[PLUG] Re: grub and fdisk problems mean what?

[eehouse]

> > If I'm understanding correctly, I could modify the partition table to
> > indicate that there's an ext2 partition, hda1, beginning at the start
> > of the disk and running, say 15G.  Even if that's wrong, it'd give me
> > a much better chance of getting at that /boot/grub/stage1 file, after
> > which I could put the partition table back the way it should be with
> > no harm done to the files themselves (everything but the partition
> > table having been -ro all the time.)  Right?
> 
> In theory, I believe so.  In reality, I've never tried it to know if it 
> helps.  I'm also not 100% sure if the 'stage1' file contains an exact 
> replica of the partition tables you want.  I would assume it does since 
> grub builds the stage1 file before writing it to the MBR, and thus 
> partition table.  If you used grub or anything similar to play around 
> with your 8MB card, then the stage1 file is probably wrong.  Otherwise 
> it's worth a shot.

No need to take that shot.  The problem is fixed.  testdisk worked
beautifully.  I booted off the live cd, downloaded it to /tmp, and
ran.  It first found what looked like the right partitions, but had
the last two marked as "delete" and said they were corrupt when I
tried to change that.  But it also mentioned that the number of heads
per cylinder was set to 16 and recommended 255.  When I made that
change it then found all four partitions, said they were fine, and let
me write the new table out.  On reboot fsck was run, but didn't report
finding any errors.  And now life is good again.

I did run grub from this machine against the CF card on /dev/sda.  Does
that mean I should now reinstall grub on this machine just to make sure
the stage1 file is what I want?

Live CDs rock, but this group rocks more!  Daniel, I owe you a beer
if you're ever in Corvallis.

Thanks,

--Eric
-- 
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