[CentOS] Reinstalled Windows and GRUB - Cannot boot Linux - fstab and grub.conf errors?

Lanny Marcus

lmmailinglists at gmail.com
Sat Nov 8 20:10:02 UTC 2008


Background: This is a dual boot (Windows XP and CentOS 5.2 (32 bit)
box. There were four (4) NTFS partitions. The C partition got full. I
deleted the 4 NTFS partitions and did a clean install of Windows XP,
into one (1) NTFS partition.
I knew that I would need to install GRUB again and I did that, using
the CentOS 5 Installation DVD. When I tried to boot into Linux, no
joy. this is the GRUB error I got:

Booting 'CentOS (2.6.18-92.1.17.el5)'
root (hd0,2)
Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x8e
Kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-92.1.17.el5 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet

Error 17: Cannot mount selected  partition
Press any key to continue

(same error, trying to boot the 2 older Linux Kernels)

The CentOS 5 Installation DVD apparently is now damaged (Murphy's
Law). I have available to me:
(a)  CentOS 5.2 i386 Live CD (I am running on that, as I write this email)
(b)  Knoppix Live Disk, V.5.1.1
(c)  SystemRescueCD V.0.2.15

The partitions on my hard drive, as shown by QTParted on the Knoppix
Live CD are now:

01   /dev/hda1  ntfs   Active
02   /dev/hda2 ext3              (/boot)
03   /dev/hda3 unknown      (CentOS LVM)


My belief is that  /hda3 is not mounted. If I click on the "Local Hard
Drives" Icon under "disc" it only shows hda2 (the Linux /boot
partition).   How and where do I fix that?


When I view /etc/fstab as centos user with the CentOS 5.2 Live CD, I
see that the line I had to mount the NTFS data  partition (E: when I
had 4 NTFS partitions) showed it as /dev/hda6
Now, the only NTFS partition, C, is /dev/hda1.     Viewing it as
centos user, in gedit, it is read only. When I try to view it as root,
it shows me a /etc/fstab file that apparently is created by
the LiveCD and doesn't show the Windows partition. How do I edit the
/etc/fstab file so I can change it from /hda6 to /hda1? Here's the
file contents:

/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
LABEL=/boot             /boot                   ext3    defaults        1 2
devpts                  /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
tmpfs                   /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
proc                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
sysfs                   /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
/dev/hda6       /mnt/win   ntfs-3g  rw,umask=0000,defaults 0 0

TIA! Lanny



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