How to solve "Kernel panic - not syncing - Attempted to kill init" -- without erasing any user data

security ubuntu linux-kernel selinux panic

Slayer · Oct 12, 2012 · Viewed 400.3k times · Source

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

if the full message is:

kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill inint !
PId: 1, comm: init not tainted 2.6.32.-279-5.2.e16.x86_64 #1

then you should have disabled selinux and after that you have rebooted the system.

The easier way is to use a live OS and re-enable it

vim /etc/selinux/config
    ...
    SELINUX=enforcing
    ...

Second choice is to disable selinux in the kernel arguments by adding selinux=0

vim /boot/grub/grub.conf
    ...
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-selinux-2003040709 ro root=/dev/hda1 nousb selinux=0
    ...