cr said: > 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
I've used 'map' without any damages, but Win* didn't want to finish booting using it. > 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. ...because it was written with open minds! I second this plan, and strongly recommend people to use two drives when possible if you're going to multi-boot w/ windows. That way WinDos can play their games with the drive A's partition table, and Linux can sit on a fdisk/cfdisk/whatever made partition table in drive B-ZZ99. I've been through frustration like you've described more than once trying to mix windows and linux on the same disk. That's not to say I don't do it because in one computer I only have space for one IDE HD, but where I can avoid it I do. -- Jacob Trying out SquirrelMail -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
