nickstah

ok, thanks for the advice. I've done a bit more research and have pulled these files from my system. It seems that I've screwed up the mounting of my devices and I'm not quite sure how to put them right again. The "none / unionfs" does not appear in any tutorials and I assume it's this that I have made a mess of. I have one SATA HDD partitioned approx half to Linux, half to Windows. I hope this is a simple fix and that I can learn quickly. "/etc/fstab" contains the following none / unionfs rw 0 0 /dev/sda1 /media/hd ext2 sync,relatime 0 0 /dev/sda5 /media/hd2 vfat unmask=0022,users,iocharset=utf8,sync,noauto,exec 0 0 /dev/sr0 /media/cdrom auto unmask=0022,users,iocharset=utf8,sync,noauto,ro,exec 0 0 "fdisk -l" shows the following Device Boot Start End ID System /dev/sda1 * 1 15353 83 Linux /dev/sda2 15354 30401 5 Extended /dev/sda5 15354 30027 b W95 FAT32 /dev/sda6 30028 30401 82 Linux Swap/Solaris and "Mount" gives the following none on / type unionfs (rw) none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw) /dev/sda5 on /media hd2 type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,sync,users,umask=0022,iocharset=utf8)

After typing mount -t /dev/hda1 /mnt in the terminal, it came up with the help on syntax on "mount". Do I have it exactly right above or should I change it in some way? I tried mount -t /dev/hda1 /mount and that seemed ok, but then when I tried to chroot to /dev/hda1, it could not find the directory.

Arctic, can I just clarify a couple of things from the above, in an attempt not to screw it up even more. I should boot the Mandriva Live CD and open a terminal as a root, then: mount -t/dev/hda/mnt (Should this be hda or sda?) grub-install /dev/hda (same question) Exit and reboot as normal. I'm ok with the last bit but please could you spell it out for the first bit as this is a bit beyond me. Thanks

Yes, I think it's Mandriva One, hence no repair option. Is there anything else I can do using GRUB for example?

Thanks for the suggestion. My install disc only gives me the following options after hitting F3. F1 is a help screen. Boot from hard disk Installation Installation ACPI disabled then it gives me boot options: a) installer options Install Network options b) Kernel options splash acpi ide Is there anyway I can get to the repair option as hitting F1 does not give me a prompt.

That's part of the problem, it no longer gets to this stage. The GRUB message comes up before the Mandriva boot menu. After my initial changes and reboot, the screen did appear and it would proceed as normal before reaching a point where it gave me a message about "ext2 not being a valid drive" - sorry I can't remember the exact phrase now. Then it would just hang. Then I used the Live CD to see if I could sort it out. Through the Live CD I went back into the Mandriva partitioning tool to unmount the external drive. Since I did this, even the Mandriva screen does not appear before the GRUB message. It goes without saying that I should have not tried to fix it without help but if you can dig me out of this hole, I will be mightily relieved! PS I still have internet access through another Windows computer from work (or through the Live CD if necessary), hence these messages.

Please could you clarify how and where I should I hit "e"? I can't seem to get into the GRUB configuration. I tried pressing "e" during the boot phase but the GRUB17 message appeared again. Can I make the changes in a terminal window as I have access to this through the Live CD. On the plus side, with the live CD, I was able to get the following from the "fdisk - l" query: Boot ID /dev/sda1 * 83 Linux /dev/sda2 5 Extended /dev/sda5 b Win95 FAT32 /dev/sda6 82 Linux swap/Solaris This makes sense because when I set up the system originally, I partitioned the HDD approximately 50% for Linux and 50% for Windows, just in case I wanted to install Windows after all. I never have and never will! I have one internal SATA drive. The size of the partitions agrees with my original partitioning, so I think this means that I have not repartitioned the HDD by mistake. The external drive was definitely sdf.

I unplugged the external drive and got the same GRUB message as before. I'm pretty certain I was editing the correct drive though. The HDD was SDA and the external SDF. It was SDF that I was editing and did not touch SDA. Also, after I had done the disk partitioning and before I used the Mandriva CD ROM; the normal Mandriva start-up sequence launched and only stalled when it found a problem with the mounting of the partitions. It's only since I used the Mandriva CD ROM that the GRUB message appeared. From my limited knowledge and searches under GRUB 17 errors, I think I have screwed up the mounting of the partitions. Is there anything I can try or do I have to re-install everything? This will mean I have lost everything, so it's obviously a last step for me!

Mandriva 2007 only, no Windows I've been happily using Mandriva for 4 months and this morning attempted to backup my system to an external hard drive. The external hard drive was inherited from a Windows system and therefore I could not write to it. I attempted to use Mandriva's disk partitioning tool to reformat the external drive for use with Linux. The drive is 250gb and I reduced the existing windows partition to 100gb and created a new 150gb partition for Linux. Everything seemed fine in Mandriva but I could not find my new partition on the external drive so I rebooted. Initially I got a message saying that the ext2 was not valid....superblock etc, so I tried to repair from the Mandriva installation disk. As I got Mandriva One, all it did was open a Mandriva session from the CD rom and did not repair anything. Now when I reboot, I get the message: GRUB Loading stage1.5 GRUB loading. please wait.... Error 17 and the system hangs. I desparately need help in trying to recover the system but I'm afraid the more poking about I do, the more damage I do. If anyone can help, I would be extremely grateful as I only have a partial back up of what is on the drive. Thanks in advance PS I have access to a terminal using the Mandriva disk, so I need help in mounting the drives correctly. Thx [moved from Installing Mandriva by spinynorman - welcome aboard :)]