How to restore all of /boot/?

[Zembower, Kevin]

Bryan and Kevin, thanks so much for your suggestions. Bryan, I ended up following your directions, but it still didn't help me and now I'm at a standstill. As far as I can tell, /boot/ and /boot/grub/ are fully populated. /boot/contains files System.map, config, initrd, sysvers and vmlinuz, all for 2.6.18-92.1.1.el5. /boot/grub/device.map looks identical to another of my systems that uses GRUB and LVM. I tried both '/sbin/grub-install /dev/sda1' and '/sbin/grub-install /dev/sda' after booting the CentOS 5 rescue mode and 'chroot /mnt/sysimage'. Neither one reported an error, but neither one fixed the problem. I also tried 'root (hd0,0)' and 'setup (hd0,0)' from the grub prompt. Again, reported 'success' but didn't fix the problem.

I'm at a loss for what to do next. Are there any diagnostics or logs in grub? Any way to tell what's going on just before it goes to the grub> prompt? The word 'GRUB...' flashes by, but that's all I can read before it clears the screen and goes to the grub> prompt.

If I can't get this working, I think I can still recover the system by installing CentOS 5 normally, then rsyncing with the files on the other server. I was avoiding this because I don't know what files and directories changed, and I don't think I'll be successful just rsyncing the whole /td/ directory, because of open and in-use files. However, I can't think of an alternative at this time. Any suggestions?

Thanks, again, for all your help and advice. Have a good weekend.

-Kevin

-----Original Message-----
From: linux-poweredge-bounces at dell.com [mailto:linux-poweredge-bounces at dell.com] On Behalf Of Bryan Miller
Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2008 3:44 PM
To: linux-poweredge at dell.com
Subject: Re: How to restore all of /boot/?

other than the files in /boot/grub/* anything in /boot always comes
from the kernel rpms.

Just reinstall the rpms from the CDs. Find the dir with the RPMS, and
look for kernel*rpm. Copy those over, or if the CD is mounted on the
server, just rpm -i --force kernel*.rpm It'll install files over
again.

If you're paranoid about that (the only other stuff installed is in
/lib/modules/<kernel ver>/*), you can use rpm2cpio < kernel-blah.rpm |
cpio -idv. Do this in a temp work dir in /usr/src/, i.e. /usr/src/z/.

Then you can just cp ./boot/* /boot/


-Bryan



On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 12:05 PM, Zembower, Kevin <kzembowe at jhuccp.org> wrote:
> I think that my earlier problems (see thread starting at
> http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2008-August/037024.html),
> stem from not restoring all of the contents of /boot/. Doing a grub-install installs
> all the files in /boot/grub/ but my other systems show a lot of files in /boot/, such as:
> [kevinz at t ~]$ cd /boot/
> [kevinz at t boot]$ ls -la
> total 11282
> drwxr-xr-x  4 root root    1024 Dec 11  2007 .
> drwxr-xr-x 25 root root    4096 Jul  8 14:36 ..
> -rw-r--r--  1 root root   72590 Nov 21  2007 config-2.6.22.14-72.fc6
> -rw-r--r--  1 root root   72589 Sep 27  2007 config-2.6.22.9-61.fc6
> drwxr-xr-x  2 root root    1024 Dec 11  2007 grub
> -rw-------  1 root root 2400348 Dec 11  2007 initrd-2.6.22.14-72.fc6.img
> -rw-------  1 root root 2400278 Oct  9  2007 initrd-2.6.22.9-61.fc6.img
> drwx------  2 root root   12288 Jul 12  2007 lost+found
> -rw-r--r--  1 root root 1245924 Nov 21  2007 System.map-2.6.22.14-72.fc6
> -rw-r--r--  1 root root 1245724 Sep 27  2007 System.map-2.6.22.9-61.fc6
> -rw-r--r--  1 root root 2016152 Nov 21  2007 vmlinuz-2.6.22.14-72.fc6
> -rw-r--r--  1 root root 2015944 Sep 27  2007 vmlinuz-2.6.22.9-61.fc6
> [kevinz at t boot]$
>
> [This is from a Fedora Core 6 system. I'm restoring a CentOS 5 system.]
>
> I didn't originally restore the boot partition to my other server, and this
> problem has been going on so long that my backup tapes have rolled over
> and the backup of this host's /boot/ are gone.
>
> This seems like it should be an easy question, but it has me stumped.
> Using the original CentOS 5.0 disks or some other media, what can I do
> to restore all of the contents of /boot/?
>
> Thanks again for all your help, suggestions and advice.
>
> -Kevin
>
> Kevin Zembower

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