No /boot

[Ringtail Raccoon <ringtail@ringtail0.ursine.dyndns.org>]

When trying to get my cd burner working, when reinstalling LILO to change
a boot option, I got the error
ringtail0:/# lilo
Fatal: open /vmlinuz: No such file or directory

Looking closer, I see in ls of /

lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           23 Aug 13 02:13 vmlinuz -> boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-686

Looking in /boot, there is nothing.

Try mounting /boot, it won't mount, complaining about a bad superblock.
Decide to try and rebuild /boot, starting with remaking the filesystem.

ringtail0:/# mkfs.ext3 -c /dev/hda1
mke2fs 1.27 (8-Mar-2002)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=1024 (log=0)
Fragment size=1024 (log=0)
2000 inodes, 8001 blocks
400 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=1
1 block group
8192 blocks per group, 8192 fragments per group
2000 inodes per group

Checking for bad blocks (read-only test): done
Writing inode tables: 0/1
Could not write 8 blocks in inode table starting at 5: Attempt to write
block from filesystem resulted in short write


Eep!  So, other than not rebooting for the time being, what's a good way
to get out of this situation?