recover from a bad F16 install

[Paul Allen Newell]

On 3/17/2012 10:37 PM, T.C. Hollingsworth wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 17, 2012 at 10:03 PM, Paul Allen Newell<pnewell at cs.cmu.edu>  wrote:
>> On 3/17/2012 9:52 PM, Ed Greshko wrote:
>>> On 03/18/2012 12:49 PM, Paul Allen Newell wrote:
>>>> Though I appreciate the suggestion, I can't get any further progress once
>>>> I do the
>>>> install to hard drive option ... its does the same "No usable disks"
>>>> message (and
>>>> therefore no option to try anything).
>>> I don't think I ever suggested doing an install to hard drive....
>>>
>>> I was suggesting you check out the disk partitions using something like
>>> parted to see
>>> how things are set up.  Did you do that?
>>>
>> Ed:
>>
>> Oh, I did misread you and I apologize. Since I had never used a Live CD, I
>> jumped to the faulty conclusion that its install to hard disk was different
>> than the installation DVD.
>>
>> PartedMagic was the one option I asked about in my original email and it
>> looks like that or the other two suggestions of sysresccd.org or fdisc will
>> keep me busy tomorrow. I don't see parted when I did a which so I figured it
>> was PartedMagic. I just tried as root on my working system and see it (saved
>> myself an email about how I have to be root see it). As the memtest86 is
>> going to go for a long time, I was under the impression that the LiveCD user
>> doesn't have "root" access to munge with the hard drives et al ... am I
>> mistaken?
> Odd, `parted` has been included on every Fedora LiveCD I've ever used.
>
> To get root on a LiveCD just open a terminal and run `su -`, no
> password required.
>
>> One good thing is I finally have a Live CD image that works. Every other
>> time I've tried to create one it has been a horrible failure.
>>
>> Paul
> -T.C.
T.C.:

Thanks for reply. I discovered about 5 minutes ago that memtest86 passed 
and, when I use the Live CD, su works as there is no password (as I 
mentioned, this is the first time I have been able to get a working 
LiveCD created).

On both the LiveCD and the installation DVD troubleshot into a bash 
shell, I am getting "parted - Invalid partition table - recursive 
partition on /dev/sr0" and I am pretty certain it is looking at the 
CD/DVD as that's the device it displays. So I don't know whether I am 
even able to get at the hardware via parted/cfdisk (???)

I went through the options on parted and cfdisk and, to be honest, 
couldn't make sense of them.

I've never done partitioning before except through successful 
installations, so I got alot of reading to do (or accept that I've got a 
"brick"). I am also going to look at the sysresccd site and see if it 
presents me with easier to understand access.

All I want to do is get it back to a sane minimal state that I can run 
the installation DVD and let it do the proper partitioning.

Paul