Arch Linux

crs

Member

From: Boulder, CO

Registered: 2014-03-10

Posts: 9

[SOLVED] panic on boot - "Failed to execute /init (error -2)"

after updating on Sep-12 my Thinkpad W510 won't boot anymore, complaining that it can't find /init.  An image showing the error messages is here:

https://goo.gl/photos/2p3zfEMqeJ7TL2sU7

I don't know how to debug this, so any suggestions are welcome!

I tried downgrading every package that was upgraded on Sep-12, but the problem persists.

Looking into the initramfs image, /init is present, as is the busybox shell that interprets it.

Booting with 'initrd=random-file' produces the error "Unable to mount root fs", so it seems the kernel is actually mounting the initramfs image but for some reason is unable to access files in it.

thanks for any help!

Last edited by crs (2016-09-24 07:46:58)

crs

Member

From: Boulder, CO

Registered: 2014-03-10

Posts: 9

Re: [SOLVED] panic on boot - "Failed to execute /init (error -2)"

this turned out to be self-inflicted - I'd installed an RPM package manually, which overwrote the symlink

/usr/lib64 -> lib/

with an actual directory.  This broke /usr/bin/ldd, which cycles through these:

RTLDLIST="/usr/lib/ld-linux.so.2 /usr/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 /usr/libx32/ld-linux-x32.so.2"

the 2nd of which was now non-existent, causing ldd to return "not a dynamic executable" for any x86-64 program.  So during the next kernel package upgrade, no shared libraries were included in the generated initramfs.  Oops.

headkase

Member

Registered: 2011-12-06

Posts: 1,976

Re: [SOLVED] panic on boot - "Failed to execute /init (error -2)"

Please mark your thread solved.  Edit the first post in it and in the title pre-pend "[Solved]" without the quotes.