grub and kernel wiped out!

[rgaelzer]

Something VERY weird just happened to me...

I just upgraded the kernel to 2.6.17-1.2145_FC5smp, but it doesn't boot. It will hang there and I'm forced to reset the machine and boot with the previous kernel: 2.6.16-1.2133_FC5smp.

Now, I just looked into the /boot partition and this is all the content:

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 65999 Jul 1 14:33 config-2.6.17-1.2145_FC5smp
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 852263 Jul 1 14:33 System.map-2.6.17-1.2145_FC5smp
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1800879 Jul 1 14:33 vmlinuz-2.6.17-1.2145_FC5smp

It means that all grub configuration and the working kernel has been wiped out and I simply don't know why... I looked into the history for the root user but there's no del command acting in the /boot partition...

Now I'm left with a kernel that doesn't work and no grub configuration. I'm not gonna reboot my machine until I can fix this.

Can anyone suggest what are the steps I should take at this point? Reinstall kernel 2.6.16-1.2133_FC5smp, reinstall grub and edit grub.conf? Will that be enough?

Any help appreciated.

[jhetrick62]

That is what I would do. There is a setting for how many kernels FC will keep. I upped mine as it was set for two and I wanted to keep the new one plus two additional.

gedit /etc/yum/pluginconf.d/installonlyn.conf and increase the number of saved packages, which also adds to the number of saved kernels. This may help prevent the problem in the future although it will take up some added space on your box as all packages will save an additional one or two.

If you don't keep a backup copy of grub.conf, you will have to completely re-install Grub it seems.

Jeff