longgone Posted January 5, 2010 Share Posted January 5, 2010 Here is the problem ... I lost my menu of OS's ... here is the backround .. had problems again with XP ... got fed up .. re-installed XP and all the mainboard drivers ... XP boots up fine (no web connect though) ... I use the grub bootloader from Mandriva .. with PCLinuxOS as the default OS ... BUT ... since the menu is gone .. I can't boot into any OS except PCLinuxOS .... I did check the grub/menu.lst in PCLinuxOS .. and all the OS's do appear there .... question is .. how do I get back into Mandriva to get this all straightened out .. ??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BarryB Posted January 6, 2010 Share Posted January 6, 2010 Dalethere is a tool in Mandriva free DVDs (or PWP or Dual CD ) : the rescue mode. Boot the DVD, pick rescue mode..then down to restore grub on MBR.That tool is not present in Mandriva One CDs if that is what your using. in this mode, it's possible to restore the windows bootloader or the grub Mandriva bootloader. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted January 6, 2010 Share Posted January 6, 2010 Dale,A couple tips from Bruno...http://www.brunolinux.com/05-Configuring_Y...Bootloader.htmland I think this one will work for Mandriva too, Barry will have to verify this...http://www.brunolinux.com/09-Distro_Specif..._Redo-lilo.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BarryB Posted January 6, 2010 Share Posted January 6, 2010 Eric/DaleGreat tools use,The PClinuxOS LivCD will put PCLinuxOS grub in the mbr,which should put all the OS's with it. Then if needed could boot into Mandriva and restore Mandriva Grub through MCC..under boot and setup boot system if mandriva's boot splash is more to your liking.If that is not successful then use Bruno's note and rebuild the MBR, but either of the CD options would probably be easier. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
longgone Posted January 6, 2010 Author Share Posted January 6, 2010 Ah hah ........... mostly disregard the start of this thread ... got boot/grub/menu.lst back using Super Grub Disk .. Mandriva OS is on HDA7HD0,6 went through the prompts ,, selected it .. got into Mandriva ,, checked the grub/menu.lst .. it was good so I have the grub menu back .. boots PCLinuxOS, Mandriva, DesktopBSD ,,, lost the Windows though tells me no mbr present ... so now I gots to figure that out Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BarryB Posted January 6, 2010 Share Posted January 6, 2010 DaleDid you restore the grub mbr from Mandriva? or just using super grub, Will windows boot from super grub? Thinking maybe maybe with the reinstall of windows the sectors aren't the same as previous install and you may need to re-add windows to grubYou RM's have way to much fun with your tools ya know!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted January 6, 2010 Share Posted January 6, 2010 Dale, you're getting pretty good at figuring this stuff out for yourself. Pretty soon you won't need us at all anymore. :(Seriously though, good job! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
longgone Posted January 6, 2010 Author Share Posted January 6, 2010 booted from Super Grub ... selected the partition that Mandriva is on ,, booted it up ,, made sure that the boot/grub/menu.lst had all the OS's on it ... pulled out Super Grub ,, rebooted and got the Mandriva grub/menu from there .. I booted into all the listed OS's ,, only one that I did not get into was Windows .. there is an entry on the Super Grub to select Win ,, I have not tried it yet ... but if/when/after I get into Windows I need to do repair work on the boot mngr there .. it has 3 entries for Win XP Pro .. of which only one is good .. the other two are of no use .. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BarryB Posted January 6, 2010 Share Posted January 6, 2010 roger that Dale Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted January 6, 2010 Share Posted January 6, 2010 booted from Super Grub ... selected the partition that Mandriva is on ,, booted it up ,, made sure that the boot/grub/menu.lst had all the OS's on it ... pulled out Super Grub ,, rebooted and got the Mandriva grub/menu from there .. I booted into all the listed OS's ,, only one that I did not get into was Windows .. there is an entry on the Super Grub to select Win ,, I have not tried it yet ... but if/when/after I get into Windows I need to do repair work on the boot mngr there .. it has 3 entries for Win XP Pro .. of which only one is good .. the other two are of no use ..Nice job Dale!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
réjean Posted January 6, 2010 Share Posted January 6, 2010 Good job indeed Dale!The minute I saw the title of your thread I thought " Here is a job for Super Grub " of which I keep the latest copy burnt on a CD, just in case I loose access to the latest MBR.I also keep a copy of my actual /grub/menu.lst in my on line yahoo mail box in case I made a mistake and messed it up. So I can go in the distro where the MBR was, name the bad /menu.lst "/menu.lst.old " replace it with the saved version and often it is " voilà ".BTW Does anyone know if Super Grub will restore a Grub-2 booboo? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted January 6, 2010 Share Posted January 6, 2010 Mel (mhbell) is probably our GRUB2 guru at this point. He might know. ;yes: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
longgone Posted January 6, 2010 Author Share Posted January 6, 2010 Well ... actually on the Super Grub there are two entries for Win and neither one is of help to me ... So ... at the moment XP an Win7 are unavailable ... So .. here is my new question ... I want to burn to disk .. both my Thunderbird and Mozilla folders .... but the folders that I checked do not appear to have much of anything in them ,, these folders are the hidden folders in /home/dale ... are these the ones I should be looking at or is there another place I should look .... want to do this so in case my next step at trying to get Win back puts a glich in the rest of the OS's ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BarryB Posted January 6, 2010 Share Posted January 6, 2010 Dale Open Firefox.2. Select Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks.3. The Bookmarks Manager opens. Click File > Export…( then o bring back in) 4. Save the bookmark.html file wherever you wish. I usually prefer the Desktop.Now you can use the file to import the bookmarks into another program.for thunderbird your mail, settings are usually located in your profile usually ~/.thunderlbird/xxxxxxxx.default/I would think you can copy,save to cd/usb drive then replace if you have to re-installHope this helps Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted January 6, 2010 Share Posted January 6, 2010 I keep a primary Firefox and Thunderbird profile (backed up monthly) on two separate (archive and backup) partitions on my system. I use those common profiles for ALL my distributions. Just copy /home/dale/.mozilla and /home/dale/.thunderbird to a CD or wherever you want store it. If you need to repair or add a profile to one of your distros, just copy your backup back into the new location's /home/dale directory. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BarryB Posted January 7, 2010 Share Posted January 7, 2010 I Like your way Eric. make much more sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
longgone Posted January 7, 2010 Author Share Posted January 7, 2010 Ummm........... I like Erics' suggestion too ... BUT .... I brought up both of those files just to see if there was any info in them ... I am under the impression (probably wrong) that I should be able to open either one of those two files and be able to view the contents of the folder for a specific subject .. so far .. that has not been the case ... I only tried this to make sure that there was something in the folder .. did I not do it correct or is what I saw what I am supposed to see ... ??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted January 7, 2010 Share Posted January 7, 2010 I Like your way Eric. make much more sense.HAHA! Had to find a good way to do it way back in '06 when I had 12 or 15 distros on my system, all running those Moz apps. Ummm........... I like Erics' suggestion too ... BUT .... I brought up both of those files just to see if there was any info in them ... I am under the impression (probably wrong) that I should be able to open either one of those two files and be able to view the contents of the folder for a specific subject .. so far .. that has not been the case ... I only tried this to make sure that there was something in the folder .. did I not do it correct or is what I saw what I am supposed to see ... ???Dale, are you sure the directories are empty? Here's what mine look like:*click for bigger picMy .mozilla also has my Seamonkey profiles in there. You may not have that if you're not running Seamonkey on your system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted January 7, 2010 Share Posted January 7, 2010 Note that bookmarks are no longer kept in the profiles folder since Firefox 3. You need to do the export as Eric mentioned to share them.Also useful are the Firefox Environment Backup Extension (FEBE) that can also backup bookmarks. Or you can back up online with an addon such as Xmarks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
longgone Posted January 7, 2010 Author Share Posted January 7, 2010 Eric...Going by your example ... the /home/dale/ .... directory has a ... lot of folders in it .. and one for .mozilla and one for .thunderbird .... what I am saying is that when I open up say the .thunderbird folder it displays more folders ... say for instance I click on the folder titled "Web MD" ... shouldn't I be able to see all the emails that I have in that folder ?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BarryB Posted January 7, 2010 Share Posted January 7, 2010 DaleIf I'm correct, each Thunderbird mail folder is stored in two files named after the folder name:A file with no extension stores email messages in the plain text format, one after one. This file is larger than the MSF index. A corresponding (smaller) .MSF file contains mail folder indexes and preference data. Thunderbird figures out what part of the message to be displayed, the order of messages within a folder, and the like - all based on the .MSF file information. It is important to note that .MSF files do not contain any email messages and, all in all, are redundant. Thunderbird will rebuild .MSF files as needed if they are missing. My understanding of this process is that to read the mail, it must be opened within thunderbird, and because of the structure would not be viewable from within a file manager. Barry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
longgone Posted January 7, 2010 Author Share Posted January 7, 2010 Would that also hold true for the .mozilla folder ???So .. in theory .. if I select the .mozilla and the .thunderbird folders ... burn them to disk .. in the event that I needed them .. everything that I see on the monitor is contained in that folder ..... ?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BarryB Posted January 7, 2010 Share Posted January 7, 2010 SunratI thought just the file storage had change and that places.sqlite is used now, but it still in the profile folder.DaleIf I'm correct on Firefox, the answer is yes, copying .mozilla and.thunderbird should work Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
longgone Posted January 7, 2010 Author Share Posted January 7, 2010 Okay .. I shall give that a shot ... somewhat along the same lines .... can I take those two disks that will be burned in PCLinuxOS ... and install them into the respective folders on my Mandriva installation ??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BarryB Posted January 7, 2010 Share Posted January 7, 2010 I would suspect yes...from Eric's statement that is what he does. Sounds reasonable..as long as your not mixing FF2 to FF3 or something like that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
longgone Posted January 7, 2010 Author Share Posted January 7, 2010 Okay .......... this should prove to be a very interesting adventure ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted January 7, 2010 Share Posted January 7, 2010 Eric...Going by your example ... the /home/dale/ .... directory has a ... lot of folders in it .. and one for .mozilla and one for .thunderbird .... what I am saying is that when I open up say the .thunderbird folder it displays more folders ... say for instance I click on the folder titled "Web MD" ... shouldn't I be able to see all the emails that I have in that folder ??Nah... doesn't work that way, Dale. FF an TB store stuff in their directories as .sql files. They're not readable with plain text editors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted January 7, 2010 Share Posted January 7, 2010 Barry, that's correct... to save EVERYTHING that you see in you FF (Bookmarks, saved pages, preferences, etc.) and TB (stored emails, preferences, account info, address books, etc.), just copy the .mozilla and .thunderbird (.mozilla-thunderbird in some distros) directories in their entirety. That's it. And yes... IMPORTANT: your FFs and TBs used on all your distros should be VERY close in version numbers. A profile for FF 2.0.x is going to be buggy on FF 3.0.x, for example. Yet a profile for FF 3.0.1 will work fine for FF 3.0.8. You see what I mean, I think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
longgone Posted January 7, 2010 Author Share Posted January 7, 2010 Ahemmmm.....Well ... the adventure is somewhat complete .. system recovery completed ... XP is back and on line (posting from it now) ,,, however ,,, it wiped HDA/SDA .. slick .. (not to mention that it can't read the correct size of it) ,,, PCLinuxOS, Mandriva are all gone (swap too) ... but HDB/SDB is fine ... I forsee a few hours of rebuilding everything ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted January 7, 2010 Share Posted January 7, 2010 Well, you got some lemons. Make some LEMONADE! It's a great time to wipe everything, design and create an efficient partitioning scheme, reinstall everything fresh and new! :'( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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