whole load of partitioning problems

[coolpcguy]

Before I get into my problem, a little background, have a Dell 1520, 160GB HDD, of which 130 GB is allocated as NTFS in 2 drives, 115GB as C, and rest as E.(D is for DVD RW)

the remaining 18GB is allocated to openSUSE, with 2GB swap, and rest 16 GB as a LVM, with /boot, / and /home as the LV's

Now recently I "upgraded" from XP to Vista, and that has screwed by my partition table BIG time
Check the picture below

*www.imgx.org/pthumbs/small/11657/partitioner.jpeg

so basically my 15GB Windows partition is "marked" as extended partition, Windows partition AND as my /boot LVM ALL at the same time. :-\
as a consequence, by /boot partition doesnt get mounted, (and can't mount manually either).
The only way to boot into openSUSE right now is to boot via openSUSE DVD, goto installation mode, choose other options and then choose Boot installed partition.
Unfortunately this doesnt mount my /home partition, and it fallsback into a bare-minimum root shell. I've to manually mount my /home partition, after this I can go into init 5. Even then none of the kernel modules are loaded
So after this lengthy explaination, how can I get this mess fixed ? anyway without having to reformat, repartiton etc etc?

And I have to boot using the DVD method, since the /boot partition doesnt mount AT ALL, I cannot use grub and write the bootloader
Any fixes ?

 

[Faun]

now thats some real deal to deal with
I hope you survive, lolz /boot as extended (wtf happened during install?)

Your partition table is corrupt AFAIT. Just dont format any thing you may lose all data. Go make a backup and then do whatever you want to.

 

[coolpcguy]

now thats some real deal to deal with
I hope you survive,

yeah!

(wtf happened during install?)

No idea. Did a upgrade of my existing XP install to Vista. openSUSE was already installed

Your partition table is corrupt AFAIT.

ouch

Just dont format any thing you may lose all data. Go make a backup and then do whatever you want to.

I think I'll leave it as it is :-\ don't have much time(or any place to dump the backup) to sit thru the backup-format-reinstall ritual! thanks!

 

[NucleusKore]

I can't help on this one. Don't know a jack about LVM in practice. Have only read about it in theory.

Try booting with a live Ubuntu or openSUSE cd and back up your data, if possible that is. Then try SUPERGRUB from *supergrub.sourceforge.net

 

[coolpcguy]

^ Backup is out of the question, since I can't load ANY of the modules, I cant access my Windows partitions. Maybe will get a pendrive formatted to ext3 and try. thanks.

 

[NucleusKore]

Do one thing
Boot into openSUSE, open a konsole and type

sudo fdisk -l

and press ENTER. Paste the output you get here

 

[coolpcguy]

Sorry for the Delayed reply doc here's the output of fdisk -l

[root@localhost fedora]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0004ed56

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1          10       80293+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2   *          11       15091   121135645+   7  HPFS/NTFS
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda3           15091       17455    18991317   8e  Linux LVM
/dev/sda4           17456       19456    16073032+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5           17456       19456    16073001    7  HPFS/NTFS

 

[NucleusKore]

Looks a lot harder than I thought. If you get an external hard disk I can guide you on how to back up the data, then maybe you can redo the partitions /dev/sda2 onwards

 

[coolpcguy]

^ No access to an external drive can you tell me what might be the reason for this mess ?

 

[NucleusKore]

What do you mean by no access to external drive? I do not understand you. Also post your problem in *forums.opensuse.org

 

[coolpcguy]

No access meaning I dont have an external drive.
Can I go ahead with deletion of the linux partition ?

 

[NucleusKore]

Sorry I do not know

 

[coolpcguy]

Ok, thanks. Have posted in forums.opensuse as well, will see how that goes