[ubuntu-us-mn] Fwd: fdisk -l

Kevin Bullock kbullock at ringworld.org
Sat Nov 27 04:38:31 GMT 2010


On 26 Nov 2010, at 10:26 PM, Thomas Rieff wrote:

> I was updating some things on my laptop and it would not bring a login screen back up.
> I can get back into it with a livecd. Did a fdisk -l and got the following. Tried to re-install grub but no luck.
> My concern is the partitions sda2 and sda5 cover the same area in the hard drive.

That's normal with a BIOS partition table. You'll notice that sda2 actually covers all the blocks of sda5 _and_ sda6. sda1 is a 'physical' partition, sda2 is the 'extended' partition, and sda5 and 6 are 'logical' partitions within the extended partition. This is a remnant of the very first IBM PC, which only allocated enough space in the partition table for 4 partitions. Thus to allow more partitions on a drive, the 'extended' partition acts as a sort of pointer to a secondary partition table.

> Any ideas???
> Tom
> 
> ubuntu at ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l 
> 
> Disk /dev/sda: 30.0 GB, 30005821440 bytes 
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3648 cylinders 
> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes 
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes 
> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes 
> Disk identifier: 0x9e239e23 
> 
> Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System 
> /dev/sda1 * 1 2295 18434556 7 HPFS/NTFS 
> /dev/sda2 2296 3648 10867942 5 Extended 
> /dev/sda5 2296 3584 10353861 83 Linux 
> /dev/sda6 3585 3648 514048+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris 
> ubuntu at ubuntu:~$ sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt 
> ubuntu at ubuntu:~$ sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/ /dev/sd5 
> /usr/sbin/grub-probe: error: cannot stat `/dev/sd5'. 
> Invalid device `/dev/sd5'. 

Well, /dev/sd5 isn't the name of any device under Linux. Anyway, GRUB uses a different naming scheme for drives (for hysterical reasons); you probably want something like `grub-install '(hd0)'` (note the single quotes; this is assuming you want GRUB installed to your MBR, the usual way).

pacem in terris / mir / shanti / salaam / heiwa
Kevin R. Bullock




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