[TriLUG] Grub Error

[Tim Jowers]

Deepan,

We did this in a class one time. You can dd the mbr back over there. Now, if
your BIOS says "no OS" then that must be MBR if I'm thinking correctly; but,
if your MBR code says "no GRUB" then the MBR is OK. You can actually dd out
the 512 bytes of the MBR and then run the strings command on it to see the
messages it can give. Something like
dd /dev/sda1 of=my_mbr bs=512 count=1  BUT DO NOT QUOTE ME as you can mess
things up if you dd the wrong way. :-O

I think you can boot the Fedora disk for instance and instead of choosing
install then choose rescue. Then restore grub or do the dd etc.

Oh yeah, my point is you can copy the MBR from a like disk and use it too.
E.g. if you have a lab of computers. Or use a tool to restore the mbr.


All that said, your original message suggest you do not have
1. bad MBR
2. bad GRUB
but have
3. Missing OS message from GRUB

You can use the e ky during the GRUB screen to go in and fiddle with where
it looks for the OS. It might well be your OS listing labeled as "default"
is the Winders and so you can use the arrow keys and also set another
default. Just from what I'm guessing from your oriniginal message. Could
also be sda3 became sda2 or some such I think.? E.g. the partition number
for your Linux has changed in and you need to change it in GRUB (menu.lst or
grub.conf).

Best,
TimJowers

On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 10:06 AM, Joseph Mack NA3T <jmack at wm7d.net> wrote:

> On Wed, 2 Apr 2008, Kevin Hunter wrote:
>
> > At 8:56p -0400 on Wed, 02 Apr 2008, Deepan wrote:
> >> [Lost master boot record, how do I get it back?]
>
> back up all your mbr's. I put them in /boot/mbr/
>
>
> Joe
>
>
> --
> Joseph Mack NA3T EME(B,D), FM05lw North Carolina
> jmack (at) wm7d (dot) net - azimuthal equidistant map
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