HELP WANTED----plan9 overwrote linux partition

[Nigel Roles ngr@symbionics.co.uk]

> Hi, there,
> 
> Help wanted, Plan9, the so boasted next generation os is just a piece of
> junk. This time, AT&T really picked a good name for plan9.
> 
> I've run linux1.2.0 for about a half year, everything seems OK.
> Today, I download the plan9 to play with, it looks working too.
> However, actually when I was installing plan9, it overwrote my linux
> partition without any pre-warning.
>
Oh dear. The installation instructions referenced in 
http://www.plan9.att.com/distrib.html implored people to read the 
errata document. In particular, a new version of prep (the disk 
partitioner) is required to avoid this. The original version installs after the 
highest numbered DOS active partiton. Evidently your Linux partition 
is after your DOS partition.
 
> My linux partition is not bootable now, and I try to boot from floppy,
> and do fsck on it, it says: "bad magic number". So definately
> plan9 overwrote my linux partition.
>
Yes no question that your Linux partition is totalled.
 
> I want to recover my more than half-year work, since I don't have tape
> backup. Please help! Any suggestion will be mostly appreciated.
> I guess this is doable, since my linux partition occupies 400Mbytes, 
> while plan9 only occupies 20Mbytes according to its installation notes,
> so it looks like the rest 380Mbytes should be able to recoverd, sounds
> reasonable?
> 
Unfortunately, again, the installation documents are clear that Plan 
9 will occupy ALL the space at the 'end' of the disk, not just 20Mb. 
20Mb was a minimum requirement, not a maxiumum. I guess you need help 
from the Linux community to help recover the data. It appears that 
you are not the only person.

The free demo version of Plan 9 was issued for people to work out
whether it would work on their machines before buying the full
version, because Plan 9 is not intended to be as PC compatible as
Linux is. Under such restrictions it was perhaps a bit rash to
install it on a valued machine without a backup.

Good luck with recovering your data.