How to solve “Kernel panic - not syncing - Attempt

Question

I was trying to update libc in our Ubuntu server but it failed and now when I reboot the server I get a error message:

Kernel panic - not syncing - Attempted to kill init!

and it just hangs.

What is the solution to this problem? The server is used by 10 people so I don't want to reinstall erasing their data.

Answer 1

I just came across this problem when I replaced a failing disk. I had copied over the system files to the new disk, and was good about replacing the old disk's UUID entry with the new disk's UUID in fstab.

However I had not replaced the UUID in the grub.conf (sometimes menu.lst) file in /boot/grub. So check your grub.conf file, and if the "kernel" line has something like

kernel ... root=UUID=906eaa97-f66a-4d39-a39d-5091c7095987 

it likely has the old disk's UUID. Replace it with the new disk's UUID and run grub-install (if you're in a live CD rescue you may need to chroot or specify the grub directory).

Answer 2

Booting from CD to rescue the installation and editing /etc/selinux/config: changed SELINUX from enforcing to permissive. Rebooted and system booted

/etc/selinux/config before change:

SELINUX=enforcing and SELINUXTYPE=permissive

/etc/selinux/config after change: SELINUX=permissive and SELINUXTYPE=permissive