Let's Sign the petition today.
| The purpose of this page is to collect data about ThinkVantage Rescue and Recovery in order to get ThinkVantage handled in bootloaders (especially Debian Grub) |  |
Let me quote IBM/Lenovo presentation :
Rescue and Recovery is an essential tool that enables users and administrators to restore backups, access files, diagnose problems, and make Ethernet connections if the Microsoft Windows operating system will not open or run correctly. It also enables deployment of critical updates to systems that are corrupted or off the network, as well as automatically apply patches to a system when a restore is performed.
The Rescue and Recovery program provides an environment that runs independently of the Microsoft(R) Windows(R) operating system. Because the Rescue and Recovery workspace exists separately from Windows, it provides a safe place from which to perform rescue and recovery operations that might not be possible from the Windows environment. more
RnR has it's own bootloader on MBR. since most Linux distribution install Lilo or grub on the MBR by default, RnR isn't available at boot time (no more "Press F11 to invoke the Product Recovery Program" or "To start the product recovery program, press F11")
Even though it is possible to restore ThinkVantage boot sector, most people won't bother... if grub or lilo provides access to the rescue partition.
I need to collect hints on how to detect Thinkvantage hidden partition (so i can forward all those to debian's os-probe maintainers).
Please send me information to fpiat at bigfoot dot com. (i sometime on irc.debian.org#debian too) :
where PE stands for "Pre-Installation" Thoses are very easy to use in grub (partition number may be reversed):
title Thinkvantage Rescue and Recovery root (hd0,0) savedefault makeactive chainloader +1
and
title Windows NT/2000/XP root (hd0,1) savedefault makeactive chainloader +1
older thinkvantage used to have a msdos based recovery system, needing something like this in grub :
title Thinkvantage Rescue and Recovery root (hd0,1) parttype (hd0,1) 0x0b unhide (hd0,1) chainloader +1
and :
title Windows XP root (hd0,0) hide (hd0,1) chainloader +1
Rescue and Recovery 4.0 for Windows Vista
fdisk -l /dev/sda omitting empty partition (5) Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 830 6660096 27 Unknown /dev/sda2 830 14087 106485760 7 HPFS/NTFS [output truncated] mount /dev/sda1 /media/TVTOS/ -o ro $ls -al /media/TVTOS total 508 dr-x------ 1 root root 4096 2007-07-20 15:21 . drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 2007-07-21 16:20 .. dr-x------ 1 root root 0 2006-12-08 04:20 boot -r-------- 1 root root 438840 2006-12-08 04:18 bootmgr dr-x------ 1 root root 4096 2007-07-12 14:16 INOV8LOG dr-x------ 1 root root 0 2007-07-12 13:15 mfgstat dr-x------ 1 root root 4096 2007-07-12 05:49 preboot dr-x------ 1 root root 61440 2007-07-12 04:50 Recovery dr-x------ 1 root root 0 2007-07-12 05:08 $RECYCLE.BIN -r-------- 1 root root 0 2007-07-12 05:49 SCRREC.VER dr-x------ 1 root root 0 2007-07-12 14:15 swwork dr-x------ 1 root root 0 2007-07-12 04:38 System Volume Information dr-x------ 1 root root 0 2006-12-08 04:19 tvtos dr-x------ 1 root root 0 2007-07-12 14:15 windows ls -al /media/TVTOS/boot total 3620 dr-x------ 1 root root 0 2006-12-08 04:20 . dr-x------ 1 root root 4096 2007-07-20 15:21 .. -r-------- 1 root root 262144 2007-07-21 15:36 bcd -r-------- 1 root root 262144 2007-07-21 15:36 bcd.LOG -r-------- 1 root root 1024 2006-12-08 04:18 bootfix.bin -r-------- 1 root root 3170304 2006-12-08 04:18 boot.sdi -r-------- 1 root root 2048 2006-12-08 04:18 etfsboot.com dr-x------ 1 root root 0 2006-12-08 04:19 fonts ls -al /media/TVTOS/tvtos/ total 179008 dr-x------ 1 root root 0 2006-12-08 04:19 . dr-x------ 1 root root 4096 2007-07-20 15:21 .. -r-------- 1 root root 183298253 2007-07-12 05:45 winpe.wim
Rescue and Recovery 4.0 for Windows XP.
Thanks to Meik Hellmund (Meik.Hellmund*math.uni-leipzig.de) for sending the information.
Here is the contents of the RnR partition:
# ls -l /mnt total 972 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 11 2006-07-14 22:04 autoexec.bat -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 169 2007-12-07 20:54 boot.ini -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4952 2004-08-04 09:00 bootfont.nib -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 63 2006-07-14 22:04 bootsec.py -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 512 2007-12-07 22:35 bootsect.dos -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 53786 2006-07-14 22:04 command.com -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 14320 2006-07-14 22:04 himem.sys -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 44240 2006-07-14 22:04 ibmbio.com -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 42550 2006-07-14 22:04 ibmdos.com drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-11-15 14:50 mfgstat drwxr-xr-x 10 root root 4096 2007-11-15 23:02 minint -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 47564 2004-08-04 15:00 ntdetect.com -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 222368 2006-07-14 22:04 ntldr -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 18 2005-11-14 19:09 pdalang.txt -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 222368 2006-07-14 22:04 pdldr -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 260272 2004-08-04 15:00 peldr drwxr-xr-x 16 root root 4096 2007-11-15 14:50 preboot drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 12288 2007-11-15 14:50 recovery -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 0 2007-11-15 15:38 scrrec.ver drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2006-11-30 00:20 swwork -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 10 2004-08-04 15:00 win51 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 10 2004-08-04 15:00 win51ip -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 10 2004-08-04 15:00 win51ip.sp2
Rescue and Recovery 4.0 for Windows XP
please, provide "fdisk -l /dev/sda" plus "ls -al /mnt" plus "ls -al /mnt/XXX" for interesting directories (those that can help identify that it's a recovery partition).