Re: Can't boot "Kernel panic: No init found"

[David Z Maze <dmaze@debian.org>]

Rich <deblists@osg.saic.com> writes:
> I can no longer boot my Woody laptop. Here are the last few lines of
> boot up:
>
> 	VFS: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly.
> 	Freeing unused kernel momory 208k freed
> 	kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel.
>
> I use GRUB and have tried adding the kernel parameters 'init=/sbin/init'
> and 'init=/bin/bash'. No dice.

Hmm.  Are you specifying the right root= partition?  If you have
multiple partitions, it sounds like the kernel could be picking one
that really is a valid ext3 filesystem but isn't the one that contains
/sbin, etc.

  title Linux (Kernel 2.4.20)
  root (hd0,1)
  kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20 root=/dev/hda2

Remember that Linux's /dev/hda typically corresponds to GRUB's (hd0),
and that Linux's partition numbers are one higher than GRUB's.

-- 
David Maze         dmaze@debian.org      http://people.debian.org/~dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting.  Politicking should be illegal."
	-- Abra Mitchell