Nightmare install.

rockwell32001

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Hi. I've done something horrible to my laptop. I installed puppy linux on it, ran into some dependency problems, and then tried LXLE. In the process of installing LXLE, I either corrupted my system, wiped the kernel, or both. The install of LXLE went smoothly until I restarted the computer, and now i can't go back or forward. I can still get to Grub2dos, and the dd command is still in play. So, how do I do a completely clean install, starting by nuking the hard drive with dd? The computer is a stock ASUS K50I. Thanks.
 


G'day rockwell, and Welcome to linux.org

I am assuming you have lxle on a usb stick, and also puppy on a usb stick as well ?

Did you "wipe the drive" between puppy and lxle ?
 
if you really want to start form zero , then you might use knoppix on a usb stick and use gparted from that. Are you saying in essence your visual desktop is toast but your core and command line is working ?

So can you do , Su or Sudo, Fdisk -l , wget ?
 
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It's all toast. I can't go back and I can't go forward. The only thing I can get to is grub4dos.
 
mmm
well its a clean start then unless somebody can up up with a miracle.

Looking on the +ve ..
you can now review whether you want to give puppy another go( i once installed it ,quite a few years ago) or something else

You can go over the steps of installation

You can think about having a live distro on a usb stick. i'm mostly a visual person so prefer booting up a distro on a usb stick and having a look at hard drive on main pc, to see whats there etc

So how and what in the form of an install.iso do you have to hand that you can boot from? Any other PC to utilize?
 
Well, I didn't mention: I'm in rural Wyoming. No internet connection to speak of. I have the LXLE usb, but that's it. All my gear is in Utah. So, I need a way to nuke the disc from grub4dos.
 
Without an internet connection I don't see how you could download another distro to perform a fresh installation to correct the problem.

If you have a usb or CD of Knoppix or g-parted you can wipe those partitions away completely.

The only other way that I know of is to use DBAN to wipe the disc.
OR> use the dd command to wipe the whole drive but that will take a while.

Here's the instructions for using the dd command.



Wiping the entire disk4984Edit

This will overwrite all partitions, master boot records, and data. Use the sudo command as well (sudo dd...)

  • Filling the disk with all zeros (This may take a while, as it is making every bit of data 0) :dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1M *replace X with the target drive letter.

  • If you are wiping your hard drive for security, you should populate it with random data rather than zeros (This is going to take even longer than the first example.) :dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdX bs=1M *replace X with the target drive letter.

The reason one should fill with urandom in case of required security is explained here: [1]
Important Note: You need to replace sdX with the device name you want to overwrite. sda is usually the first hard drive, the second drive would be sdb
and so on. Use for example gparted to find the correct drive. If you
replace the device name, you can also wipe USB sticks and other
peripherals.

Wiping the Master boot record (MBR)4986Edit

If you messed up your master boot record (MBR) you can wipe it using this command :

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdX bs=446 count=1 *replace X with the target drive letter.

Wiping partitions4985Edit

You can wipe a partition using the same method than for the whole
disk. Just replace the device identifier. If /dev/sda is the whole disk,
then (on Linux, because the naming scheme vary from one Linux to
another) /dev/sda3 is the third partition on the disk.

  • Filling the second partition on the /dev/sda disk with all zeros :dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX2 bs=1M *replace X with the target drive letter.

  • Filling the third partition with random data :dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdX3 bs=1M *replace X with the target drive letter
 
I just tried it, got an error 11. Are there supposed to be any spaces in the command?
 
I just tried it, got an error 11. Are there supposed to be any spaces in the command?
Depending on which command you used, yes there are some spaces.

Which cmd did you use?
 
Wait a minute....it's still in puppylinux, and that one doesn't respond to the standard commands. So, does that carry over into grub4dos?
 
Wait a minute....it's still in puppylinux, and that one doesn't respond to the standard commands. So, does that carry over into grub4dos?
I don't know if it carrys over into grub4dos.
If I had to guess I'd think it would.

Is this the cmd you're using?
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1M

If you're still having trouble it would be better to wait till you have an internet connection, download and use DBAN. OR as I mentioned before use Knoppix or g-parted Live.

 
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Without an internet connection I don't see how you could download another distro to perform a fresh installation to correct the problem.

Of course there must be some internet connection otherwise he couldn't post to this forum. I'm assuming its via a smart phone. Now if he had a huge data , in theory he could download it to his phone. Of course my contex being from the luxury of my PC which has android file transfer ,so that phone becomes like a usb stick
 
Maybe the smart phone is connected to a hot spot?

Either way OP could download Knoppix, G-parted or another distribution.
 
I am writing this from a smartphone. I may be able to download knoppix, but I'm not sure what to install it on. I have an sd card in the phone.
 
and some of the ASUS K50I variants have sd card reader; does yours

you say you can access the dd command, via a terminal window? what does the command
$ type dd

output ?
 
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It does, but I can't download from sourceforge, which is where the files are hosted. I'm just going to have to wait till I get back to Salt Lake. Doing a usb stick at the library requires admin access.
 

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