On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 10:43 AM, Simon Matter <simon.matter at 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