On Fri, 13 Jun 2003, Richard Heycock wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm new to this list and I need some help! I just ran grub-install on my
> root partition instead of my boot partition and it appears to have wreaked
> it.
Ouch.
> If I run file -s /dev/hda5 I now get 'x86 boot sector' instead of
> 'ReiserFS V3.6 block...' and I can no longer mount it.
> When the machine tries to boot it loads the kernel (from /dev/hda6) but
> when it comes to mount the root partition it kernel panics as it cannot
> mountthe filesystem.
>
> I know at least some of the data is on the partition (`less /dev/hda5`).
> I'm guessing that grub-install has overwritten N number of bytes at the
> beginning of the partition but beyond that I'm at a complete loss at what
> to do.
Your probably not in too bad shape. The boot sector is just a single
sector, and the rest of the drive should be untouched. The trick is
recovering that first sector.
Your basic tool for moving stuff around is dd which you can use to copy
just the first sector from one file (ie probably a device file) to
another.
I don't know the details of ReiserFS. There's a good chance though that
the first sector contains only really generic stuff, and/or there are
backups stored elsewhere on the device. You might even find it's as easy
as copying the first sector (only) from a healthy ReiserFS file system to
your damaged one. There's nothing on that sector you're trying to save,
so just give it a whirl, but DONT MOUNT THE FILE SYSTEM IN OTHER THAN READ
ONLY MODE until you're pretty sure its OK, and then consider copying the
most important files out of the file system when it becomes accessible.
If it's not so happily simple and the first sector contains the root of
your file system, device parameters or something similar, then the place
to get help is probably a developers list for the ReiserFS file system.
Andrew
--
No added Sugar. Not tested on animals. If irritation occurs,
discontinue use.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew McNaughton In Sydney
Working on a Product Recommender System
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Mobile: +61 422 753 792 http://staff.scoop.co.nz/andrew/cv.doc
--
SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/
More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
