🚀 go-pugleaf

"preamp" <preamp@spamblock.dingoblue.net.au> wrote in message
news:3a9a135a$0$25468$7f31c96c@news01.syd.optusnet.com.au...
>
> No luck...
>
> Both a 'check' and a 'copy' of hda5 result in ...
>
> Error: Could not detect file system.
>
> So, how do I write a standard FAT32 boot record to it?  (or was that boot
> record in my /boot?  I have my doubts about that, as I reinstalled linux a
> few times as I experimented with various options, so the mistake was
> probably made on an earlier install - and I never noticed until later)
>

There is a backup boot record here;

-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          512 Feb 24 23:03 boot.0345

Now is this the time and date that you re-wrote the /dev/hda5
boot record?

If yes then;

dd if=/boot/boot.0345 of=/dev/hda5

If no, then you can still backup /dev/hda5 before going further
using a raw copy command.  First make another partition
on /dev/hdb that is the SAME size as /dev/hda5 then;

cp /dev/hda5 /dev/hdbNUM

NUM is the number of the new partition.

Now what you want to do is re-write the first 512 bytes of
/dev/hda5 with what would normally appear in a FAT32
filesystem.  I don't know exactly what is there but if you
create another FAT32 filesystem (may need to be the
same size) then boot linux and (please check dd argument
below because I'm doing from memory, which isn't very
good);

dd if=/dev/hdbNUM of=/tmp/boot_record bs=512 count=1

bs is block size and count is number of blocks.  Check size
of file by;

ls -l /tmp/boot_record

Should be 512 bytes.  If everything OK then copy this boot
record to /dev/hda5;

dd if=/tmp/boot_record of=/dev/hda5

Now reboot and see if /dev/hda5 is OK.

Keith