Is it fixable - lilo gone

[acid45]

*there is a yes/no question at the bottom*
Okay, I killed it good this time. My guess is trying to upgrade to 2.6 is the problem...

I rebooted the system and got an error and the lilo stack and kernel stack were overlaping...okay. So I took out my ubuntu 5.1 live cd and tried to fix it, without knowing what I'm doing.

You guess it, I ran:

mount /dev/sda /mnt
/mnt/sbin/lilo -C /mnt/etc/lilo.conf

This gave me an error about lilo not knowing what to do with device #HEX#. I figured that I accidentially tried to tell lilo to install the boot loader into my ram, which would be the live distro I guess.
So I decided to read the lilo man page...

man -M /mnt/usr/man lilo

After reading that I found that I needed to sepcify the device I would like to install lilo to the MBR of. So I ran:

/mnt/sbin/lilo -M /dev/sda -C /mnt/etc/lilo.conf
maybe it should have been 
/mnt/sbin/lilo -M /mnt/dev/sda -C /mnt/etc/lilo.conf

It siad it did it successfully and there was a backup in /boot/.boot0 or something like that.

This is where I broke it good.
When I boot, it comes back and says there is no bootloader on the partition, I'm guessing the MBR partition.

Now I can't even mount /dev/sda or /dev/sdb, which doesn't make sense. They worked perfect the first and second time. Well I never tried /dev/sdb. It says they are busy or are already mounted but I use find / -name .mp3 to find any files in that filesystem and none are available.

Can I fix it?

okay I lied it's not yes no, it's no / yes and...
If yes
Where can I find a tutorial to mount the drive, if I can just get /dev/sda mounted and move the files I need to /dev/sdb, that would be great!!!

I think this one might help...but I'm not sure
http://www.talug.org/howto/rootboot.html

PS there is one odd thing I noticed. In the live filesystem there are entries for /dev/sda and /dev/sdb but the only places I can find that they might be mounted are at /sys/block/sda etc. But this only contains partition info, drive specs etc. I figured this might be why the device would be labeled as busy but it seems like it's all just data that the sysm wrote to file as it checked the disks.

I think I found something that might help, using a boot disk. But they left me with a bunch of questions...


Are the really important programs (/bin and /sbin stuff) statically or dynamically linked? If they're dynamically linked you can shoot yourself in the foot by messing with libraries. Doesn't matter, I screwed with bootloader, I hope so anyway.

Do you have kernel source in /usr/src from which a new kernel can be compiled? Yes, a 2.6 kernel...I don't think it's in /usr/src though

Do you know how to use LILO to boot a backup kernel image? If I did, I wouldn't be here...but maybe the man page can help.

Do you know your partition layout? If you're using one massive partition have you thought about the pros and cons of doing that? Yup, on massive partition. Nope, I don't expect data corruption of any kind, the partitions SEEM to be in tact, althought they did start acting funny after my last lilo command, not being able to mount either of them for example.

Again, can I fix it? Do I just need a bootdisk and then run lilo for the native filesystem rather than a live filesystem?


"Worse case scenario is you lose all of your data - then we get to point at you and laugh. " -Brian, "http://www.talug.org/howto/rootboot.html"

[cybertron]

For one, you don't want to mount /dev/sda, you want to mount /dev/sda1 or something like that. That may be what is causing your problems, although I'm extremely surprised that it even let you run mount on /dev/sda. The first thing coming to mind since you can't mount that you should check is if your partition table is intact. You can run "fdisk -l" as root to check that out (that's a lower-case L).

Then again I have partition problems on the brain right now so maybe that isn't the issue.

[acid45]

I bet it was my anger after I screwed it up even worse that made me forget sda2 and not just sda...thanks!!!

YAY

Now I just feel stupid :P

[gehidore]

Now I just feel stupid :P

Life does that now and again.

[cybertron]

So everything's okay now?

[Pafnoutios]

Now I just feel stupid :P

We've started a new thread for that.

By the way, I recently lost a partition table, so I know how it feels. testdisk and gpart might be able to help.

[acid45]

So everything's okay now?

Nah, I took some time to try some things that you guys suggested, over and over. I also went and tried something I found on some tutorials for my distrobution. I don't know what my problem is but I think it might be something else.

I thought it was because I was missing modules that were needed for boot. One being reiserfs module, and the other being Silicon Image SATA support. 3112a to be precise.

I started a new thread for that but that issue has been resolved I think, well kind of.

http://justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?t=146208

I still get the errors listed under the section "Creating an initrd" http://www.slackware.com/~alien/dok...:kernelbuilding
Here are the errors.

VFS: Cannot open root device "802" or unknown-block (8,2)
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel Panic-not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown block(8,2)

As you can guess this is copied from the site, kernel panic. I went throught the tutorial at the top of the above mentioned paged to create a customer kernel, except I skipped right to the make 'oldconfig' part, since I already have the kernel I want, for now. Once I get this working, and booting, I might try and upgrade to the latest 2.6 kernel but I'll burn that bridge a thousand times when I get to it. I've checked and rechecked the lilo settings, if you want I can paste them for you, as well as my hardware layout.

The ONLY thing that I can think of that would still be producing this error, and I'm not entirely sure if it's true.

I think this may be hwat's happening, I'm working on this now

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/sla...i-think-3.html

I think I have a hardware issue.

What I've tried to diagnose software install issues
1 I tried downloading and burniong a new set of install disks, checking the MD5
2 I tried replacing the IDE cable from the CD-ROMs with 4 or 5 differnet cables
3 I've tried 2 different CD-ROMs
4 I tried installing 2.4 and then upgrading to 2.6 using test26.s and I've tried just installing 2.4 with sata.i

Things I have to try before I think I had expensive hardware failure
1 reseat all cables
2 replace SATA cable
3 disassemble and rebuild/reseat entire system (UGH)

Any other suggestions are welcome...

[cybertron]

Well, can you post your kernel's .config file? It should be in your kernel source directory. Also your lilo.conf. Have you checked the possibility that SATA->IDE emulation might have gotten turned on, like they mentioned in one of your links? That could cause your root partition not to be found.

[acid45]

Is that what this guy is trying to say?

Heh... I solve today this problem.

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/sla...i-think-3.html

I had almost given up, sticking with kernel 2.4.31. I think I will try it tommorow. I also downloaded fedora core 5. It's gona blow, nothing is gona be where it should be and everything is gona want to be done from GUI and tabs.
Thanks.

[cybertron]

Yeah, that's what I was referring to. Not sure how 2.4 kernels handle SATA, but if it changed the /dev names that could cause your problems with finding the root partition.

[m3rlin]

nop kernel 2.4 doesn't handle sata . you need 2.6 or above for it.

You could download 2.6.13 and using a Live CD like gentoo and recompile your kernel and enable SATA support, remeber that your drives will go from hda to sda.
Live Gentoo will detect your drives as SATA so they will be sda already