From: Remko Lodder (remkoelvandar.org)
Date: Mon Feb 02 2004 - 03:52:39 CST

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A friend of mine used this program;

R-Linux: Located at http://www.r-tt.com
it helped us restore partition info which was not accessible due freebsd
anymore. perhaps it works for openbsd as well,

cheers

--

Kind regards,

Remko Lodder
Elvandar.org/DSINet.org
www.mostly-harmless.nl Dutch community for helping newcomers on the
hackerscene

-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: openbsd-misc-bounceslists.elvandar.org
[mailto:openbsd-misc-bounceslists.elvandar.org]Namens marmango
Verzonden: maandag 2 februari 2004 10:44
Aan: miscopenbsd.org
CC: nickholland-consulting.net
Onderwerp: [Openbsd-misc] same mistake: sucessful installation but
thepartition table is empty

> ...
>
> What happened is somehow you specified an offset of 0 for the start of
> the first partition. Block 0 just so happens to be where the
> partition table is loaded (along with the MBR). So, what happens to
> be where the MBR and partition table is supposed to be got overwritten
> by the PBR instead (which looks like an empty partition table,
> curiously. Hmmm... I wonder what the new PBR looks like. heh. Guess
> I got some testing to do... 8)
>
> This is workable, but in general, a bad idea for a few reasons (for
> one, if someone were to re-install the MBR code on your system -- a
> usually acceptable and safe proceedure -- your system will be in big
> trouble). You *could* leave your system this way, but I would
> *really* recommend pulling any data and config off the thing and
> re-partitioning the system.
>
> In general, you want to leave the first track unallocated. In *your*
> case, your first OpenBSD partition should start at sector 63, not
> zero. That comes from your drive's geometry, reported by fdisk:
> "geometry: 4865/255/63" (it will vary on different drives, BIOSs, and
> interfaces).
>
> More info on what is going on, plus what those annoying TLAs I just
> threw around meant:
> http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#Boot386
>
> BTW: Good problem report, good details. 8)
>
> Nick.

I' m in the same situation on an old notebook armada without CD drive
nor NIC...only a floppy :-(
And because I couldn't make the Cirrus Logic 7548 graphics card work
under xfree86 (in openbsd that is, haven't tried it on linux yet), I
decided to remove openbsd keeping the data in the other partitions
intact, because the only way to backup/restore is through the parallel
port connection This is the way I worked until now- I used linux to copy
the installation files in a folder in the ext2 fs. But now I cannot boot
linux because linux's fdisk sees only the opebsd's partitions (msdos' is
worse...sees an empty disk like openbsd's).
There should be a way to restore the MBR into the dos compatible
format...I don't care loosing the disklabel...
My goal is to save the data on the fat32 and ext2 partitions.
Aggelos. :-\
PS: I attached output from openbsd's fdisk and disklabel and linux's fdisk
# /dev/rwd0c:
type: ESDI
disk: ESDI/IDE disk
label: ST91420AG
flags:
bytes/sector: 512
sectors/track: 63
tracks/cylinder: 16
sectors/cylinder: 1008
cylinders: 2794
total sectors: 2816352
rpm: 3600
interleave: 1
trackskew: 0
cylinderskew: 0
headswitch: 0 # microseconds
track-to-track seek: 0 # microseconds
drivedata: 0

16 partitions:
# size offset fstype [fsize bsize cpg]
  a: 1552320 0 4.2BSD 2048 16384 328 # (Cyl. 0 - 1539)
  b: 165312 1552320 swap # (Cyl. 1540 - 1703)
  c: 2816352 0 unused 0 0 # (Cyl. 0 - 2793)
  i: 544257 1717695 MSDOS # (Cyl. 1704*- 2243)
  j: 552321 2262015 ext2fs # (Cyl. 2244*- 2791)
Disk: wd0 geometry: 698/64/63 [2814336 Sectors]
Offset: 0 Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting Ending LBA Info:
 #: id C H S - C H S [ start: size ]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 0: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0: 0 ] unused
 1: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0: 0 ] unused
 2: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0: 0 ] unused
 3: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0: 0 ] unused
Disk /dev/hda: 64 heads, 63 sectors, 698 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 4032 * 512 bytes

16 partitions:
# start end size fstype [fsize bsize cpg]
  a: 1 1540 1540 4.2BSD 2048 16384 328
  b: 1541 1704 164 swap
  c: 1 2794 2794 unused 0 0

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