Repair a Corrupt MBR and boot into Linux (fedora)

There are times when you inadvertently overwrite your Master Boot Record. The end result being that you are unable to boot into Linux. This is especially true when you are dual booting between windows and Linux OSes. Once when I was working in Windows XP, I accidentally clicked the hibernate button instead of shutdown. And windows somehow overwrote my MBR which housed the GRUB boot loader. At such times, it pays to have this cool tip at hand.

This is what you do to restore the GRUB boot loader when faced with the above problem. First you need a Linux distribution CD. If you are using Fedora (RedHat) then the first CD is sufficient. But you may also use any of the live CDs like Knoppix, Ubuntu Live CD and so on.

With Fedora CD

Boot your computer with the first CD of Fedora in your CD drive (You have to enable your PC to boot from the cdrom, which you can set in the BIOS settings). At the installation boot prompt that you get, enter the following command:

boot: linux rescue

… and press Enter. The installer will ask you a few questions like the language you would like to use, the type of keyboard etc. Then, if you have linux previously installed on your machine, the Fedora installer will automatically detect it and mount it in the /mnt/sysimage directory. Once the linux partition is mounted, you are dropped into the command shell prompt. The next step is to make your newly mounted directory the root (or parent) directory. This you do by running the chroot command as follows:

# chroot /mnt/sysimage

Now you are in the shell with respect to the parent directory which is the linux partition on your harddisk.

From here, the steps needed depends on which bootloader you are using. You have to have a fair idea what is the device node of your harddisk partition housing your MBR. In most cases, it is /dev/hda if you have an IDE harddisk. But if you have a SCSI harddisk, it will be /dev/sda.

Restoring GRUB
Execute the following command :

# grub-install /dev/hda

… to install GRUB boot loader on to your MBR. And then type exit to reboot the machine. Now your GRUB boot loader is fixed.

Install Extra Applications in Fedora

Install Email Client (Mozilla Thunderbird)

yum -y install thunderbird

Applications -> Internet -> Thunderbird Mail Client

Install Newsreader (Pan)

yum -y install pan

Install CHM viewer (GnoCHM)

yum -y –enablerepo=dries install gnochm

Applications -> Accessories -> CHM Viewer

Install Web Authoring System (bluefish)

yum -y install bluefish

Applications –> Programming –> Bluefish Editor

Install CD/DVD Burning Application (GnomeBaker)

yum -y install gnomebaker

Applications -> Sound & Video -> GnomeBaker

Install Partition Editor (GParted)

yum -y install gparted

Applications -> System Tools -> GParted

Install Firewall (Firestarter)

yum -y install firestarter

Applications -> System Tools -> Firestarter

Install Extra Fonts

yum -y install xfonts-arabic

yum -y install xfonts-chinese

yum -y install xfonts-gujarati

yum -y install xfonts-hebrew

yum -y install xfonts-hindi

yum -y install xfonts-japanese

yum -y install xfonts-xorg-truetype

wget -c http://easylinux.info/uploads/msttcorefonts-1.3-4.noarch.rpm

rpm -ivh msttcorefonts-1.3-4.noarch.rpm

Install Desktop Applets (gDesklets)

yum -y install gdesklets

Applications -> Accessories -> gDesklets

For more info see: http://gdesklets.gnomedesktop.org/

Install XFCE

yum -y groupinstall XFCE
/etc/init.d/xfs restart

Install MP3 Support in Fedora 7

Follow these instructions to get mp3 support on your Fedora Core 7.

Open a terminal and become root, then run this command:

# wget http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/7/i386/livna-release-7-2.noarch.rpm
# rpm -ivh livna-release-7-2.noarch.rpm

Install all other plug ins..

# yum -y install gstreamer-plugins-bad gstreamer-plugins-ugly xine-lib-extras-nonfree