From: mavroidi@acf2.nyu.edu (Telly Mavroidis) Subject: Re: SUMMARY: Rescuing Linux Partition Date: 11 Aug 1993 00:18:04 GMT
adam@csi.on.ca (Adam Trevor) writes:
>A few weeks ago I made a request for a method to save my linux partition that
>had been trashed by a Stoned variant.
I seem to have missed that thread when it first came around.
>The virus only trashed the boot table but I was out of luck since I had not
>recorded my partition table specs. A lesson learned! Anyway Chris gave me
>an awesome fix and I hope this helps those of you who encounter similiar
>difficulties.
I can't tell if you were in the following situation, but it may
help others:
Some viruses (including stoned variants), will move the
partition table somewhere else on the disk, and put garbage
where the part. table is supposed to be. Then if you boot off
of a DOS floppy and try to read the hard drive, you'll get a
message like invalid media, or something else pretty strange
due to the garbage.
BUT, if you boot off of an infected disk, the virus will allow
DOS to boot (by redirecting disk reads of the partition table
to the real part. table, I imagine). But unfortunately the
virus is in memory, and without the virus your disk won't
work.
IF this happens it is possible to save your disk. Boot off of
an infected disk, then save the partition information on a
floppy (there are utilities to do this see below ), then boot
off of a clean disk and restore the partition table from the
floppy.
There is a shareware utility that automates this procedure
available from simtel20 archives in dskutl/brinf126.zip. And
under the norton utility disk tools there is are options called
"create rescue diskette" and "restore rescue diskette" that do
this also.
If you create a bootable disk with the partition information be sure
to disinfect it before booting.
Hope this helps...
ObLinux: Stay away from DOS and this won;t happen to you :-)