Screwed up my linux partition by messing with volumes, help!

[badbit]

First of all, sorry about my english, it's not my native language.

I have a dual boot system, with three main partitions:

The first one is NTFS formated (has Windows XP installed), another FAT32 partition, for data storing, and my Linux partition.

I decided to delete my FAT32, and format it in ext3 to make my /home partition (not very sure of how to do that). I downloaded QTParted and did that, easily. But I didn't know how to automount it in the /home directory, and how to move my user folder to the new partition.

I was opening every program that looked like i could handle partitions. I came across that Volume manager, or something, and showed something like Volume00, and an Unassigned Volume. Stupidly enough, I joined the unassigned Volume to Volume00. And I still don't know what I did. I turned off the computer.

When I tried to use my computer (it is a laptop) a few hours later, I couldn't boot. All that i got was a grub command line.

I booted with Ubuntu Linux Live Cd, run cfdisk, and this is what i got:

Name Flags Part Type FS Type [Label] Size (MB)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
hda1 Boot Primary NTFS [] 13908.95
hda5 Logical Linux ext3 13563.49
hda6 Logical Linux ext3 [/boot] 106.93
Logical Free Space 633.35
hda2 Primary Linux LVM 11795.06

Not very organized, I know, but I wanted to delete everything and star from scratch.

hda1 is where my windows is.
hda5 is the ex-FAT32 partition (with nothing on it)
hda6 is my boot partition
The logical free space is something I could not allocate, I don't even remember why it is there.
hda2 is (or was) my main fedora core 4 linux partition

Now, i don't want to boot anything anymore, i was going to delete everything anyway, i just want to get whatever information I didn't backed up How could I do that? If i didn't screw up too much

Thanks in advance.

[daneel971]

I assume that you want to do a fresh install of FC4, saving your personal data, fixing the layout of your hd and having a dual boot wit win (are you sure about this latter? ).
Try this.
First of all, fetch an external hd. Boot you pc with knoppix and use partimage for cloning your wxp partition on it (I'm not sure partimage support NTFS - alternatively, try ntfsclone).
Then, mount somewhere your old FC4 installation and copy your documents from your /home to the external hd.
Now you have a backup of your data and a clone of your win installation - if something goes wrong, you can recover from them - with some patience
Unmount all the partition of you internal hd.
start qtparted.
Leave untouched the first NTFS partition (hda1); delete all of the others; create a primary ext3 partition (hda2 10/15 GB), then an extended partition on the remaining space. On the extended partition, create a logical swap partition (hda5), then a logical ext3 partition (hda6). Commit the changes and cross fingers.
Install FC4: choose manual partitioning with disk druid. Select hda2 for / and hda6 for /home.
install grub in hda.
at the end of the installation, reboot. edit the grub.conf file and add an entry for wxp (maybe it's created automatically, don't know for sure). mount somewhere the external hd and copy from it to your /home your docs.
Before trying all that, be sure to have well understood all the steps, make a checklist with all you need to do and ask for everything that doesn't seem clear.

[badbit]

Thanks for the advice.

But there's something else, that i forgot to tell you. When I try to mount hda2, i don't know what to put in the "-t" argument of the mount command. I tried

mount -t LVM /dev/hda2 /mnt/

...but it didn't work.

And yes, i'm seriously thinking about leaving windows forever, i really feel uncomfortable using it. Deleting the fat32 partition was a step towards forgetting about that hateful operating system. Still, I need to connect my TI-89 calc to the computer, and I have not been able to get TILP to work, nor Mplayer, can you believe it?

[daneel971]

I don't know about LVM, but I think that on LVM you have an ext3 filesystem - try passing the -t ext3 option to mount. Many users on this forum have LVM: ask for help on how to manually mount this kink of partition.

PS:
when you fixed your FC4 installation, we'll try the mplayer thing, ok?

[badbit]

I tried that, didn't work I will ask someone, or wait till someone answers here...

Thanks for your quick replies!

[daneel971]

can you mount hda6 and post your grub.conf?

[badbit]

Ooops, seems that I can't. This is what i get:

root@ubuntu:/home/ubuntu # mount -t ext3 /dev/hda6 /mnt/
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda6,
missing codepage or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so

I remember booting with the Fedora first instalation CD, and telling me that it couldn't mount /dev/hd6 :s

[daneel971]

no ideas, sorry.
Last try to recover your files (but it's a long shot): boot win xpx and try e2fsexplorer or similar utility for accessing ext2/ext3 partitions from windows.

[mgulbran]

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