I wanted to experiment with making a customized SystemRescueCD (from
version x86-0.2.19) as decribed in chapter 8 of the manual. The first
machine I tried it on had a small /dev/hda1 so step 2 (extracting
files) failed. I have a 2.4 Ghz IBM Net Vista machine on which I had
installed Kubuntu 5.10 as the sole OS after removing all partitions. I
booted from the RescueCD and ran fdisk -l /dev/hda1 to verify there was
enough space.  It showed /dev/hda1 was the bulk of the drive and type
83 (linux).  However, step 1 from chapter 8 ("mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/custom") fails with
errors indicating an NTFS error (HUH?) though there is no longer an
NTFS partition present.  The second message (of 3) said there could be
a bad/corrupted superblock and the 3rd suggested looking at "dmesg |
tail&quot; but that only showed the same 3 mesages.<br><br>Sorry, but I can't give the exact text because when I could not resolve it I began a wipedisk before thinking of checking here.&nbsp; Therefore this is a question of curiosity or preparation for a repetition.&nbsp; I am assuming that something did not cleanup the mysterious (to me) area between the MBR and the beginning of the 1st partition (presumably at sector 63) and that this area was being looked at as containing the &quot;superblock&quot; which appears to be a Unix thing.&nbsp; But this is just a guess.
<br><br>How could this have happened?&nbsp; How can it be fixed if the wipedisk and reload does not?&nbsp; How can I look at the raw content of the drive sectors?&nbsp; Years ago I would have used Norton Utilities, but ...<br>-- <br>"The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them."
<br><br> Patrick Henry quote