Curious...
> BTW, I know the data is still there because my kernel is on that
>drive and lilo can still run it, but of course it can't mount root, cause
>the file system info is wrong in the MBR.
Um. Well, it ought to be possible -- provided you haven't done anything
silly like write to the huge DOS partition it's created for you --
to write back in correct values for the location of each partition into
the MBR. After all, whilst the contents of the partition tables is
screwed up, that should be all.
The only way I can figure for you to do this will be to boot DOS and
use Norton [or similar] to look across the surface of the disk for
the start of each partition. The problem is that unless someone here
can provide you with some hex patten which can be located near the beginning
of an ext2fs file system, it's going to be almost impossible. I don't even
know if the swap partition will have such an identifier -- anyone?
However, if you are able to work out correct values, you can use Norton
to drop them back into the MBR (make sure you compute the size field
correctly!), everything should work again. The partition type code
for a linux swap partition is 82h, and that for an ext2fs one is 83h.
Best,
I.
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