOADING OPERATING SYSTEM

Is it broken permanently chaps or is there a way to recover.
See, i tried to be clever, and i'm never dumber than when i try to be clever.

Can you help me please?

Many Thanks

Offline Bren

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 223
Re: I've broken PcLinux! Help!
« Reply #1 on: September 05, 2009, 09:24:12 AM »
I ran into a similar problem.  I added a second hd to a tower and installed PCLOS, so I have 2 drives with PCLOS. When I tried to boot from either drive, I got "error loading operating system".
I went into bios and changed the boot order of the drives and now I can boot from one and select the other, and it opens a second boot selection screen. Not sure why or how, but it's working.
Brenda

Offline Dreamofgilgamesh

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 215
Re: I've broken PcLinux! Help!
« Reply #2 on: September 05, 2009, 09:31:50 AM »
Just tried that, i set the slave disk to boot 1st and it got as far as the Blue caress screen then hung.

Changed it back to boot from the primary and i still get,,,
ERROR LOADING OPERATING SYSTEM

Offline jaydot

  • Administrator
  • Super Villain
  • *****
  • Posts: 15569
  • there is no limitation on imagination
Re: I've broken PcLinux! Help!
« Reply #3 on: September 05, 2009, 09:52:58 AM »
it's possible you may need to redo-mbr with a live disk.

you might also like to explorer rsync and grsync (the gui front end) as a way to offload data to somewhere safe.

there are some useful apps in synaptic for backing up your data.  have a look in pclinuxos control centre as first port of call.
PCLinuxOS  Get it?  Got it?  Good!!   8)

We don't have any millionare angels or corporate backers paying the bills here, PLEASE DONATE.
http://pclinuxos.com/?page_id=7

Offline Dreamofgilgamesh

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 215
Re: I've broken PcLinux! Help!
« Reply #4 on: September 05, 2009, 09:54:56 AM »
Thanks very much, can you just tell me where on the live cd i'll find the fix mbr command please

Offline Bren

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 223
Re: I've broken PcLinux! Help!
« Reply #5 on: September 05, 2009, 10:19:42 AM »
PC symbol- then System- configuration -Boot and Init- Redo MBR

Somebody else will have to walk you through the process. I don't know much about it.
Brenda

Offline Dreamofgilgamesh

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 215
Re: I've broken PcLinux! Help!
« Reply #6 on: September 05, 2009, 11:01:16 AM »
Ok i found the redo mbr thingy, and as soon as i run it a Kwrite window pops up with my configuration, like so,,,

timeout 10
color black/cyan yellow/cyan
gfxmenu (hd1,0)/boot/gfxmenu
default 0

title linux
kernel (hd1,0)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux root=UUID=a115d44b-f7b0-4485-a6c4-be31dc66624a  acpi=on resume=UUID=a92bd7d9-7f5b-43e7-a1fa-f9c742cf2864 splash=silent vga=788
initrd (hd1,0)/boot/initrd.img

title linux-nonfb
kernel (hd1,0)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux-nonfb root=UUID=a115d44b-f7b0-4485-a6c4-be31dc66624a  acpi=on resume=UUID=a92bd7d9-7f5b-43e7-a1fa-f9c742cf2864
initrd (hd1,0)/boot/initrd.img

title failsafe
kernel (hd1,0)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=failsafe root=UUID=a115d44b-f7b0-4485-a6c4-be31dc66624a  failsafe acpi=on
initrd (hd1,0)/boot/initrd.img

Am i right in thinking that the references to HD1 is the hard disk?  If so it's wrong, HD1 is the slave disk, the master is SDA1

Offline hankcurt

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 446
Re: I've broken PcLinux! Help!
« Reply #7 on: September 05, 2009, 11:12:33 AM »
Hi Dreamofgilgamesh,

In grub, the (hd1,0) notation does not have anything to do with the prefixes the kernel gives your devices.  This is a simple notations to select the drive based on the bios order of the drive.  So (hd0) is the first drive, according to the bios order and (hd1) is the second, and so on.  The number after the comma is the partition on the drive.  So (hd0,0) points to the first partition on the first drive, and (hd0,1) points to the second partition on the first hard drive.

I was wondering if you had tried unplugging the cable from your slave drive ( with the computer off powered down, of course) and then booting it up with only the master drive connected.

If I understand correctly, you cloned the entire drive, or atleast an entire partition.  That may have resulted in two partitions having the same UUID (which stands for universally unique identifier).  I have no idea what that would do to grub, but it might confuse it.  I'm just speculating on this, but if you unplug one drive, and the other suddenly works, this may be the problem.

Offline Dreamofgilgamesh

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 215
Re: I've broken PcLinux! Help!
« Reply #8 on: September 05, 2009, 11:16:14 AM »
What a coincidence! thats exactly what i'm now trying, i'll give it a go and let you know how it works out.

Offline Dreamofgilgamesh

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 215
Re: I've broken PcLinux! Help!
« Reply #9 on: September 05, 2009, 11:20:10 AM »
Alas, no luck, same message

Online Old-Polack

  • Administrator
  • Super Villain
  • *****
  • Posts: 11591
  • ----IOFLU----
Re: I've broken PcLinux! Help!
« Reply #10 on: September 05, 2009, 12:16:47 PM »
Alas, no luck, same message


Grub sees the boot drive as (hd0), always. Doesn't matter whether it's an IDE master or slave, or if a SATA drive, doesn't care if it's sda, sdb, sdc, or whatever. To grub, whichever drive is the boot drive, it's (hd0). Your menu.lst entries say (hd1,0), so it's always looking at the other drive, to find what's on the boot drive, and that don't work. The first thing you need to do is change each (hd1,0) to (hd0,0) so grub can find the kernel and initrd image. Then you have to make sure the /etc/fstab is pointing to the right partitions, for / and /home, if /home is a separate partition.

Part of the problem with UUID for partition recognition, is that ghost, copies not just the data, but the partition table and filesystems of the partitions, as well, (bit for bit copy) so there will now be two partitions with the same ID, making it not unique. You'll probably have to go back to standard /dev/<whatever> designations to recover the original OS, and probably reformat the slave drive, to get rid of the erroneous information now stored in the superblocks there. Were I you, and at the moment I'm glad I'm not, I'd be not using ghost on Linux drives anymore.  ;D ;D

First try setting the master as the boot drive, in BIOS, and then reformatting the slave drive, from the liveCD, logged in as root. Mount the / partition of the master drive, and edit it's menu.lst.

Earlier you said the master was sda1. First, that's a partition designation, not a drive designation, and second sda would indicate a SATA, or USB drive, neither of which knows, from beans, what a master or slave drive is. The best thing you can do, to start with the sorting process, is to open a terminal on the liveCD, and enter;

[root@localhost ~]# fdisk -l            <Enter>   <-- That's a lower case L, not a number 1

Post your results, including the prompt and the command.
Old-Polack

Of what use be there for joy, if not for the sharing thereof?



Lest we forget...

Offline Dreamofgilgamesh

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 215
Re: I've broken PcLinux! Help!
« Reply #11 on: September 06, 2009, 03:12:36 AM »
Thank you very much for your kind help, so much of this is way over my head.  I followed your instructions are here are the results.  Oh, i disconnected the slave drive by the way.

[root@localhost ~]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 122.9 GB, 122942324736 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14946 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xbf33bf33

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        1568    12594928+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2            1569       14946   107458785    5  Extended
/dev/sda5            1569        2077     4088511   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6            2078       14946   103370211   83  Linux
[root@localhost ~]#


Online Old-Polack

  • Administrator
  • Super Villain
  • *****
  • Posts: 11591
  • ----IOFLU----
Re: I've broken PcLinux! Help!
« Reply #12 on: September 06, 2009, 09:52:12 AM »
Thank you very much for your kind help, so much of this is way over my head.  I followed your instructions are here are the results.  Oh, i disconnected the slave drive by the way.

[root@localhost ~]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 122.9 GB, 122942324736 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14946 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xbf33bf33

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        1568    12594928+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2            1569       14946   107458785    5  Extended
/dev/sda5            1569        2077     4088511   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6            2078       14946   103370211   83  Linux
[root@localhost ~]#



Assuming /dev/sda1 to be the / partition, from the liveCD, as root, in a terminal;

First we want to check that the filesystems are proper.

[root@localhost ~]# fsck -f /dev/sda1              <Enter>

When done, repeat for /dev/sda6.

[root@localhost ~]# fsck -f /dev/sda6              <Enter>

With both partitions checked, and made proper, mount /dev/sda1.

[root@localhost ~]# mount /dev/sda1              <Enter>

By default, on the liveCD, /dev/sda1 will be mounted on /mnt/sda1.

To see the contents of menu.lst on /dev/sda1;

[root@localhost ~]# cat /mnt/sda1/boot/grub/menu.lst              <Enter>

and the contents of fstab on /dev/sda1;

[root@localhost ~]# cat /mnt/sda1/etc/fstab              <Enter>

Post your results, including the prompt, command, and output response to the command, for the last two commands above.
Old-Polack

Of what use be there for joy, if not for the sharing thereof?



Lest we forget...

Offline wedgetail

  • PCLinuxOS Tester
  • Hero Member
  • *******
  • Posts: 2444
  • Any Bugs in site?
Re: I've broken PcLinux! Help!
« Reply #13 on: August 21, 2010, 04:41:29 AM »

I have to add this link
http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,62180.msg502509.html#msg502509

Which I believe is the continuation of the story, with a very positive result. old-polakc's effort deserves to show to anybody in the future landing here that it was concluded very nicely.   ;D
32 bit: KDE (older) & various KDE-mini, ASUSTek P5P41D Rev X.0x, BIOS AMI0207 07/21/2009, "Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU E5300 @ 2.60GHz", nVidia GeForce 9600 GT, 2x1GB Seagate Technology 1000528AS HDD
TV CompuPro VideoMate Vista E700 (not working in Linux), Acer X243HD LCD Screen

Offline Phil

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 743
Re: I've broken PcLinux! Help!
« Reply #14 on: August 21, 2010, 09:45:50 AM »
Congratulations on breaking your system, best way to learn.

Going back to your comment:

"i've been trying to get my head around how to back my system up."

I use clonezilla to back up my root system partition and rsync to back up my data.

Clonezilla is a "live" linux cd which will clone all of a disk or a part of a disk to an image. If everything goes horribly wrong with the root partition you can reverse the process and use a stored image to put right the bad system partition. I occasionally copy my / partition sda1 to another disk sdb5 as an image, and this includes the mbr. Its painless and easy. (Occasionally an update will bork something, rare but it does happen. Or you mess something up and want to put it back as it was)

For backing up data I use rsync and have the commands in a script which is run as a cron job every so often. Be careful with your slashes.....
I back up data to another disk which is only mounted for back up purposes and not for general use (additional safety precaution).
There are several easy to use front ends.

As an additional thought if you want to backup your "perfect" PCLOS system you can create a clone "live" cd. There should be info on how to do this elsewhere in the forum.

Phil