Accidentally Deleted /boot/ (Debian)

Hi all,

I'm having a bad day and did something colossally stupid, deleting everything from /boot/.

The system is still running. What do you think my best course of action is?

My current idea is to create a timeshift backup, reinstall debian from USB, then restore from backup in timeshift

If this won't work or you have a better idea I would really appreciate your advice.

Thanks in advance

27 comments

Your system would continue to work as long as you don't turn it off. So no matter what you do, keep it on until you restored your /boot
Recovering it should be straightforward, assuming you didn't put custom files directly to /boot.
Just reinstall the linux kernels using apt. Then manually run grub-install with appropriate parameters. Finally, run update-grub or grub-mkconfig to recreate the grub config.
If the system is turned off, you can use live USB and chroot to it to properly install the kernel packages.
- I've only ever used grub with bios/mbr or a BIOS/gpt (with grub bios partition).
  No clue about efi/uefi.
  This is the simplest method I can think of.
  The arch wiki, however, is, as always, a great source of info:
  https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GRUB
  **Linux is amazing in it's ability to keep working even when you accidentally all the things.
  I once sudo apt removed mint-x-icons or something which, for whatever reason, also needed to remove cinnamon. As in cinnamon the entire DE.
  I realised what I had done as I watched the terminal.
  #%&@! panic.
  ...
  reinstalled.
  joy.
  
  Linux is amazing in it's ability to keep working even when you accidentally all the things.
  Annoyingly so. I once made a backup. Then to confirm it would restore the system, I deleted everything on root path. as in /
  It did as told.
  OK let's reboot and verify system.
  Sudo reboot
  Command not found
  sudo shutdown
  Command not found
  But it sat there with a blinking cursor on the terminal
- Can you link me to the commands to reinstall the kernel? Thank you for very much your help[
  
  probably something like apt reinstall linux-image-...
  To find ..., run apt list --installed | grep linux-image and pick one
  Edit: also if need current kernel, can see booted kernel name using uname -a
  
  Can't find an article for it at the moment, but I can tell you real quick how I would've done it.
  Use aptitude and look for linux-image-amd64 or something under Installed -> kernel. The exact name might be a bit different.
  View the package and look under the Version and check out the one that's marked 'i' (for installed). Select that package and mark it to reinstall (shortcut 'L').
  Then finally execute it (shortcut 'g' and then 'g' again).
Live CD and reinstall kernel should do it. If it's only boot, it'll be as of nothing ever happened to it.
No need to reinstall or start over, that's wildly overkill. This is Linux, if your data is still there, it's recoverable.
- Ok very happy to hear that, thank you.
- I'm not familiar with Debian. On arch you could just run the package manager to reinstall linux (kernel) and run grub-install with all the usual commands.
  I use systemd-boot now so I might be rusty on that. I don't know if it's faster but it feels faster and I don't really care about dual booting.
Assuming the boot partition is still there and mounted. Just empty. If it were me I would try to reinstall grub2 and kernel packages. I don’t know what errors I would encounter trying it, so that would be the next hurdle.
- Ok thank you. I will sleep on it while data copies. I don't like my odds but I may learn something in the process.
Try not to reboot.
- I was able to keep the system online and follow pastermill's advice to get it working again!
  Already rebooted sucessfully.
  
  It was a lame joke. Glad you figured it out.
Backup ASAP as thoroughly possible and accept you'll probably need to start over. Schedule backups more often in the future as a lesson learned.
- Yes indeed.
  I made the mistake of putting my timeshift backup on the same disk as the data and kept having it fill my drive to 0bt and crash plasma. Of course I do something this idiotic the one time it's disabled
  
  If you have a backup, can you mount it and restore just /boot? It shouldn't change so frequently as to be incompatible.

27 comments