Hi.

I'm not sure if this is the right place for this post. Please let me know if not.

I have obviously made a big mistake.

I installed Porteus Kiosk to my hard drive on my HP 355 G2 laptop.

Now I can't use my Linux Mint Debian 2 Betsy/cinnamon 64-bit at all. I can't boot anything except Porteus, and can't access my Mint files. I hope they weren't deleted!

I have googled everything I can think of, thought it was maybe the bootloader, tried boot-repair-disk, no luck. When I tried to deinstall Porteus, it couldn't find any OS at all.

I idiot of course hadn't got round to making a backup (OK, I know what you're thinking!)

The readings of Boot-Repair:- http://paste.ubuntu.com/25075301 and 25075357

fdisk -l gave me

/dev/sda1 * 2048 6143 2048 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 6144 1849343 921600 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 18949344 1953525167 975837912 83 Linux

I installed Mint with a swap partition and an extra partition for the home folder. If I could at least access the home partition, that would be enough for me

Can anyone out there please help me?

I tried booting a live mint debian from DVD. When I clicked on "999 GB Volume" it said "no items". Now I'm really worried!

James

Nothing to do to help you, sorry. You may have Googled around a bit, but did you look at the Porteus documentation? From their web page:
This means that it does a format of whatever device you tell it. So, your entire drive was formatted, and a new OS loaded. Chances are you won't be able to recover anything at this point, since it's not only formatted, but new partitions created, new OS loaded, and the system booted and used. Lots of stuff has been overwritten at this point, probably well past anything that a recovery tool could find.

1 members found this post helpful.

so you have experience in installing Linux by two OS's at least.
a third should not be that hard. logic states.

so what happened?

did you do as the post #2 states allowed this new other Linux to decide where to put itself? if yes then a full take over probably has happened. Ubuntututu too likes to do that, but it has an option called "do something else"

if you did that something else , like partition out your hard drive before you told that new install where to go and this other Linux perhaps didn't listen to you. But you show this as testimony of your hard dive.
1,2,4 where is 3? a no answer required question. Just an observation.
they are all type 83

been there done that, which is lost everything I had on my hard drive. Luckily most everything was able to be gotten again and what was not was not really all that needed to begin with.


I do hope this is the same case with you.

dropbox and other means to back up what one considers really needed is a good habit to get into.

sorry for your lost, A wake is in order.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks a lot, TBone and BW-userx.

Porteus should come with a health warning.

Is there really no way a professional data rescue service, say, could retrieve anything?

Otherwise I'll just have to pick myself up, dust myself off and start all over again....

One positive is that I found this site, which seems a really good place for advice.

Apparently it does as pointed out in the post above by TBOne. You could try TestDisk photorec at the site below. Make sure you read the Step By Step guide before beginning. Good luck.

https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

1 members found this post helpful.

It did, and was clearly outlined and stated in their own documentation about installing, and they're not to blame if folks didn't read it.
Yes, there really is no way anyone can recover anything for you, period. If the disk was dead, a recovery service MIGHT be able to do something. But since you intentionally repartitioned it, formatted it, loaded a new OS over your old data, then booted the system at least once (further scrambling everything), then there's not much anyone can recover.

The good part is, you lost nothing important; because if your data was important to you, you would have had a backup of it. ALL disks fail, period...just a matter of time. So even if you didn't overwrite your own data, you would have lost it all one day anyway.

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No doubt posted on some notice board in the local planning department in Alpha Centauri.

I have long since given up reading install instructions for the various distros. However, I have so little trust in the devs I always install to a stand-alone old box I keep just for the purpose. So even if they trash the BIOS (as has happened) I am no worse off.
Poor indictment of the state of things really.

It is actually under the FAQ tab on the Porteus home page (link below) where it specifically states the following under "Can I install Porteus to my hard drive?:

The link below to another page on the Porteus site explains dual-booting with windows and installing Porteus to it's own partition. It should also work for another Linux, disregarding the specifics of windows such as EasyBCD.

http://www.porteus.org/component/con...a-windows.html

Excellent reference.
I've never had BIOS issues, but with pretty much any distro, it'll let you partition/format as you see fit. However, this is a 'single purpose' distro, designed for kiosks with limited functionality. When you have to put something in the hands of questionably skilled 'field techs', a simple "put disk in and press enter" design is better, since if the machine is broken, a reload is the easiest/fastest way to get it going again.

But in defense of Porteus, it was very plain and listed in several places.

perhaps because of incidences like this they should rethink there page warning on this subject and set the font size to really really big and blinking. its not like that cost much to do.

True, but again in defense of them; how many times does it have to be done??? If someone just simply read the installation instructions, it tells them. If they just read the FAQ it tells them. Already have it in multiple places...how many does it take?

Did a network conversion years ago. Wrote up a document complete with pictures of login boxes, etc, with a 72 point font front page that said "READ ME FIRST!!!" which we would tape to peoples monitors with their login info/temp passwords. Monday morning comes, and we get dozens of calls...we ask them where the document is, and most pulled it back out from the trash, never having looked at it. Can only make things so plain and do so much before it falls on the user.

I know it is still up to the user whatabe to read the read mes but How many people love to sit back in a chair and enjoy reading their favorite docs on something?

I'd set a page like that just to be the opposite of facetious.

C'mon, really??? No one reads (or WRITES) them because they enjoy it..it's part of the job. Either you do it or you don't. The instructions exist; whether you read them or not is your choice. You could put things in 1,000 different places, fonts, blinking lights, etc., but you can't make someone read them or follow them.

They did due diligence; the OP did not, period.

OK OK this is getting ridiculous ---

just apply the ole adage:

when all else fails - read the instructions -

Much of this thread has nothing to do really with helping the OP.
It would be helpful if out of topic discussions take place on PM's.

james53 is a new member and is trying to fix his system.