/boot Partition was Deleted! What is the best way to recreate?

matthewbauer · 2009-11-23 23:00:43

My /boot Partition was somehow deleted.

How can I recreate it?

I've been trying to boot from a LiveCD then un-archive the Grub and Kernel26 pkgs from a flash drive.
Then run:

mkinitcpio -c /mnt/sda3/etc/mkinitcpio.conf -k 2.6.31-ARCH -b /mnt/sda3/ -g /mnt/sda3/boot/kernel26.img

Everything seems to work except it fails to detect /dev/sda3.

Error Log:

.......
:: Loding udev.../init: 11: /sbin/udevd: not found
/init: 11: /sbin/udevadm: not found
/init: 11: /sbin/udevadm: not found
Waiting 10 seconds for device /dev/sda3 ...
Root device '/dev/sda3' doesn't exist, attempting to create it
ERROR: Failed to parse block device ids for '/dev/sda3'
ERROR: Unable to detect or create root device '/dev/sda3'
You are being dropped to a recovery shell
.......

And no /dev/* devices show up, except for console, mem, null, and zero.

grey · 2009-11-23 23:51:19

If you have a spare partition lying around somewhere, you could do an install with /boot on where-you-want-it and / on the spare partition. Then boot from where-you-want-it with root=your actual arch root. Then junk the spare partition. Not the most elegant solution, but it should work.

matthewbauer · 2009-11-24 22:23:19

Does anybody else have any solutions? I need help as soon as possible.

PheniX · 2009-11-25 00:06:04

Hello o/

1) Boot on your live CD

2) Launch fdisk on your boot disk and create a new partition

3) mkfs.ext3 your new partition

mkfs.ext3 /dev/your_boot_partition

4) mount your / partition and /boot

mkdir /mnt/my_system
mount /dev/your_system_partition /mnt/my_system
mount /dev/your_boot_partition /mnt/my_system/boot

5) Chroot into your system :

chroot /mnt/my_system /bin/bash

6) Install grub and kernel26

pacman -S grub kernel26

7) Edit your /mnt/my_system/boot/menu.lst to reflect the change

8) Exit your chroot and umount yours partitions and reboot

Sorry for my english

matthewbauer · 2009-11-25 02:19:56

PheniX: Thanks so much!

That fixed everything. I should probably remember to use chroot when I run into catastrophic problems like this.

Note (for future reference): Because I could not connect to the internet while using chroot, I had to download the packages with "pacman -Swd" and "cp /var/cache/pacman/pkg/*.pkg /mnt/sda3". And use pacman from the chroot.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-11-23 23:00:43

/boot Partition was Deleted! What is the best way to recreate?

#2 2009-11-23 23:51:19

Re: /boot Partition was Deleted! What is the best way to recreate?

#3 2009-11-24 22:23:19

Re: /boot Partition was Deleted! What is the best way to recreate?

#4 2009-11-25 00:06:04

Re: /boot Partition was Deleted! What is the best way to recreate?

#5 2009-11-25 02:19:56

Re: /boot Partition was Deleted! What is the best way to recreate?

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