How to Recover the Contents of the /boot Folder

Volo · July 28

Long story short, I accidentally removed all the contents of the /boot folder 😢.

I'm running minimal Armbian 24.5.1 Bookworm with Linux 6.1.43-vendor-rk35xx on Orange pi 5 plus.

It all started with a failed apt update indicating there wasn't enough space in the boot partition. The update was trying to install 6.1.75-vendor-rk35xx kernel, so I decided to remove the old one from the boot to free up some space. Instead, I accidentally applied 'rm -r' to the entire /boot folder. My SBC is working fine now, but I'm afraid it won't boot on next restart, so I'm looking for a way to recover the files.

So far, I performed apt upgrade, which put the new 6.1.75-vendor-rk35xx kernel in the boot, but I'm not sure if it installed correctly - there was a warning that it couldn't be done automatically since there were no headers. I also copied armbianEnv.txt and boot.cmd from Armbian_24.5.3_Orangepi5-plus_bookworm_vendor_6.1.43_minimal.img so now armbianEnv.txt looks like below:

verbosity=1
bootlogo=false
console=both
overlay_prefix=rockchip-rk3588
fdtfile=rockchip/rk3588-orangepi-5-plus.dtb
rootdev=UUID=0af659d6-5b18-4106-9904-3ec2a1445b8a
rootfstype=ext4

Finally I used u-boot-tools to make boot.scr:

mkimage -C none -A arm -T script -d boot.cmd boot.scr

Did I miss anything, or am I good to try restarting the SBC and see how it goes 😅?

The original contents:

total 74660
    4 -rw-r--r-- 1 1003 1003      254 Jul 23 23:40 armbianEnv.txt
    4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root     1536 Sep 10  2023 armbian_first_run.txt.template
   40 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root    38518 Sep 10  2023 boot.bmp
    4 -rw-r--r-- 1 1003 1003     3820 Sep 10  2023 boot cmd
    4 -rw-rw-r-- 1 root root     3892 Sep 10  2023 boot.scr
  240 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root   243278 May 20 15:52 config-6.1.43-vendor-rk35xx
    0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root       24 Jul 24 00:44 dtb -> dtb-6.1.43-vendor-rk35xx
    4 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root     4096 Jun 12 12:21 dtb-5.10.160-legacy-rk35xx
    4 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root     4096 Jun 17 20:40 dtb-6.1.43-vendor-rk35xx
    0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root       28 Jul 24 00:44 Image -> vmlinuz-6.1.43-vendor-rk35xx
15452 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 15816813 Jul 24 00:30 initrd.img-6.1.43-vendor-rk35xx
   16 drwx------ 2 root root    16384 Sep 10  2023 lost+found
    4 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root     4096 Feb 23 21:28 overlay-user
 6836 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  6998291 May 20 15:52 System.map-6.1.43-vendor-rk35xx
    0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root       28 Jul 24 00:30 uInitrd -> uInitrd-6.1.43-vendor-rk35xx
15452 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 15816877 Jul 24 00:30 uInitrd-6.1.43-vendor-rk35xx
36596 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 37468672 May 20 15:52 vmlinuz-6.1.43-vendor-rk35xx

After recover:

total 74296
    4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root      181 Jul 25 01:14 armbianEnv.txt
    0 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root        0 Jul 24 02:03 armbianEnv.txt.out
   40 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root    38518 Jul 25 00:41 boot.bmp
    8 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root     4159 Jul 25 00:13 boot.cmd
    8 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root     4231 Jul 25 00:35 boot.scr
  240 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root   243875 Jul 21 11:42 config-6.1.75-vendor-rk35xx
    0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root       24 Jul 24 01:11 dtb -> dtb-6.1.75-vendor-rk35xx
    4 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root     4096 Jul 24 01:11 dtb-6.1.75-vendor-rk35xx
    0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root       28 Jul 24 01:12 Image -> vmlinuz-6.1.75-vendor-rk35xx
15460 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 15827858 Jul 24 01:12 initrd.img-6.1.75-vendor-rk35xx
 6756 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  6917422 Jul 21 11:42 System.map-6.1.75-vendor-rk35xx
    0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root       28 Jul 24 01:12 uInitrd -> uInitrd-6.1.75-vendor-rk35xx
15460 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 15827922 Jul 24 01:12 uInitrd-6.1.75-vendor-rk35xx
36316 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 37186048 Jul 21 11:42 vmlinuz-6.1.75-vendor-rk35xx

Werner · July 28

https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_Recovery/#replacing-boot

Volo · July 28

Thank you for the link, but since my SBC is still working (at least until I reboot it), wouldn't it be easier to recover the boot by reinstalling the kernel using armbian-config? Wouldn't it place all the necessary files and symlinks in the boot?

Edited July 28 by Volo