Re: lost partition table

[Craig Shelley <craig@microtron.org.uk>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1447 bytes --]

On Fri, 2006-03-24 at 13:55 +0000, ild0012@raven.londonmet.ac.uk wrote:
> Hello folks.
> 
> i am using slackware linux(2.6.14 with reiser4 patch) on x86_64 and was trying to install free_bsd on a separate partition.
> well, during that instalation , accedentualy i have pressed a wrong key , so my partition table is owerriten by something else , but i realized this streight away and stopped the instalation process .


I once did this by running fsck.reiser4 on the whole disk, instead of on
the first partition.

luckily, I wrote down what was in /proc/partitions, and reconstructed
the partition table with help from hexedit to check the exact alignment
of the partitions.

As for the first partition on the disk, I had let fsck.reiser4 run to
completion, fixing thousands of errors, with the various rebuild options
turned on. Obviously this had caused a lot of damage to the file system,
with it being off-set from the beginning of the disk. Amazingly
re-running fsck.reiser4 on the actual partition seemed to do the trick,
leaving only a few libraries corrupt.

Quick tip: I found that about 0x11044 bytes in from the beginning of a
Reiser4 partition, you find the string "ReIsEr40FoRmAt". I am sure other
file systems have similar magic strings which can be searched for using
hexedit, enabling the partition table to be fixed.


-- 
Craig Shelley
EMail: craig@microtron.org.uk
Jabber: shell@jabber.earth.li

[-- Attachment #2: This is a digitally signed message part --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]