stevemassey

Hi all,

I'm new to these forums, and have every little Linux experience. My question may not be relevant here, but i figured i would give it a shot.

I have a Gentoo linux box running on an old Dell server. Recently i've attempted to convert the image to VMWare using their convertor tool. However i hit an issue (which was resolved in the end, but i think it may be the cause of the issue i'm hitting now).

Basically the Dell server had a Diag partition (i think) at the start of the hard drive (only 20MB in size), but when the convertor tool attempted to convert the Gentoo server, it scanned the server and it looked at the first partition attempting to find an OS. Obviously it couldn't find an OS on the Dell diag partition and failed.

Someone in our department managed to convert the image, but removed the Dell partition during the conversion process. So we have the image now on our vmware server, but when we try and boot the server it fails.

Firstly, we are able to get to the Grub screen and it lists booting to Gentoo or the Dell partition, when we select Gentoo it begin to load and then stops.

I'm just wondering if when we removed the dell partition (i.e. the first partition) whether it was cleanly removed. And due to this the Linux partition has moved forward one "slot". i.e. 0,0 rather than 0,1 (if that makes any sense), but Grub or what ever determines where Linux should be still thinks it's on 0,1.

When i attempt to boot to the Dell partition in Grub i get;

rootnoverify (HD0,0)
make active
Chainloader +1
Error 13; Invalid or unsupported executable format

Booting to Gentoo i get;

root (HD0,1)
Filesystem type unknown, partiton type 0xf
Kernel /boot/kernel-2.4.28-gentoo-r7 root=/dev/sda2
Error 17: Cannot mount selected partition.

Any advice or pointers in any direction would be greatly appreciated.

Lakshmipathi

post your output of command
so that people from here can understand your problem more clearly

Is it root (HD0,1)? I normally seen them in small letters
like root (hd0,1)

__________________
- Lakshmipathi.G
-------------------
FOSS India Award winning ext3fs Undelete tool and tutorials www.giis.co.in
First they criticize you,Then they laugh at you,Then they fight with you,Then you win. - M.K.Gandhi
-------------------

stevemassey

Sorry, hd in lowercase

Where would i type the fdisk command you mentioned? All i get is the grub loader, and the options of the command line (c) or editing the different options (e).

Lakshmipathi

If you have live-CD boot through it and ran above said command.

If you don't have Live-CD

grub has auto-complete option goto grub command line:
the type
and press TAB ,that will tell you available partitions.

And also try this command from grub command prompt:
those outputs will be useful to analyze your problem.

__________________
- Lakshmipathi.G
-------------------
FOSS India Award winning ext3fs Undelete tool and tutorials www.giis.co.in
First they criticize you,Then they laugh at you,Then they fight with you,Then you win. - M.K.Gandhi
-------------------

stevemassey

Right - done that, and this is what i get;

If i type in root (hd0,

I get;

"Error 11: Unrecognised device string"

If i type in geometry (hd0)

I Get;

Drive 0x80: C/H/S = 1024/255/63, The number of sectors = 20049120, LBA
Partition num: 0, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83

I think i could be well out of my depth here.

Lakshmipathi

I'm still trying to understand your problem with gentoo.

Seems like you have only one partition,try re-installing grub.that might help.
If you have Linux Installation CD ,go to rescue mode and the re-install grub using command,

Following thread might help you.
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/ubu...ce-string.html

__________________
- Lakshmipathi.G
-------------------
FOSS India Award winning ext3fs Undelete tool and tutorials www.giis.co.in
First they criticize you,Then they laugh at you,Then they fight with you,Then you win. - M.K.Gandhi
-------------------

darkrose0510

You've only got one partition, and this is trying to boot from the second one!
1st line change (hd0,1) to (hd0,0)
3rd line change root=/dev/sda2 to root=/dev/sda1 and try again.

You will likely need to make similar changes to /etc/fstab when/if you get it to boot too.

__________________
Inventor of '{' and '}' - patent pending

A computer without a Microsoft operating system is like a dog without bricks tied to its head.