[NBLUG/talk] Can't boot Linux anymore!

[paulgs at sonic.net]

Greetings!

I had to reinstall my WinXP partition last week because the registry
decided to self destruct (just before tax time too).

Somehow I managed to trash the MBR on my Linux partition during the
reinstall. When I whip out my handy Knoppix CD to fix it, I run into
problems.

I have a dual boot Thinkpad A30 running WinXP on hda1, Debian testing on
hda2, a Linux swap on hda3, and the IBM recovery partition brings up the
rear on hda4.

First I boot into Knoppix. Then I "su - root".  The mount command "mount
-t ext3 -o rw /dev/hda2 /mnt/hda2" comes next. Then I try "grub-install
/dev/hda2" (I'll make this partition the boot partition with "parted"
later).

grub-install gives me the message "mkdir: cannot create directory
'/boot/grub': Read-only file system". Huh? I can do "dd if=/dev/zero
of=/dev/hda2 bs=512 count=1" just fine. Why is grub not happy?

Of course I forgot to create a new boot floppy after compiling my new
kernel, so I can't get in that way either.

Google doesn't seem to offer any help.

Anyone know a way to avoid reinstalling my Debian partition?

Thanks,

Paul