Cannot boot because: Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

This is what I've got. I cannot boot and I see the two of three little lights on the keyboard blinking all the time and the cooling is working on full power, almost.

I saw in other askubuntu topic suggestion for memory test. I did it. I didn't have any errors.

I am 99,9% sure it is not a hardware problem, because I have Windows 7 and I can boot it and it works just fine.

This problem came without any warning or something. I just turned off the laptop one day and at the other day I couldn't boot.

From recovery mode I get this:

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8 Answers

There you go /sbin/init: No such file or directory. Looks like it can't find a /sbin/init on /dev/sda6.

Maybe have a look from a Live CD, and see what is on sda6? Is it the right partition? Is just that file missing?

You can probably fix it from a Live CD, but I'm not sure what caused it, so I can't give instructions. Reinstalling is probably easier, if you don't know how to fix it, yourself.

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From my experience, I think that this problem is caused by upgrading to a newer kernel version.

Force shutdown and then power on again. Select the Advance option for Ubuntu or Elementary. In the next tab, just choose a previous kernel version and hit Enter and it will go to desktop normally.

I had a lot of trouble with that same exact problem and it took me a while but i managed to fix my problem with the following solution. I installed Boot repair and repaired my file system. I have LVM(logical volume mangement) and i couldnt run fsck. you can follow how to install it from or

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair
sudo sed 's/trusty/saucy/g' -i /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yannubuntu-boot-repair-trusty.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair && (boot-repair &)

after that, boot-repair should open automatically

1. click the "advanced options" to expand
2. in the "Main options" tab, check "Reinstall GRUB" and "Repair file systems" Repairing file systems is the most important part as the kernel panics happen because of some file system error.
3. int the "Grub options" tab, check "Purge GRUB before reinstalling it"
4. and of course you must have internet connection as you will be installing new files. and finally click Apply.

You had this problem because your kernel is not signed and your system is in safe boot. Even if you disable safeboot, you may get an error like Kernel not syncing : -Vfs

1. In the GRUB bootloader, choose advanced options and then select and older kernel version to boot into your system.

2. Open up the terminal using Ctrl+Alt+T

3. Then check your available kernel using the command, dpkg --list | grep linux-image

4. Update to the latest kernel or get the latest kernel with the commands:

    sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade sudo apt-get upgrade linux-image-generic

   sudo apt-get upgrade linux-image-generic is optional

Now the new kernels will be downloaded.

Then reboot the system. The new kernel will be assigned as the main kernel instead of the previous unsigned one!

Just to add my 2c for those encountering this problem when running virtual machines. I was seeing the same message when trying to use VM migrated from VirtualBox to VMWare ESXi. None of the solutions above have worked to resolve the issue, the only option that resolved the issue was to manually convert the disk image into VMWare format:

 /Applications/VMware\ -r ubuntu-disk1.vmdk -t 4 ../ubuntu-disk.vmdk

The important part being the -t 4, which creates ESXi-ready disk image. I've used VMWare Fusion as an example but any distribution of the vmware-vdiskmanager can be used.

I hope this helps someone. The same problem was occurring for me on all the 4 available kernels on my laptop. I have tried various methods like fsck, nomodeset,selinux=0. Nothing was working.

I fixed the error with a live ubuntu usb. Booted from live usb and run these commands

sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
sudo mv /mnt/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu /mnt/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu-copy
sudo mkdir /mnt/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
sudo cp -r /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/* /mnt/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu

Then umount /dev/sda1 and reboot (remove the usb). It worked for me.

1

The problem is the memory RAM. i remove a memory RAM 2 Gb. In this case i had 2 memory ram than 2Gb only remove 1 memory and it working

I got this issue with ubuntu 18.04, on upgrading my distro from 16.04 to 18.04, The boot process throws, Kernel Panic

e2fsck
sbin/init: No Such file or Directory
Kernel Panic - Not Syncing : Attempted to kill init !

In order to resolve this, I booted from Live Ubuntu 18.04 disk, then i replaced the contents of my filesystem directories

/bin & /sbin

with the corresponding content of the directories /bin & /sbin of stock filesystem of Live Ubuntu disk.

First find the disk partition which has the probelm in my case it was /dev/sda5 now boot from the live disk and mount /dev/sd5 with the Live Disk

open terminal and run the following commands to replace the contents

cp -r -i /bin /media/ubuntu/<name of your partition folder>
cp -r -i /sbin /media/ubuntu/<name of your partition folder>

example:

cp -r -i /bin /media/ubuntu/cdfb882d-e33c-49b5-8965-fea541464686/bin/
cp -r -i /sbin /media/ubuntu/cdfb882d-e33c-49b5-8965-fea541464686/sbin/

shutdown the pc and reboot.

Done Hope this may help!

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