(Originating from [EMAIL PROTECTED] I am temporarily without access
to my account and am using someone else's. Please direct any replies to
this account, and not [EMAIL PROTECTED] :) Thanks. )
Hi, everyone. I have a problem, and could either use a little help or a
big favor, depending on how difficult this would be to resolve. :)
Several months ago, I wrote about using e2compr to compress files on my
partition. While that isn't the direct cause of my current problem,
I'm certainly hoping it is indirectly involved. I recently purchased a
TV tuner, and have been attempting to get it working under Linux. I've
failed, though, so I decided to try resorting to windows, since I
probably wouldn't have to worry about quite as much. Once I had it
working under windows, I could try using Linux. Well, booting windows
produced the nice blue screen of death, with a cryptic error message. I
should have just decided to ignore windows, but I didn't. I tried to
reinstall from a win95 cdrom, hoping that some new hardware which I had
installed but not autodetected would be configured. In doing
this, I completely forgot about microsoft's bullying policy where disk
partitions are concerned. Anyhow, it trashed my boot sector, replacing
it with the standard microsoft one. "No problem," I thought. "I have an
old kernel on my c: drive which will boot up long enough for me to run
lilo and reboot." Well, I had forgotten that this old kernel wasn't
patched with the e2compr patch, and wouldn't load the OS. Similarly,
tools like ext2tool couldn't read the partition either, claiming that
there was an unknown error, 2147333211 or something
like that. I'm sure that isn't right, but the last few digits were
fairly random anyway, and I suspect that whoever designed the Ext2
standard didn't forsee the possibility of billions of errors; if so,
we've got a messed-up standard. :)So, I have 3 courses of action
at this point. I can reinstall Linux. I don't want this, though. I have
my web pages, as well as some CGIs that I don't want to have to rewrite.
Add to that papers that I am working on, projects, etc. and you have a
pretty formidable reason why I don't want to reinstall.
I'm also thinking that if I can find a boot loader that works under DOS,
I can install that, load Linux, and copy the e2compr-aware kernel to my
DOS partition, installing Lilo at the same time. Are there any boot
loaders which are fairly simple to install under DOS which
can load Linux? I need something that is free; not a commercial product.
The third alternative (here's the big favor :) is to have someone build
an e2compr-aware kernel for me. I was running 2.2.3, so anyone who is
running that should be able to help me. If the kernel source is backed
up to another directory, the e2 patches applied and the kernel rebuilt
without running any of the install targets, building the kernel
shouldn't effect your running system at all. If someone chooses to do
this, please build something with e2compr in the kernel, not as a
module. Also, select all methods of compression in the kernel, and
select bzip2 as the default compression. I'm using an IDE disk with a
PS/2 mouse, since my system boots into X immediately, so I'll need that
in the kernel as well. But, beyond that, I don't need anything else. If
someone could build a vmlinuz for me and
email it as an attachment to this address, I'd greatly appreciate it.
When I get back, maybe we can have a beer or something. :) Seriously,
though, I'd appreciate this lots, since all I'd hopefully need to do is
copy the file onto my DOS partition and fire up loadlin on it.
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