My sorry tale of failure, poor judgement and ultimate success
Richard Ford <[email protected]> Thu, 07 Apr 2005 10:35:33 +0800
| Newsgroups | gmane.org.user-groups.linux.beijing.tech |
|---|---|
| Organization | Creditude |
| Message-ID | <1112841333.5444.39.camel@peach> |
--===============0743045479== Content-Type: multipart/related; type="multipart/alternative"; boundary="=-8JyLVlu5skS/2Za3e988" --=-8JyLVlu5skS/2Za3e988 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="=-EP0bX00GmhmXUsj3PRSX" --=-EP0bX00GmhmXUsj3PRSX Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ok, below is how I hosed and then rectified my system. Background ------------- Had FC3 and W2K installed. W2K was clapping out on me, so I decided to reinstall. I realised that doing this will hose my grub installation (MBR) and there was no way to prevent windows from doing this. Because I usually install windows first and then linux - and my FC3 had taken me a long time to get "just right" I was not about to go and screw that over. I really wanted to install XP - because I like to watch subscription internet TV and the realplayer client for Linux doesn't support this service under Linux. My Plan --------- Assume my request is common and many people have done it before. Turn to our good friend google and start the search. I found answers like: A) "Make a boot floppy" B) "have the FC3 rescue disk handy" C) "Bootstrap from inside a booted windows" D) "make this binary file and mount it with the windows loader" - A, no luck, the 2.6 kernel series won't fit on a floppy (and my old Dell won't usb boot) - B, well duh! - C, Keyi jieshao "fangbian" de yisi gei ni ma? - D, Hmmm, effort. Not fond of that, hence why I chose to use Linux and not windows (and before that OS/2 and DrDos). My Actual Plan ---------------- Backup and just go for it and solve it as the problems come along. The Tale ---------- Windows XP installed fine and all was cool, except no booting to FC3. It is now 11PM and I will need my system back in operational status by 9AM and I want to watch the Rugby in South Africa on the tube at 4am - so I needed to sleep soon. And sport is always more important than computers - but not work (9am). The Panic ----------- Agh! Curse out MS a few times. Drink another beer and try to think outside the box. "All I have to do is install GRUB again?" So how do I do that? Answer, "grub-install" So off I boot with the FC3 rescue CD. But it has no grub-install. So I mount my system again in r/w mode. mkdir /mnt/oldsys mount /dev/hda5 /mnt/oldsys Success! Go to /sbin and execute "grub-install /dev/hda" No luck, the system can't find all these dependency files that makes grub-install work. I look about and discover that "grub-install" is just a wrapper script. So I go about editing it. It still won't work! So I chroot the system to /mnt/oldsys "chroot /mnt/oldsys" Now Grub-install works - but it can't find any /dev points. The real Panic and my introduction to the new udev system in FC3 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is getting late and the fact that I shan't be watching NSW crush Natal is dawning on me. Not happy. I can't figure out what there are no devices in /dev. Then it dawns on me UDEV! I did not boot with this system and the go through the proper UDEV startup sequence, I just chrooted it so no wonder! I then discover that with some more editing of "grub-install" I can get it to work while the system is not chrooted. Bingo! Almost ----------------- Grub is back! But the graphical backdrop is all stuffed up and nothing bootstraps (XP or FC3). Then I remember that while doing the reinstall of XP, I also deleted a 512MB spare swap partition I had made for when I was stuffing about (unsuccessfully) with the various new flavours of suspend to disk and hibernation in the 2.6 kernel. And having done by this stage a lot of reading on grub, I knew that it had a new device mapping scheme, not unlike windows, so all my logical partition mounts were off by one number. I adjusted my grub.conf accordingly, saved and rebooted. The Lessons -------------- - Don't touch your bread and butter PC when you do not have the time to run the risk of it being off. - Pay up for a satellite dish and then will have no need for subscription net TV. - When faced with a desire to do something and a task that may seem too hard. Don't run - just keep at it and when things fall into place, you can add one more subset of knowledge to your Linux quiver. - Post your activities online to help others in the future. Seems at times that making money from Linux is much easier than taming the beast that it is. But hey, that is why we all love it and we all together created it for our and everyone else's use! ;-) Cya, Richard. --=-EP0bX00GmhmXUsj3PRSX Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 TRANSITIONAL//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; CHARSET=UTF-8"> <META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="GtkHTML/3.3.2"> </HEAD> <BODY> Ok, below is how I hosed and then rectified my system.<BR> <BR> Background<BR> -------------<BR> <BR> Had FC3 and W2K installed. W2K was clapping out on me, so I decided to reinstall.<BR> <BR> I realised that doing this will hose my grub installation (MBR) and there was no way to prevent windows from doing this. Because I usually install windows first and then linux - and my FC3 had taken me a long time to get "just right" I was not about to go and screw that over.<BR> <BR> I really wanted to install XP - because I like to watch subscription internet TV and the realplayer client for Linux doesn't support this service under Linux.<BR> <BR> <BR> My Plan<BR> ---------<BR> <BR> Assume my request is common and many people have done it before. Turn to our good friend google and start the search.<BR> <BR> I found answers like:<BR> <BR> A) "Make a boot floppy"<BR> B) "have the FC3 rescue disk handy"<BR> C) "Bootstrap from inside a booted windows"<BR> D) "make this binary file and mount it with the windows loader"<BR> <BR> - A, no luck, the 2.6 kernel series won't fit on a floppy (and my old Dell won't usb boot)<BR> - B, well duh!<BR> - C, Keyi jieshao "fangbian" de yisi gei ni ma?<BR> - D, Hmmm, effort. Not fond of that, hence why I chose to use Linux and not windows (and before that OS/2 and DrDos).<BR> <BR> <BR> My Actual Plan<BR> ----------------<BR> <BR> Backup and just go for it and solve it as the problems come along.<BR> <BR> <BR> The Tale<BR> ----------<BR> <BR> Windows XP installed fine and all was cool, except no booting to FC3. It is now 11PM and I will need my system back in operational status by 9AM and I want to watch the Rugby in South Africa on the tube at 4am - so I needed to sleep soon. And sport is always more important than computers - but not work (9am).<BR> <BR> The Panic<BR> -----------<BR> <BR> Agh! Curse out MS a few times. Drink another beer and try to think outside the box. "All I have to do is install GRUB again?" So how do I do that?<BR> <BR> Answer, "grub-install"<BR> <BR> So off I boot with the FC3 rescue CD. But it has no grub-install. So I mount my system again in r/w mode.<BR> <BR> mkdir /mnt/oldsys<BR> mount /dev/hda5 /mnt/oldsys<BR> <BR> Success!<BR> <BR> Go to /sbin and execute "grub-install /dev/hda"<BR> <BR> No luck, the system can't find all these dependency files that makes grub-install work. I look about and discover that "grub-install" is just a wrapper script. So I go about editing it. <BR> <BR> It still won't work!<BR> <BR> So I chroot the system to /mnt/oldsys<BR> <BR> "chroot /mnt/oldsys"<BR> <BR> Now Grub-install works - but it can't find any /dev points.<BR> <BR> <BR> The real Panic and my introduction to the new udev system in FC3<BR> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------<BR> <BR> It is getting late and the fact that I shan't be watching NSW crush Natal is dawning on me. Not happy.<BR> <BR> I can't figure out what there are no devices in /dev. Then it dawns on me UDEV! I did not boot with this system and the go through the proper UDEV startup sequence, I just chrooted it so no wonder!<BR> <BR> I then discover that with some more editing of "grub-install" I can get it to work while the system is not chrooted.<BR> <BR> <BR> Bingo! Almost<BR> -----------------<BR> <BR> Grub is back!<BR> <BR> But the graphical backdrop is all stuffed up and nothing bootstraps (XP or FC3).<BR> <BR> Then I remember that while doing the reinstall of XP, I also deleted a 512MB spare swap partition I had made for when I was stuffing about (unsuccessfully) with the various new flavours of suspend to disk and hibernation in the 2.6 kernel.<BR> <BR> And having done by this stage a lot of reading on grub, I knew that it had a new device mapping scheme, not unlike windows, so all my logical partition mounts were off by one number. I adjusted my grub.conf accordingly, saved and rebooted.<BR> <BR> <BR> The Lessons<BR> --------------<BR> <BR> - Don't touch your bread and butter PC when you do not have the time to run the risk of it being off.<BR> - Pay up for a satellite dish and then will have no need for subscription net TV.<BR> - When faced with a desire to do something and a task that may seem too hard. Don't run - just keep at it and when things fall into place, you can add one more subset of knowledge to your Linux quiver.<BR> - Post your activities online to help others in the future.<BR> <BR> <BR> Seems at times that making money from Linux is much easier than taming the beast that it is. But hey, that is why we all love it and we all together created it for our and everyone else's use! <IMG SRC="cid:1112841204.5444.35.camel@peach" ALIGN="middle" ALT=";-)" BORDER="0"><BR> <BR> Cya,<BR> Richard.<BR> <BR> <BR> <BR> </BODY> </HTML> --=-EP0bX00GmhmXUsj3PRSX-- --=-8JyLVlu5skS/2Za3e988 Content-ID: <1112841204.5444.35.camel@peach> Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=smiley-4.png Content-Type: image/png; name=smiley-4.png Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAABAAAAAQCAYAAAAf8/9hAAAC/UlEQVR42n2Tf2iUdRzHX9/v8zy3 u91ulnO5pXGXUUsK1yIY9ke0CDQiodbQKCOnNieaIkKI/yRhf0QgCeEqViKUYgUOnTE9G5WtjlqB TV1bsnl0tV93u93ux3PP93meb/8sKBNf8P7jw/v9+fz1/sD/iQI7gB7AWdApoGPB+w/ihvnI/bHK bfu2NLF2zUrMcAw8G2d+mIGBi+w/nGE46XQBnTc7cOFAZ+MTO1/bgDBCuIVxnPwIQhgYwXqMQA2q MMahd+O8fWLmAvAkgLGw/MGbOx55fueuF/FKKVRxHF/NIaQFgO+kcQtjgGZ1cwyjOLXiuyG7DuiV QLSx4fat2zvX4dmTeOVphDCwvUqkWcVk2mfDnkGEtPCdLEJabH95CfctN7YBUQk83XNoMUJaTE+M cuT476x9pZfmZ3sI1D7D8fMeP/2a4a3uGaqWt6Ly1zBDdbzadhvAowLomrn0eocqXMeoqCVU+xga E2mYlKb6sSINtG58gzOnTzGf/BR7+hukWUni52u07p04aS5bdudmAN/NURZ3oSe+RBhhhLTQGsqZ BKd7Pic3fhSVGwLAtaeoX2IAPGem02kQJrP5EHJRHYb0CHhZtG+CdtFeiezIO2h3Hu17OI6Dqxzy RR8AadvlXu0WqDSm6O87xkzWx6p+AF/l8N08vmejvRLaV7jKJjNnEwwvJTXtASQk0FecOEsoUs/6 9RuJx8+RGOgjuLgZK7ISzBo8X9L/w1+07RnmnqZ2RpNlrg7lAU4IILrq3sh437GnMCruIFD9IL8M fsvQpUE+OiO4fGWYRVUGhw+2sablIZJXPiN+cYwPT2b4LaUb/mli94Etsfatm5pwi0kisU1Y4RUI IfHsSTQalR/lcuJj/ph0Od8/y9G46gI6/13lrzrW1bTs3RwmEKxGyAp8lWN2rkShpCkrzfU/FYkf 53j/rPM18PjNnqn77jrZ/kJLFasaQ4SDglJZk533GUspvjiXZSTFJ8BL3IIosBv4HlBAGrgKvAc8 fGP4b4kpTGRKdd96AAAAAElFTkSuQmCC --=-8JyLVlu5skS/2Za3e988-- --===============0743045479== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline