On Friday 19 September 2003 21:12, cr wrote: (DOS / Win95 / Win98 install)
> Next step, see if I can boot the whole thing with GRUB.... > > cr "Progress" report... :) The 'aaaargh' was prophetic.... Well, it all booted happily with Grub while it was Drive 1 in my spare PC. So I put it in this box as /hdd, DOS would boot OK, but while I was faffing around with 'map' and 'hide' trying to make Windows behave consistently, *something* (whether me with Grub or Windows thinking it ought to be on Drive 1) went and munged /dev/hda5 where Debian lives. First I knew of it was 'kernel panic' when trying to boot Deb. I found that /hda1 ( /boot) was OK, but /hda5 (root) and /hda6 ( /swap) seemed to have got themselves lost in /hda2. And I *hadn't* backed up the mbr, nor did I have a record of the exact partition size.... Soooooo... I got a spare drive, installed Debian on it intending to see if I could salvage the old /hda5 somehow, and in the midst of my usual battle to the death with dselect I came across a little utility called gpart which guesses partitions. And, it works! OK, relying on it is a bit like driving your car into a power pole to check if the seat belts work, but still, I'm damn grateful to its author. Conclusions: 1. Back up the MBR and everything else, first! 2. Be very, very careful when using 'map' to swap drives around 3. It's probably safest to let DOS/Windows occupy Drive 1, where in its blinkered arrogance it thinks it belongs. Linux can sit somewhere else. We all know who's really in charge and it isn't Windows ;) cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
