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From: Christoph Kukulies <kuku@gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de>
Message-Id: <199701310715.IAA15260@gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de>
Subject: Re: how to fixit
In-Reply-To: <9701310112.AA15407@fyeung8.netific.com> from Francis Yeung at "Jan 30, 97 05:12:59 pm"
To: fyeung@fyeung8.netific.com (Francis Yeung)
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 1997 08:15:04 +0100 (MET)
Cc: questions@freebsd.org
Reply-To: Christoph Kukulies <kuku@gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de>
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> 
> Greetings,
> 
> 	During upgrade from 2.1.5 to 2.1.6, I made a dum mistake
> in doing sync/sync/reboot after I merged my old /etc/ files into the 
> upgraded /etc directory instead of doing an exit. 
> 
> 	The disk partitions got yanked and the disk can not be booted
> anymore because of invalid partition. 
> 
> 	Using the "fixit" floppy, "disklabel -r wd0" indicates that
> the label is invalid. There is no vi in the "fixit" floppy. 
> 
> 
> 	What will be my best shot in recovering the disklabel (slices/
> partitions etc) ? Or anything from the disk.
> 
> 	Thank you for your help.
> 
> 	Francis

I once had a similar problem and wrote a little program that scans
the disk for disklabel entries resp. start of a filesystem.

Running it over a disk gives the offset of possible former FS
starting blocks. You can then dd skip=... if=/dev/rwd0a of=part1 coun=...
and make a /dev/vn0 of that file. This requires to have the disk
attached to another system where upi have plenty of space and 
would be difficult to do with a fixit.flp.

If you want I can sent you this little program. It's a dirty hack though...

> 

--Chris Christoph P. U. Kukulies kuku@gil.physik.rwth-aachen.de