Lost boot of main partion

[fraytown01]

Hello,
Ive been running crunchbang on my system, and yesterday decided to try opensuse so i can install the novell client.

I ran the live gnome cd and during installation I shrank my main partition down and created a new partition for opensuse.

Installation went well other than sometimes programs close and make the part of my desktop that they occupied useless.

Question 1) I can see my crunch bang files through opensuse but i cannot find or boot into crunch bang.

question 2) Why are these programs closing and then killing my desktop? Say i have a Firefox in the top left of my desktop and it errors and closes. I go open Firefox again, anywhere that the old Firefox window was in ( not click able). My cursor will turn to the text cursor as soon as it enters the x y position. I have to restart the laptop to be able to click file or insert a web address.

[gogalthorp]

Possible reasons

You need to adjust the video driver. What video chip do you have? Did you install th propritary drive?

Was a a bad down load or burn, Did you check the iso checksums and run the media check function on the burned CD/DVD?

Have you tried a failsafe boot?

crunch bang is a Linux distro just like OpenSUSE. You don't run crunch bang from any other Linux it is it's own thing. You install it more or less as you would OpenSUSE. I suggest you read the instruction for crunch bang on a crunch bang site.

[fraytown]

The problem with the windows seems to have gone away.

I had crunchbang installed on my entire HDD for a few weeks now.

I loaded the live gnome opensuse 32 bit cd, selected to shrink my main crunchbang partition from 292 gig to 200 and format the other 92 gigs for suse.

When logged into Suse i can see my 200 gig partition and all my crunchbang files, but the grub does not show me any other volumes to boot from other than suse and failsafe suse

[fraytown]

everything on crunchbang is backed up but I installed virtual box on my crunchbang partition and inside my virtual box was windows 7 running C++ express. I need to get my .cpp file for class by sunday and really do not want to re write my program. That is the only file not backed up i need.

[gogalthorp]

Don't know what file system it uses but most are supported so you can mount the partition and get the data.

If you have it installed what is the problem? Maybe it does not show in the OpenSUSE Grub menu?

If so then you should be able to add it. Open a console (command Line) window and type

su -
then the root password when asked. Note this does not echo anything to screen just typer the PW
then
cat /boot/grub/menu.lst
post here
also need to see
fdisk -l
to see what the partitions are there

Please note which are OpenSuse and which are crunchbang

Note that crunchbang seems to be a Debian based distro so it likely using the newer Grub2 boot loader. You over wrote this in the MBR when you installed OpenSUSE if you took a standard install.

[fraytown]

# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Fri Apr 8 11:13:34 EDT 2011
# THIS FILE WILL BE PARTIALLY OVERWRITTEN by perl-Bootloader
# Configure custom boot parameters for updated kernels in /etc/sysconfig/bootloader

default 1
timeout 8
##YaST - generic_mbr
gfxmenu (hd0,2)/boot/message
##YaST - activate

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title GNU GRUB 2 -- openSUSE 11.4 - GNU GRUB 2
kernel (hd0,2)/boot/grub2/core.img root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST9320325AS_6VEL4KJP-part3 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST9320325AS_6VEL4KJP-part5 splash=silent quiet showopts vga=0x317

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title openSUSE 11.4
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.37.1-1.2-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST9320325AS_6VEL4KJP-part3 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST9320325AS_6VEL4KJP-part5 splash=silent quiet showopts vga=0x317
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.37.1-1.2-default

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- openSUSE 11.4
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.37.1-1.2-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST9320325AS_6VEL4KJP-part3 showopts apm=off noresume nosmp maxcpus=0 edd=off powersaved=off nohz=off highres=off processor.max_cstate=1 nomodeset x11failsafe vga=0x317
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.37.1-1.2-default


\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000e9fe6

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 419427067 209712510 83 Linux ////////////////////////// crunchbang
/dev/sda2 614010878 625141759 5565441 5 Extended
/dev/sda3 419428352 614008831 97290240 83 Linux /////////////////////// opensuse
/dev/sda5 614010880 625141759 5565440 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Partition table entries are not in disk order

i believe that sda1 is crunchbang and sda3 is opensuse

[gogalthorp]

The first menu entry does not belong to OpenSUSE since it references Grub2. But it is pointing to the wrong partition ie OpenSUSE instead of Crunchbang.

You may want to change the title to Crunchbang. But that is optional.
Change the kernel line to

kernel (hd0,0)/boot/grub2/core.img root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST9320325AS_6VEL4KJP-part1 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST9320325AS_6VEL4KJP-part5 splash=silent quiet showopts vga=0x317

I think that should work.

To edit become root as before and type
joe /boot/grub/menu.lst

[fraytown]

jtatum@linux-nsop:~> su
Password:
linux-nsop:/home/jtatum # /boot/grub/menu.lst
bash: /boot/grub/menu.lst: Permission denied


any reason why i cannot access menu.lst while in su mode?

[gogalthorp]

It is not an executable it is just a text file thus has no executable permission. You need to use a text editor to edit it. You can use any text editor such as vi, but vi is a bit of a steep learning curve so I recommend joe or install Midnight commander and start it with mc command