On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 10:43 AM, Simon Matter simon.matter@invoca.ch wrote:
Well, I have the disks in hand - all 4, but there is the overriding level of apprehension. Is there a reference to what I should do *if* I cannot reboot that I should read?
As I said before, you may need to run grub-install, but I don't know for sure. And then, you have to know where to install grub, and I don't know where you have installed it. In fact I don't know how we could know
This information is normally stored, commented out, in /boot/grub/grub.conf.
because it really depends on how your BIOS boots the box. It can be that it's installed into the MBR of /dev/hdc, then you should be able to install it using 'grub-install /dev/hdc'. But, since the disk is named /dev/hdc, it's most likely that there is also /dev/hda and /dev/hdb, and then it's also likely that grub has been installed into the MBR of /dev/hda. Who knows?
Don't assume this. If the PATA cable is plugged into a second PATA controller port, and nothing or a CD drive on the first controller port, it would explain how he wound up with /dev/hdc has his hard drive.
That said, check disk 1 by putting it into another computer, and chose 'linux rescue' at the boot prompt. Then it will boot using a root filesystem in ram, and configure network if you want and then tries to find any CentOS installation in the disks, and mount them if it finds one. Maybe it wont find one but it should find it on your server. Then it will mount it as something like /mnt/sysimage. You can then 'chroot /mnt/sysimage' and fix things.
Yeah, I love the live CD's for this as well.
Good luck! Simon