[CentOS] HELP, I accidentally initialized my /boot partition

Mon Aug 20 19:30:34 UTC 2007
John R Pierce <pierce at hogranch.com>

Alfred von Campe wrote:
> So I installed a second drive in my system today, and instead of 
> typing "mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda1" I did a "mkfs.ext3 /dev/hda1".  
> Fortunately, that was just my /boot partition.  I thought I could just 
> copy the contents from the /boot partition from another system, but 
> that didn't work as expected.  The again, I don't have another system 
> that's identical to the mine.
>
> What is the best way to re-create the /boot partition for my system?

grub.conf will be the main problem...  and possibly whats in the initrd 
if extra drivers need to be loaded to complete the boot (I believe this 
is built by mkinitrd)

# ls -lR /boot
/boot:
total 9931
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   62154 Jul 10 04:34 config-2.6.18-8.1.8.el5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   62150 Mar 15 17:19 config-2.6.18-8.el5
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root    1024 Jul 23 17:59 grub
-rw------- 1 root root 2206532 Jul 23 17:59 initrd-2.6.18-8.1.8.el5.img
-rw------- 1 root root 2206505 Jul 23 10:30 initrd-2.6.18-8.el5.img
drwx------ 2 root root   12288 Jul 23 03:22 lost+found
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   80032 Apr  1 07:49 message
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   83542 Jul 10 04:34 symvers-2.6.18-8.1.8.el5.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   83542 Mar 15 17:20 symvers-2.6.18-8.el5.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  884809 Jul 10 04:34 System.map-2.6.18-8.1.8.el5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  884787 Mar 15 17:19 System.map-2.6.18-8.el5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1765588 Jul 10 04:34 vmlinuz-2.6.18-8.1.8.el5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1765428 Mar 15 17:19 vmlinuz-2.6.18-8.el5

/boot/grub:
total 207
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     63 Jul 23 10:32 device.map
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   7616 Jul 23 10:32 e2fs_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   7456 Jul 23 10:32 fat_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   6720 Jul 23 10:32 ffs_stage1_5
-rw------- 1 root root    738 Jul 23 17:59 grub.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   6720 Jul 23 10:32 iso9660_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   8192 Jul 23 10:32 jfs_stage1_5
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     11 Jul 23 10:32 menu.lst -> ./grub.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   6880 Jul 23 10:32 minix_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   9248 Jul 23 10:32 reiserfs_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   5427 Apr  1 07:49 splash.xpm.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    512 Jul 23 10:32 stage1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 104924 Jul 23 10:32 stage2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   7040 Jul 23 10:32 ufs2_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   6272 Jul 23 10:32 vstafs_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   8864 Jul 23 10:32 xfs_stage1_5