Linux Desktop Hacks

Bypass the Boot Manager #3

Chapter 1, Booting Linux

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9

HACK

With your boot partition mounted to /bootmnt you can note the names of

your kernels and associated files (such as initrd.img files). Now you need to

mount the main root partition so that you can modify your bootloader con-

figuration file. First, create the mount point:

foo@bar:~# mkdir /rootmnt

Now mount it:

foo@bar:~# mount /dev/discs/disc0/part4/rootmnt

Of course, your root partition might be something other than part4 as speci-

fied in this command. With the partition mounted in /rootmnt, you need to

change the root partition to that mount point so that you can specify a dif-

ferent root partition from the one the installer is running. This will enable

you to access your root partition and run commands from it. To do this, use

the

chroot command on /rootmnt:

foo@bar:~# chroot /rootmnt

When you have run this command, take a look at the directory structure

with

ls, and you will see that your normal root partition is visible.

At this point in this process, you have access to your normal range of appli-

cations, and if you have a network connection, you can use this opportunity

to copy important files and directories to another computer, just in case you

can’t work out how to fix your kernel or bootloader problem. You can find

more information on making network backups with scp and rsync in “Make

Network Backups”

[Hack #83].

To restore your system ...