Linux by Sankar San

Why?!

Oh Why?! Did it happen to me?! I remember selecting Keep old partitions and use free space, when I installed Redhat. Well, I checked %: /dev and found a coupla extra hdxs. Mounted them n' discovered that my old linux partitions were intact. Retrieved all my downloads into my current partition. n' wonder of wonders! I could also mount my NTFS partitions in 2.4.26!

Well.. but I found out that the new installation had used up all the 7 GB I'd freed from my Windows partitions using Disk Management (Right-click My Computer, select Manage and navigate in Computer Management). I approached Manu n' he told me the higher numbers were the newly created partitions n' so I could delete the old linux / and swap partitions to free up space. I launched %: fdisk. Note that hitting 'p' and 'd' to your heart's content doesn't affect anything permanently, until you deliver the final death-blow 'w', which writes the table to partition and exits. Well, all was well until it popped up a scary message saying the new table is unacceptable and that the kernel would use the old table till reboot.

I typed in reboot n' waited. The computer presented me with.. GRUB in text! A grub> prompt waited for me to respond. I gazed stupidly at the screen, thoughts tumbling one over the other. The prospect of Windows being wiped out struck me full n' hard in the face. I got up groggily n' tottered over to Manu's desk. Breathlessly, I told him what happened.. He sauntered over n' casually asked me to insert the Redhat Installation CD. The bash prompt came up n' he entered that dreadful command: %: fdisk. We watched n' waited. He gingerly pressed 'p' n' it printed the partition table..

Hurrah! My Windows partitions are intact! I thought I'd truly lost both my OS's. I couldn't care less if Linux was wiped out, which it wuz as soon as Manu deleted all the ext partitions.! He restarted the computer n' it brought up the Redhat Install screen without an Upgrade option. I set to the task of reinstalling everything.. again.. This time I made no mistake. Remove all Linux partitions n' Install Redhat.

I'm back to square one. Up n' running.. on 2.4.20-8.
PHEW! TGIF! Have a great weekend!!

posted by Aslan @ 4:46 am