Kernel panic- not syncing: attempted to kill init!
 

After a disastrous start (and driving quite a few of you nuts), I decided to buy a few books and read (at least enough to understand what I was told to do in here), before I attempted to load PCLinuxOS again. Thinking I had—thinking being the operative word here—I went for the load. Everything went pretty well. Install went smooth, first thing I did was to see if the Grub dual-boot loader worked and I could get into WinXP. I was happy to see I was not reliving the past here. Rebooted the system and tried to load Linux, this is where it got messy; it froze on the splash screen and escape did nothing at all. I did something wrong I guess, rebooted, loaded Linux with “Linux Safe Settings” and here is the list I got…

Creating root device
Trying to resume from /dev/sdb5
Unable to access resume device (/dev/sdb5)
Echo: cannot open /proc/suspend2/do_resume for write: 2
Mounting root file system /dev/root
Mounting: error 6 mounting ext2 flags default
Well, retrying without the option flags
Mount error 6 mounting ext2
Well, retry read-only without any flag
Mount error 6 mounting ext2
Well, retry without any flag
Mount error 6 mounting ext2
Switching to new root
Error opening /dev/console!!!: 2
Unmounting old /proc
Unmounting old /sys
Switchroot: mount failed: 22
Initrd finished
Kernel panic- not syncing: attempted to kill init!

I did some more reading to find that (correct me if I am wrong) sdb5 is the back-up dir and that ext2 is an error default when loading to a drive that has been reformatted from NTFS and has to me changed in the advanced setting area to ext3. (PLEASE if I am mistaken correct me). So correcting is just what I did, put the LiveDVD back in and started over, and over, and over until I got what I thought was right. How wrong I was…
Although there are differences the end result is the same.

Creating root device
Trying to resume from /dev/sdb1
No suspend signature on swap, not responding
Echo: cannot open /proc/suspend2/do_resume for write: 2
Mounting root file system /dev/root
Mounting: error 6 mounting ext3 flags defaults
Well, retrying without the option flags
Mount error 6 mounting ext3
Well, retry read-only without any flag
Mount error 6 mounting ext3
Well, retry without any flag
Mount error 6 mounting ext3
Switching to new root
Error opening /dev/console!!!: 2
Unmounting old /proc
Unmounting old /sys
Switchroot: mount failed: 22
Initrd finished
Kernel panic- not syncing: attempted to kill init!

My system information: Running WinXP PRO on an internal 200gig SATA HDD, Loading PCLinuxOS to an external 120gig IDE HDD via USB, Gigabyte 8400 Video card, AMD Phenom 9500 processor, Gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3 motherboard, 20inch Monitor w/DVI connected, USB mouse and keyboard. I have the boot sequence in Bios set to CDROM 1st, External USB HDD 2nd, and Internal SATA HDD 3rd, 2gig Memory. There should be enough information here to know if it may be a system/software conflict.

If you want me to boot from the LiveDVD and access the HDD installed program from the terminal, please tell me how to do that. I cannot find the command for that and wouldn’t know what to look for if I could .

Pointer to one discussion
 

Kernal Panic
 

I am working on Inspirion /1100.I got the same message as in the post.In my case I had made a bootable flash drive that worked on several other Machines.But for some reason on this one just after probing for USB devices the machine would look to the CD drive for the loop not the USB drive.
So I burned the CD and it worked fine.I have tried the flash drive I made on additional Machines and it works fine.Just not on this one.

I too have experienced this problem, when trying to use the Slackware 13 install cd.
The recipient computer isn't exactly new, but it's not that old either. Other install and Live media seem to work fine, only when I use Slackware 13, cd 1 (The install cd) does it give me this kernel panic.
Most peculiar.

I think some Linux distributions have hard time with certain hardware. For example I had a 5-year old HP Pavilion zv6000 that refused to install Slackware, it kept killing the install halfway through (DVD was fine, so was HDD). Now on my newer Acer Aspire One, Slackware installed just fine; I just couldn't my wireless and Ethernet to behave. But on this machine, Sabayon refuses to install. I think just trying to use another distribution might work for you.

Debian did, in this case, but I fount it odd that only Slackware - and at that, only Slackware 13 - would do it on that computer.

Wow talk about digging up an old thread. Alot of times the reason you get this error is because the kernel had an issue mounting the root file system. This can be caused by alot of different things and problems.