Greetings,

I just made a series of newbie mistakes when I knew better...ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR DATA. I didn't; mistake #1

I was trying to install Zenwalk on a system that already had Xubuntu and 64 Studio. I think I may have overwritten one of the previous installations, and messed up the bootloader. Right now I'm running the Xubuntu live version...I'm using my computer minutes after ruining my installed OS. Try that with Windows

I could not figure out the partitioner. I installed onto a section I thought was blank, but I don't know. The other partitioners I've used would easily let me set up a partition in unused space, but I could not do this--then installed anyway. Mistake #2

#3 is I told it not to install LILO, because I figured it has GRUB already, and I could configure it later. GRUB returns Error #17 How do I get in there and configure it?

I tried running cfdisk, and it said it couldn't open the disk. Same with fdisk. How do I look on my drive to see what partitions are still there?

I hope I haven't lost all my data. I'm grateful for any help you can give me.

Thanks,

Paul in Seattle

Really depends what you've actually done - deleted partition(s), overwritten partition(s), changed disk geometry ...
I'll presume "fdisk -l" doesn't work - been a while since I've had fdisk refuse to open a disk. Try the following and post the output

I got:

dd: opening `/dev/hda': No such file or directory

Substituting /dev/sda I got:

dd: opening `/dev/sda': Permission denied

I put in the Dapper installation disk and used the partitioner. No problem accessing the partitions.

Partition sda1 is now an xfs format; it was ext3 before.

Looks like I overwrote my lovingly tweaked Xubuntu partition with all its data. Damn. I knew better, but sometimes I lack impulse control.

<sigh> Now that I have apparently replaced Xubuntu with Zenwalk, how do I get it to boot?

--Paul in Seattle

Sorry, I keep forgetting to tell people to be root ...
Haven't used Zenwalk yet, but you should be able to boot the CD and chroot into your disk install. If no doco try using the Slack doco - used to be on the CD, from memory.
Then try "grub-install /dev/sda", and clean up the menu.lst in need.

FWIW I always find it useful to install the loader (into the partition) with each new distro, just so I have a "template" of what to include in my working boot system.

zenwalk use lilo instead of grub.
you can install lilo with :
start zenwalk CD
exit boot menu (the one with : choose keyboard, add swap, ...)
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
eject CD
chroot /mnt
mount -a
liloconfig (i personally choose install on mbr)
reboot

mount /dev/sda

can't find /dev/sda in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab

This happens both with Zenwalk and Xubuntu live. I am running as root.

I could just run the Zenwalk installer again and complete the LILO install. First, though,I want to see if there is any way to recover the data from my Dapper install. Is there any way to see if that data is still there? If it reformatted the partition, it is gone.

The installer never said it was about to format or write anything. Other installers I've worked with let me tell them where to put a new partition, and let me know when they were about to format the disk. They give you a chance to abort before they start writing to the disk. I was completely blindsided; the install was running before I realised it.

I hope I like the distro better than I like the installer.

this one tell you too... before choosing witch file system you want to use.[1]
if your partition is xfs then you may have format, and there's no easy way to recover.

[1] as described here : http://manual.zenwalk.org/en/ch02s04.html#d0e447
especially : http://manual.zenwalk.org/en/resources/15.png

I am familiar with cfdisk from previous installs. My experience was different this time.

When I selected the free space, it said it was an "unusable partition" and wouldn't let me create a new partition there. There was about 60 gigs free for it to use.

Somehow I got it installing without even seeing most of those screens. I don't recall being given a choice of file formats as the manual indicates. I do remember this from other installs.

[edit] Oh, wait. I remember this screen: http://manual.zenwalk.org/en/resources/15.png I could have backed out then. I didn't see the top line where it indicated where the partition was. I would never have formatted if I'd seen /dev/sda1 there.