[ale] grub rescue

Rich Faulkner rfaulkner at Tux86.org
Wed Feb 22 15:12:36 EST 2012


I don't think the ALE Central Meeting has had this as a topic for a
while.  

Michael....you have link(s) to the video you speak of?  

Rich



On Wed, 2012-02-22 at 14:34 -0500, Michael Trausch wrote:

> I can present on it again at some point, if desired.
> 
> I actually know of one other group of people that would be interested
> in the video of it as well... there was a thread on gentoo-user about
> grub vs. grub2 recently there.
> 
> --
> Sent from my Ice Cream Sandwich-powered HTC G2
> Please excuse any typos.
> 
> 
> On Feb 22, 2012 11:02 AM, "Rich Faulkner" <rfaulkner at tux86.org> wrote:
> 
>         When I returned to Linux I tried dual booting 9.10 w/X64 but
>         GRUB2 soon got the better of me.  I've never really gotten the
>         hang of it (but haven't spent that much time with it either).
>         Having several HDD in that former system; I left X64 on one
>         disk (and a borked GRUB2) and installed Fedora 12 on a
>         separate HDD w/GRUB (something I was more comfortable with).
>         Thus I got my Fedora installation running on a separate
>         (physical) disk and GRUB chain-loading X64 from the Windows
>         disk.  Then I set the BIOS to boot the GRUB disk and thus I
>         washed my hands of it and rarely booted into XP.  (My noob
>         approach to a workaround until such a time that I built a new
>         machine). 
>         
>         New machine has now been in service for a long while and I'm
>         running ONLY 11.04 on it and am quite happy.  I do run a
>         Virtualbox VM of XP for some work that I do for a museum in
>         Colorado in CorelDraw 10; but that's about how far I am
>         willing to let Windows run on my machines anymore.
>         Unfortunately, our studio requires baremetal installs of
>         Windows for hardware support to our specialized broadcast
>         audio cards.  Digigram doesn't have Linux drivers for their
>         PCX924 cards thus we're stuck with "Bill".  We at least keep
>         them offline and do all online work with Ubuntu boxes.  
>         
>         Do we have any good GRUB2 pros in the group?  Could be a good
>         topic for some of us at a monthly meeting.  Just a
>         thought.....
>         
>         Rich in Lilburn
>         
>         
>         On Tue, 2012-02-21 at 22:48 -0500, Michael Campbell wrote:
>         
>         > FWIW, after some scary episodes with dual booting and
>         > Windows' general anti-social behavior with it, I've moved to
>         > running a Windows host and my Ubuntu "machines" in a VM.  A
>         > Linux host with a Windows as a VM also works, but for my use
>         > not as well.
>         > 
>         > 
>         > With sufficient hardware, they run pretty well together, and
>         > I get the best (or at least the necessary bits) from both
>         > worlds, simultaneously, and I can even run my VM off a USB
>         > drive and carry it around with me and have my complete
>         > environment wherever I go.
>         > 
>         > 
>         > I use VirtualBox as my VM container.  No real problems so
>         > far to speak of.  I'm a Java server side developer, so am
>         > running WebSphere tools and Oracle on the VM as my day to
>         > day routine.
>         > 
>         > 
>         > On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 3:51 PM, Rich Faulkner
>         > <rfaulkner at tux86.org> wrote:
>         > 
>         >         ...and to think...Richard Stallman professed the use
>         >         of "no password" as a password to keep systems open
>         >         and free.  Unfortunately the word "ethical" is lost
>         >         on too many in the world thus we are pressed to
>         >         encrypt our file systems.  
>         >         
>         >         Glad you got your partition mounted and files
>         >         copied!
>         >         
>         >         As for making the drive bootable again...reinstall
>         >         GRUB?
>         >         
>         >         Rich 
>         >         
>         >         
>         >         
>         >         
>         >         On Tue, 2012-02-21 at 15:28 -0500, John Pilman
>         >         wrote: 
>         >         
>         >         > Here's an update on my progress with the scrambled partition table and
>         >         > encrypted home directory.
>         >         > Using dd I copied the hard drive and did the rest of this on the copy.
>         >         > I ran testdisk from a live boot usb flash drive and was able
>         >         > re-identify the unallocated partition as a linux partition and write
>         >         > the partition table.
>         >         > After a boot or two, gparted saw the partition as sda5.
>         >         > Long story short for now, Ubuntu 11.04 includes the ultility
>         >         > encryptfs-recover-private which was able to mount the encrypted
>         >         > /home/john and I have now copied my files.
>         >         > Caveat #1 - it took me a while to learn that my live boot usb Ubuntu
>         >         > 11.04 had to be 64 bit since my original partition was 64 bit.
>         >         > Caveat #2 - some of these steps were very time consuming.
>         >         > 
>         >         > I next plan to try to see if I can make the hard drive bootable again.
>         >         > 
>         >         > ...John
>         >         > 
>         >         > On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 4:05 PM, John Pilman <jcpilman at gmail.com> wrote:
>         >         > > Thanks for the ideas. I am starting with a second hard drive and the
>         >         > > dd command as Derek said and I am going to try to recreate how I go
>         >         > > into this mess.  Understanding, at his point, is more valuable than
>         >         > > the little bit of data since my last last backup.
>         >         > >
>         >         > > To partially answer some questions:
>         >         > > The disk started with Windows 7 and I installed Ubuntu 10.10 with dual
>         >         > > boot.  So the partition utility is the one used during the Ubuntu
>         >         > > install.  Also, I vaguely remember a question about encryption during
>         >         > > that process.  I can't say for sure whether the partition or just the
>         >         > > home directory was encrypted.
>         >         > > Also, I'm not sure where the boot record was.
>         >         > >
>         >         > > If possible, I will reinstall everything and then find those answers.
>         >         > > At, the speed this dd is going, I have some free time to do more research.
>         >         > > ...John
>         >         > >
>         >         > > On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 7:12 PM, Jim Lynch
>         >         > > <ale_nospam at fayettedigital.com> wrote:
>         >         > >> On 02/18/2012 05:19 PM, Derek Atkins wrote:
>         >         > >>> Once you make your copy, try making all your unallocated space into a
>         >         > >>> single linux partition.  Then you can dd the first few MB off into a file
>         >         > >>> (running a RAMDISK rescue environment, of course) and use 'file' to see if
>         >         > >>> you got it right.  Were you using LVM?  Then from there you might be able
>         >         > >>> to get lucky and find your partition endpoints.
>         >         > >> Since you can now with grub2 boot from LVM that might be the answer.
>         >         > >> I'm surprised that grub didn't recognize that.  I'd find a live cd or
>         >         > >> Knopix cd that understands LVM and see if the partition contains LVM
>         >         > >> volumes before I did anything rash.
>         >         > >>
>         >         > >> Jim.
>         >         > >> _______________________________________________
>         >         > 
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