Resurrecting the linux box

[Scoofy12]

so i dusted off my linux server today to get it set back up, and the first thing i found was that lilo didnt load. this wasnt surprising, as im fairly sure one of my drives has a problem, but not sure which. one of them (/dev/hda) is probably pushing 10 years old, and the other (/dev/hdb) was suspect when i got it, but seems to work ok (also old).
both of them have reiserFS filesytems, and i think both of them even have distros on them. i have no idea which one i was actually using, if any. probaly the one on /dev/hdb since it was bigger

anyway, after booting with the debian rescue floppy into the /dev/hda distro, i attempted to run lilo, which was setup to load either of them.
heres my error message:
Fatal: First sector of /dev/hdb1 doesn't have a valid boot signature

i used cfdisk to see if the partition table was readable (it was) and even to rewrite it but that didnt seem to have any effect. also fsck says the filesystem is ok. so, is there any program for linux that can check/repair the boot signature of a HD? and is this "boot signature" in the MBR of the disk, or in the partition, or where? any ideas so i dont have to repartition/format the drive?

[Bok]

If you need to recreate the boot sector just run /sbin/lilo I guess..

Bok

[Scoofy12]

Originally posted by Scoofy12
anyway, after booting with the debian rescue floppy into the /dev/hda distro, i attempted to run lilo, which was setup to load either of them.
heres my error message:
Fatal: First sector of /dev/hdb1 doesn't have a valid boot signature

[Darkness Productions]

That means that you have something in your lilo config trying to boot from /dev/hdb, but there's nothing with a valid boot image on /dev/hdb. Edit /etc/lilo.conf, find the line(s) concerning /dev/hdb, and comment them out. Save and exit, re-run /sbin/lilo, and reboot.

[Scoofy12]

Originally posted by Darkness Productions
That means that you have something in your lilo config trying to boot from /dev/hdb, but there's nothing with a valid boot image on /dev/hdb. Edit /etc/lilo.conf, find the line(s) concerning /dev/hdb, and comment them out. Save and exit, re-run /sbin/lilo, and reboot.

this is exactly what i did. but i still thought theres another distro on /dev/hdb1.

what do you mean by a valid boot image?
the line in lilo did not reference a specific image on /dev/hdb1, just to boot from /dev/hdb1 itself, just like you do with a windows partition.

when i get home im going to mount up that partition and see what's on it. i could be completely wrong about what i thought