HOWTO- Recovering your system after running Recovery XP

There is an application listed in the /usr/share/applications directory with the name Recovery XP. I stupidly ran it (as root, no less), and my system was insta-gibbed. I panicked for about 5 minutes especially when I did a search for it myself and came up with absolutely nothing. Now I've recovered it and am here to tell you how to fix your system, should this happen to you.

Please, read this full guide before proceeding! If not the entire guide, atleast the steps 1-5

1) Get an operating system that can run from the USB slot, either knoppix on a CD via an external dvd drive, some sort of USB key live linux distribution, or what I used was slax linux distribution on an external hard drive. Slax is very easy to set up and use, highly recommended if you have an external hard drive laying around like I did. (I actually have always kept a working copy of slax on that hard drive, since it's very useful and takes up little space). Slax may work on other types of media such as USB thumb drives.

2) From this environment, mount/etc the flash drive of the laptop. (in slax this is done for you, but others you will need to do something such as mount -t reiserfs /dev/hda0 /mnt/linpus just guessing at the format, mount /dev/hda0 /mnt/linpus should work also).
Edit: Unfortunately, I've found that the mounting information I provided was completely wrong (it was a complete guess anyway heh). Since basically every bootable OS will probably do this for you, I haven't worked terribly hard on solidifying the information. As a result I will not be updating the information I entered, so if you need help on this step just reply and I will try to assist you further. Small note, the linpus install appears to be under /dev/hdc1 and it appears to be in ext3 format, though neither of these things am I certain about at all).

3) Navigate to /boot/grub/ folder on the mounted volume.

4) There should be a grub.conf and a grub.conf.old. in the folder. There also may be a menu.lst and a menu.lst.old. Replace the grub.conf with the grub.conf.old. I personally renamed the grub.conf to grub.recovery to first back it up and second remind me that it deals with the recovery console. Same thing applies to menu.lst if you have it (under a standard installation you wont, but if you have a boot menu you will). If this does not work, try the alternate method listed below.

5) Save your changes and reboot, everything should (in a perfect world) be peachy now without any other negative affects.

Alternative method:

If you don't have grub.conf, or don't have grub.conf.old or replacing the grub.conf did not work, you can try constructing your own grub.conf from the default grub.conf, I have included a copy of it (This is with the SSD speed tweak applied)

Code:

default=0
timeout=0
splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu

title Linpus Linux RCD
    rootnoverify (hd0,0)
    kernel /boot/bzImage ro root=LABEL=linpus vga=0x311 splash=silent loglevel=1 console=tty1 quiet nolapic_time elevator=noop
    initrd /boot/initrd-splash.img

Further information:

Recovery XP is apparently designed to allow you to enter a recovery console to install windows XP on the system, I think. The only description I could find is "Recovery to Window XP system". What it effectively does is rewrites your grub.conf so that it no longer points to your linux distribution and instead points to a non-existent recovery partition. I really don't know if it was ever completed and has a real use or not.

The desktop file in question is:
/usr/share/applications/recovery.desktop
Description: Recovery XP
Comment: Recovery to Window XP system
Points to: /usr/bin/umpcd2dgen.sh

/usr/bin/umpcd2gen.sh can be opened with any text editor and figuring out what it does is fairly simple, it modifies your /boot/grub/grub.conf to read:

Code:

default=0
timeout=1
title D2D Recovery Environment
root(hd0,0)
  kernel /boot/bzImage dstdsk=/dev/sda debug=0 extsize=20gb
  initrd /boot/initrd.d2d

Finally:
I am no linux professional. I just simply recovered my computer from what a non-linux savvy person such as me wouldn't have been able to do so easily. Perhaps that's why I do dumb things like try running things with scary names like Recovery XP. Either way, I hope this guide gives you some information to go by, but is in no way intended to be an official documentation of what to do in case of a system failure. Please, contact technical support from your vendor if you are having trouble with your PC and do not have the confidence/know-how to fix it.

 

Thank you for this great guide. Running "Recovery XP" out of simple curiosity sounds exactly like something I would do!

 

Haha, you're welcome. Glad I'm not the only one who can get a little too curious