GPT messed up, cant boot or access harddrive

[gerwalt]

Same result as before (just the last line is different)

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo sh -c "cat mbrtable | sfdisk /dev/sda"
Checking that no-one is using this disk right now ...
OK

Disk /dev/sda: 15566 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Old situation:
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot Start     End   #cyls    #blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1          0+     17-     18-    140290+  ee  GPT
/dev/sda2       2192+   4280-   2089-  16777347   af  HFS / HFS+
/dev/sda3         17+     81-     64-    512000   83  Linux
/dev/sda4       1002+   1003-      1-      3087    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
Warning: given size (81590248) exceeds max allowable size (0)

sfdisk: bad input

[YesWeCan]

Oh, the total number of sectors is 250069680. I mistook 128GB for 128GiB.
Try a sda3 sector size of 63224473

[YesWeCan]

Or maybe 63224472. Or just something smaller until it works.

[gerwalt]

Yes, everything I wrote is in GB, not GiB.

Error stays the same:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo sh -c "cat mbrtable | sfdisk /dev/sda"
Checking that no-one is using this disk right now ...
OK

Disk /dev/sda: 15566 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Old situation:
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot Start     End   #cyls    #blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1          0+     17-     18-    140290+  ee  GPT
/dev/sda2       2192+   4280-   2089-  16777347   af  HFS / HFS+
/dev/sda3         17+     81-     64-    512000   83  Linux
/dev/sda4       1002+   1003-      1-      3087    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
Warning: given size (63224473) exceeds max allowable size (0)

sfdisk: bad input

[gerwalt]

Or maybe 63224472. Or just something smaller until it works.

I think the biggest that will work is 0, given the warning of sfdisk

[gerwalt]

Or maybe 63224472. Or just something smaller until it works.

Ok, this actually worked, but 2 partitions overlap now:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo sh -c "cat mbrtable | sfdisk /dev/sda"
Checking that no-one is using this disk right now ...
OK

Disk /dev/sda: 15566 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Old situation:
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot Start     End   #cyls    #blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1          0+     17-     18-    140290+  ee  GPT
/dev/sda2       2192+   4280-   2089-  16777347   af  HFS / HFS+
/dev/sda3         17+     81-     64-    512000   83  Linux
/dev/sda4       1002+   1003-      1-      3087    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
New situation:
Units = sectors of 512 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot    Start       End   #sectors  Id  System
/dev/sda1        280582   1304581    1024000  83  Linux
/dev/sda2     118786048 237103103  118317056  83  Linux
/dev/sda3     186845208 250069679   63224472  83  Linux
/dev/sda4             0         -          0   0  Empty
Warning: partitions 2 and 2 overlap

sfdisk: I don't like these partitions - nothing changed.
(If you really want this, use the --force option.)

[YesWeCan]

Same mistake again - I copied the GPT partition size for sda2. The size of sda2 needs to be reduced as well.
The size of sda2 should be 68059160 to stop the overlap.

[YesWeCan]

# partition table of /dev/sda
unit: sectors

/dev/sda1 : start=   280582, size=  1024000, Id=83
/dev/sda2 : start=118786048, size= 68059160, Id=83
/dev/sda3 : start=186845208, size= 63224472, Id=83
/dev/sda4 : start=        0, size=        0, Id= 0

[gerwalt]

Now it works, except the warnings that the partitions are not bound to cylinders.

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo sh -c "cat mbrtable | sfdisk /dev/sda"
Checking that no-one is using this disk right now ...
OK

Disk /dev/sda: 15566 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Old situation:
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot Start     End   #cyls    #blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1          0+     17-     18-    140290+  ee  GPT
/dev/sda2       2192+   4280-   2089-  16777347   af  HFS / HFS+
/dev/sda3         17+     81-     64-    512000   83  Linux
/dev/sda4       1002+   1003-      1-      3087    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
New situation:
Units = sectors of 512 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot    Start       End   #sectors  Id  System
/dev/sda1        280582   1304581    1024000  83  Linux
/dev/sda2     118786048 186845207   68059160  83  Linux
/dev/sda3     186845208 250069679   63224472  83  Linux
/dev/sda4             0         -          0   0  Empty
Warning: partition 1 does not start at a cylinder boundary
Warning: partition 1 does not end at a cylinder boundary
Warning: partition 2 does not start at a cylinder boundary
Warning: partition 2 does not end at a cylinder boundary
Warning: partition 3 does not start at a cylinder boundary
Warning: partition 3 does not end at a cylinder boundary
Warning: no primary partition is marked bootable (active)
This does not matter for LILO, but the DOS MBR will not boot this disk.
Successfully wrote the new partition table

Re-reading the partition table ...

If you created or changed a DOS partition, /dev/foo7, say, then use dd(1)
to zero the first 512 bytes:  dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/foo7 bs=512 count=1
(See fdisk(8).)

[YesWeCan]

Now run

sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda

to confirm the MBR partition table is as we want.

Next, try to mount sda1 and see what it contains. It ought to look like /boot.

sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt