Lost installation

[grendian]

A while ago, I installed Debian onto a partition, while having already installed both windows xp and red hat. since then, I have reinstalled windows and red hat and have not been able to boot debian since. i'm not sure where the boot image is. can i simply configure grub or lilo from red hat to try and boot from the debian partition?

[serz]

Yes, you can try with a boot disk as well.

[nonidentity]

Can u boot into RedHat?

I u can then u r half way there!

run cfdisk and look at the partitions

they will look like /dev/hda1 or /dev/hda2 etc. Note these!



from RedHat U can use grub-install /dev/hda (note hda is if u only have a single hard drive)

Then reboot and from grub u can boot Debian - why

Well at grub press 'c; and get a command prompt

type in the following:

root (hda0,0)

kernel /vmlinuz /dev/hda1

boot

-------------------
the above is the following
hda0,0 means hdisk 1 and /dev/hda1

or try hda0,1 means ........ /dev/hda2

and so on - do u get it

the first line ends with 0 meaning partition 1

the second line ends with 1 for partition 1

SO....

increment the counters if it fails until you boot into Debian

once you found it U need to update a file in /boot/grub/menu.lst found in you RedHat boot and not your Debian other wise U will repeat this endlessly!

Go for it

The Windows needs almost the same but needs a chainloader+1 to fool it into loading.

Cheers!

[nonidentity]

Also boot from CD and goto shell

ypu will have to mount the redhat partition and modify the lilo by hand if that is waht you are using! else

do as per described in prev mail.

I finf grub is better than lilo for multi-boot

[nonidentity]

ooops!

read as:

root (hd0,0)

kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=dev/hda1

boot

SORRY!

[nonidentity]

the line

kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1

is actually correct.

I check properly and entered it manually on grub

SORRY!!!!!:D

[grendian]

Hey man, thanks a lot. That certainly would have done the trick had I not somehow lost the data on that partition. I didn't realize this, but there only exists an empty directory called lost & found. anywho, I guess I'll just go through the debian install again, but thanks for your help. i now have a better understanding of how grub works. piece of cake. happy holidays to you and yours.

[Satanic Atheist]

I'd check that.

Lost+Found is created on a partition immediately after formatting.

Are you sure you've got the right partition? Other than that, it sounds like you wiped it when you installed RedHat.

James