From: d88-jwn@nada.kth.se (Johan Wåhlin) Subject: Beware of MS-DOS fdisk Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 13:22:56 GMT
The other day I wanted to split a Linux partition into two. I wanted
to add one partition for DOS.
I first used the Linux fdisk. After that I thought (_clever_ me !)
that I should use DOS fdisk also, as to make DOS happy. I therefore
fired up DOS and used fdisk to first remove the newly created DOS
partition and then add it again as an DOS primary partition.
After that I tried to boot Linux (I use LILO to boot it from the HD).
No avail the system told me - in swedish, so it must be the DOS fdisk
that said it - to put in another diskette. This diskette is not valid.
I think fdisk.exe saw that the newly created DOS-partition was not
bootable and therefore put that code in the boot block.
I then tried to run /etc/lilo/install again, that did not help.
Well, now I was tired so now it all gets really nice:
I messed around with the bootsector so bad that I deleted the partition table.
So I now have a question as well as wanting to warn about DOS fdisk.exe
I suppose I can scan the HD for the start of each Linux partition. I'd
therefore like to know what pattern represents the start of an
extended file system. I need to find the start of at least one
partition where I (used to) keep rather important data.
-- /Johan W}hlin (.. where the } really is an a with a ring above it.. 8))