FWIW, after some scary episodes with dual booting and Windows' general anti-social behavior with it, I've moved to running a Windows host and my Ubuntu "machines" in a VM. A Linux host with a Windows as a VM also works, but for my use not as well.<div>
<br></div><div>With sufficient hardware, they run pretty well together, and I get the best (or at least the necessary bits) from both worlds, simultaneously, and I can even run my VM off a USB drive and carry it around with me and have my complete environment wherever I go.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I use VirtualBox as my VM container. No real problems so far to speak of. I'm a Java server side developer, so am running WebSphere tools and Oracle on the VM as my day to day routine.</div><div>
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 3:51 PM, Rich Faulkner <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:rfaulkner@tux86.org">rfaulkner@tux86.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<u></u>
<div>
...and to think...Richard Stallman professed the use of "no password" as a password to keep systems open and free. Unfortunately the word "ethical" is lost on too many in the world thus we are pressed to encrypt our file systems. <br>
<br>
Glad you got your partition mounted and files copied!<br>
<br>
As for making the drive bootable again...reinstall GRUB?<br><font color="#888888">
<br>
Rich</font><div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>
<br>
<br>
On Tue, 2012-02-21 at 15:28 -0500, John Pilman wrote:
<blockquote type="CITE">
<pre>Here's an update on my progress with the scrambled partition table and
encrypted home directory.
Using dd I copied the hard drive and did the rest of this on the copy.
I ran testdisk from a live boot usb flash drive and was able
re-identify the unallocated partition as a linux partition and write
the partition table.
After a boot or two, gparted saw the partition as sda5.
Long story short for now, Ubuntu 11.04 includes the ultility
encryptfs-recover-private which was able to mount the encrypted
/home/john and I have now copied my files.
Caveat #1 - it took me a while to learn that my live boot usb Ubuntu
11.04 had to be 64 bit since my original partition was 64 bit.
Caveat #2 - some of these steps were very time consuming.
I next plan to try to see if I can make the hard drive bootable again.
...John
On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 4:05 PM, John Pilman <<a href="mailto:jcpilman@gmail.com" target="_blank">jcpilman@gmail.com</a>> wrote:
> Thanks for the ideas. I am starting with a second hard drive and the
> dd command as Derek said and I am going to try to recreate how I go
> into this mess. Understanding, at his point, is more valuable than
> the little bit of data since my last last backup.
>
> To partially answer some questions:
> The disk started with Windows 7 and I installed Ubuntu 10.10 with dual
> boot. So the partition utility is the one used during the Ubuntu
> install. Also, I vaguely remember a question about encryption during
> that process. I can't say for sure whether the partition or just the
> home directory was encrypted.
> Also, I'm not sure where the boot record was.
>
> If possible, I will reinstall everything and then find those answers.
> At, the speed this dd is going, I have some free time to do more research.
> ...John
>
> On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 7:12 PM, Jim Lynch
> <<a href="mailto:ale_nospam@fayettedigital.com" target="_blank">ale_nospam@fayettedigital.com</a>> wrote:
>> On 02/18/2012 05:19 PM, Derek Atkins wrote:
>>> Once you make your copy, try making all your unallocated space into a
>>> single linux partition. Then you can dd the first few MB off into a file
>>> (running a RAMDISK rescue environment, of course) and use 'file' to see if
>>> you got it right. Were you using LVM? Then from there you might be able
>>> to get lucky and find your partition endpoints.
>> Since you can now with grub2 boot from LVM that might be the answer.
>> I'm surprised that grub didn't recognize that. I'd find a live cd or
>> Knopix cd that understands LVM and see if the partition contains LVM
>> volumes before I did anything rash.
>>
>> Jim.
>> _______________________________________________
_______________________________________________
Ale mailing list
<a href="mailto:Ale@ale.org" target="_blank">Ale@ale.org</a>
<a href="http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale" target="_blank">http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale</a>
See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
<a href="http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo" target="_blank">http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo</a>
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
</div></div></div>
<br>_______________________________________________<br>
Ale mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:Ale@ale.org">Ale@ale.org</a><br>
<a href="http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale" target="_blank">http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale</a><br>
See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at<br>
<a href="http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo" target="_blank">http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo</a><br>
<br></blockquote></div><br></div>