Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2005, sindi keesan wrote:

> I have been accumulating evidence that the controller and the linux drive 
> (hdb) and CD-ROM drive are okay but the DOS drive (hda) has problems with the 
> partition table possibly due to monkey b virus which rewrites the partition 
> table (but keeps a copy elsewhere to fool you with).
> 1.  Spinrite said the four DOS partitions were all larger than the drive.
> 2.  Fdisk said the first partition was 100% of the drive and the other three 
> about 42%.  This adds up to about 220%.
> 3.  F-prot found no viruses, but it does not find monkey B, an old DOS virus 
> that we have had before, which at one point made C: disappear while retaining 
> D on a computer.
> 4.  Linux is so far working perfectly if I boot from a floppy disk and use 
> loadlin and kernel on it (bypassing the DOS hd partition table).

I also refrained from mounting any DOS partitions while running linux.

> Apparently the DOS partition table can affect linux.  I have not mounted any 
> DOS drives yet and things are working just fine.  I did several dus in a row 
> on the whole linux partition, no problems.

It may just affect linux to have a DOS partition (or a fat32 partition, 
anyway) mounted, because some background processes keep trying to access 
it.  But my error messages were about hdb (the linux drive).

> I will go pick up a writeprotected DOS boot disk with killmonk on it from a 
> friend who certifies it to be virus-free tomorrow.  If that fails, then I am 
> supposed to repartion/reformat the drive, unless someone has other ideas on 
> how to fix a partition table.  This is my drive with Win98 and ghostscript 
> and WORDVIEW on it and FAT32 and I may just put Win98 on a separate computer 
> instead and drag it out when needed to read WORD since I now have linux 
> ghostscript and scanner software.
>
> scandisk and f-prot found no problems (other than a corrupt himem.sys - would 
> this have messed up the partition table or is it just a symptom not a 
> cause?).  I have not tried running DOS programs other than f-prot from the 
> hard drive.

My friend said I should NOT have put Win98 in FAT32 since that is only 
needed for drives over 2GB and Win98 needs 200MB plus a bit for programs. 
He also said I should not be using more than one primary DOS partition and 
I am lucky it has worked for me to use four until now, but I don't think 
this is my problem here.

I noticed while configuring that the BL2 kernel does NOT support vfat even 
as a module.  My first non-linux partition on the problematic drive is 
FAT32 and I probably mounted it in linux.  I never specify -t msdos while 
mounting FAT16 partitions but BL2 seems to identify them okay and just 
tells me there is no ext2 partition.  Maybe I should get into the habit of 
doing this, since I am guessing that linux screwed up the partition table 
by trying to mount FAT32 as plain FAT16 (vfat as msdos).  Is there some 
way to reverse this other than reformatting the whole drive and 
reinstalling?

I would not mind replacing linux and DOS but Win98 does not like being 
copied from elsewhere and I have to delete a whole bunch of junk every 
time I install it and I am thinking of just sticking it on another 
computer instead and dragging that out if I need to view a WORD file with 
strange formatting - at least I now have a zip drive to move big Windows 
files like Ghostscript and Wordview around with instead of downloading 
them again.