RE: [SLE] Urgent! Need help!
Thanks. Anders just pointed out I should have gone into the installation option instead of the recovery option. I'm going to try that next. Meanwhile, I've been trying to recover my Windows machine from a backup. Since I did an out of the box re-installation of it, I had no device drivers, so I couldn't get on my small network to get to the Windows backup I did last night. Luckily, I have a usb device, so I copied to Windows backup onto that and plugged it into my machine. I'm currently copying that to my windows partition. Since it's USB, it takes 2 hours to copy. Once I get that onto my desktop over there, I should be able to recover my Windows system. Then, I'll go back and insert the Linux Installation CD and see if I can VERY CAREFULLY find the option under that Anders mentions. THE VERY LAST THING I WANT TO DO AT THIS POINT IS MESS UP MY LINUX PARTITION!! I have a full Oracle Enterprise Edition 9.2.0.5.0 server on it. I do have a full backup of that externally also, but I'd have to get that off of my network. However, I could get if via ftp from my Linksys Ethernet storage device, so I should be able to fully recover, even if I somehow mess up getting my MBR back in place. However, I'd just as soon not have to go through that, so I will definitely proceed very cautiously when I go in via the SUSE diskette. I only did one Linux installation in my whole life, which was when I put this system on my machine. I have ABSOLUTELY NO EXPERIENCE doing what I'm about to try to do. Yours truly, Greg Wallace -----Original Message----- From: Ingolf Hosbach [mailto:Ingolf.Hosbach-2@ruhr-uni-bochum.de] Sent: Tuesday, August 17, 2004 10:49 PM To: Greg Wallace Subject: Re: [SLE] Urgent! Need help! You have to enter "root" and your passwort. But I don´t think you will be happy after this. Because you will find your Linux without KDE. That´s why I would prefer the "boot installed Linux"-selection. It´s much easier to work with kde. Ingolf Greg Wallace wrote:
I just tried to use a tool called Partition Magic to resize my Windows partition down to allow more space for my Linux SWAP partition. This tool completely hosed my Windows partition. I had to completely re-install Windows (fortunately, I had a full backup for it that I made yesterday over on another Windows machine). Now, however, I can't get back into Linux!!! I put in the original installation CD and when the screen comes up, I
select
RESCUE. Everything seems to be going ok, but I get to a place where I get the following prompt -
Rescue login:
I have no idea what to enter here. I tried using my regular user id and password, no luck. When I say root, it prompts me with -
Rescue:` #
I have no idea what this is asking me for. Any help greatly appreciated. I have to go out for a couple of hours and will check for messages as soon as I return. I would think this is a pretty simple problem once you know the secret. I looked in my SUSE Administration guide and a Linux command handbook and couldn't find this in either. I am running 8.1 Professional.
I will be out for a couple of hours. I'll check back then. Hopefully, someone out there can tell me how to get through this.
Yours truly, Greg Wallace
Thanks. Anders just pointed out I should have gone into the installation option instead of the recovery option. A Windows install will remove LILO or GRUB from the MBR, but will not affect your previously installed Linux system. Therefore, booting from
On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 00:20:52 -0800
"Greg Wallace"
Thanks. Anders just pointed out I should have gone into the installation option instead of the recovery option. A Windows install will remove LILO or GRUB from the MBR, but will not affect your previously installed Linux system. Therefore, booting from
Ok. I did what you said and was able to successfully log into my old
system. I tested several things out and everything seems to be just as it
was. The only thing left is to re-install grub into the MBR. Now that I
know my Linux system is sounds, I think I will postpone that step. Right
now I'm trying to recover my Windows system and that is a more difficult
task. I successfully installed Windows off the Windows CD and then managed
to get the latest backup onto that stripped down (no drivers) system and ran
the restore from that backup. It seemed to work fine, but now, every time I
start it, it keeps going through a sequence like --
1) Start boot
2) Show the Windows startup screen
3) flash the BIOS
4) Restart
5) go through 1-4 again (though sometimes it doesn't restart but simply
shows the Windows startup screen again immediately after the previous flash.
In watching what happens on my hardware, it would appear that it's testing
various devices each time (Video Card, mouse, keyboard, etc.). I only have
about 6 different things that would need BIOS confirmation (keyboard, mouse,
monitor, USB, CD, floppy). I'm beginning to think that it's going trough my
entire registry and anytime it sees a piece of hardware referenced, it's go
back to the BIOS to get a confirmation that the Bios that it sees in the
registry is one that DELL has in it's machine firmware (making sure the link
can be connected during a real Windows session). Since it's testing each of
these hardware devices over and over, I guess it's simply going through the
entire registry and sending these back down to the BIOS one at a time. Why
in the hell wouldn't it just sort the list down to get the 5 or 6 unique
entries and then just test each of those once!! If I'm the BIOS, at some
point I'd abort and put out the following message --
Windows keeps asking me to check the same damn devices over and over again.
I've had it with this turkey. Dell is shutting down!
All of this leaves me where I don't want to go ahead and get grub
reinstalled until this process is complete. Once I put grub in, I would
have to be sitting at the machine so I could cursor down to the Windows
entry on the Linux start-up screen each time this Bios flash happened. It
would be like Chinese water torture. The machine went through that loop
beginning early yesterday evening and was still doing it at 1PM today! I
may have to go on a week or two vacation to allow this thing to get through
all of those registry entries.
Thanks for the good information.
Yours truly,
Greg Wallace
-----Original Message-----
From: Jerry Feldman [mailto:gaf@blu.org]
Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2004 5:26 AM
To: suse-linux-e@suse.com
Subject: Re: [SLE] Urgent! Need help!
On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 00:20:52 -0800
"Greg Wallace"
On Wednesday 18 August 2004 06:23 pm, Greg Wallace wrote:
1) Start boot 2) Show the Windows startup screen 3) flash the BIOS 4) Restart 5) go through 1-4 again (though sometimes it doesn't restart but simply shows the Windows startup screen again immediately after the previous flash.
How much memory do you have in that machine?? If you're running win98 and have over 1gig ram, that can cause the problem! Win 98 will choke big time when you get to much ram. Happened to me with 1.3 Gigs. reducing to less than 1 G stopped the constant reboot. Drove me nuts! RA
On Thursday, August 19, 2004 @ 12:06 AM Richard wrote
On Wednesday 18 August 2004 06:23 pm, Greg Wallace wrote:
1) Start boot 2) Show the Windows startup screen 3) flash the BIOS 4) Restart 5) go through 1-4 again (though sometimes it doesn't restart but simply shows the Windows startup screen again immediately after the previous flash.
How much memory do you have in that machine?? If you're running win98 and have over 1gig ram, that can cause the problem! Win 98 will choke big time when you get to much ram. Happened to me with 1.3 Gigs. reducing to less than 1 G stopped the constant reboot.
Drove me nuts! RA
Forget everything I said about this. I was not doing the recovery in the proper manner (I'd never done one). I ended going back to square one and trying again and this time I deciphered the ASR recovery process correctly and it worked perfectly (and quickly). Greg Wallace
Just to mention, I usually fix this in a different way: Assuming that your linux partition is ok and its number is the same (you haven't created/deleted partitions, e.g. still hda2), another option is to boot the CD into rescue mode, and after get the # prompt (as root), execute 'grub' You'll se a prompt in a arrow style, like grub> Then execute grub> find /boot/grub/stage1 it will return something like (hd0,2) then do grub> root (hd0,2) ...<some output here> grub> setup (hd0) ...<some output here> the argument to the 'root' command is the entire parentesis, and to the 'setup' command is the part before the comma. If find cannot find a proper location, *perhaps* your linux partition is also damaged. Anyway, you can always use 'fdisk -l' in the root prompt to replace the find command above; guess in which partition is your /boot and convert to grub notation: hda2 -> (hd0,1) hdb5 -> (hd1,4) Every reinstallation of Windows is followed by these steps and worked to me everytime. Good luck! Marcos Lazarini Greg Wallace wrote:
Thanks. Anders just pointed out I should have gone into the installation option instead of the recovery option. I'm going to try that next. Meanwhile, I've been trying to recover my Windows machine from a backup. Since I did an out of the box re-installation of it, I had no device drivers, so I couldn't get on my small network to get to the Windows backup I did last night. Luckily, I have a usb device, so I copied to Windows backup onto that and plugged it into my machine. I'm currently copying that to my windows partition. Since it's USB, it takes 2 hours to copy. Once I get that onto my desktop over there, I should be able to recover my Windows system. Then, I'll go back and insert the Linux Installation CD and see if I can VERY CAREFULLY find the option under that Anders mentions. THE VERY LAST THING I WANT TO DO AT THIS POINT IS MESS UP MY LINUX PARTITION!! I have a full Oracle Enterprise Edition 9.2.0.5.0 server on it. I do have a full backup of that externally also, but I'd have to get that off of my network. However, I could get if via ftp from my Linksys Ethernet storage device, so I should be able to fully recover, even if I somehow mess up getting my MBR back in place. However, I'd just as soon not have to go through that, so I will definitely proceed very cautiously when I go in via the SUSE diskette. I only did one Linux installation in my whole life, which was when I put this system on my machine. I have ABSOLUTELY NO EXPERIENCE doing what I'm about to try to do.
Yours truly, Greg Wallace -----Original Message----- From: Ingolf Hosbach [mailto:Ingolf.Hosbach-2@ruhr-uni-bochum.de] Sent: Tuesday, August 17, 2004 10:49 PM To: Greg Wallace Subject: Re: [SLE] Urgent! Need help!
You have to enter "root" and your passwort. But I don´t think you will be happy after this. Because you will find your Linux without KDE. That´s why I would prefer the "boot installed Linux"-selection. It´s much easier to work with kde.
Ingolf
Greg Wallace wrote:
I just tried to use a tool called Partition Magic to resize my Windows partition down to allow more space for my Linux SWAP partition. This tool completely hosed my Windows partition. I had to completely re-install Windows (fortunately, I had a full backup for it that I made yesterday over on another Windows machine). Now, however, I can't get back into Linux!!! I put in the original installation CD and when the screen comes up, I
select
RESCUE. Everything seems to be going ok, but I get to a place where I get the following prompt -
Rescue login:
I have no idea what to enter here. I tried using my regular user id and password, no luck. When I say root, it prompts me with -
Rescue:` #
I have no idea what this is asking me for. Any help greatly appreciated.
I
have to go out for a couple of hours and will check for messages as soon as I return. I would think this is a pretty simple problem once you know the secret. I looked in my SUSE Administration guide and a Linux command handbook and couldn't find this in either. I am running 8.1 Professional.
I will be out for a couple of hours. I'll check back then. Hopefully, someone out there can tell me how to get through this.
Yours truly, Greg Wallace
participants (4)
-
Greg Wallace -
Jerry Feldman -
Marcos Vinicius Lazarini -
Richard