Ubuntu booting problem: Can't find /sbin/init
 

I have an Acer netbook with the netbook version of Ubuntu and Windows 7. When I try to boot on Ubuntu I get a terminal that says "Target filesystem doesn't have /sbin/init. No init found. Try passing init= bootarg." I've found questions about this, but I get lost at "after booting from livecd." I put ubuntu-10.10-netbook-i386 on a flash card, but I don't know how to boot from it; I think that's my main problem.

How did you install Ubuntu on it? I had a real pig of a time getting an Acer netbook to boot to a live CD, I eventually booted it using USB. I've never tried booting from a flash card, but it may well be possible :) if you're having trouble getting it to boot then the first step is to change the BIOS settings so that Hard Disk is below whatever other media you want to boot (in this case, it could be the CD, DVD, Flash or USB)

Are you trying to boot from the hard drive grub to look for a CF reader?

I think you are using grub 2. here is something on it. I don't have much experience on it but here is some info from ubuntu:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1195275
init is the first program run after /dev/root is mounted. It sounds like grub can't find the root partition.
read the above entry and check the menu before you boot the os.
good luck

Booting flash drive - finding /sbin/init
 

On my eeepc I bring up a boot menu by pressing F2 and then selecting the flash drive or sd card - try googling for your acer model and boot flash drive, etc. Can you still boot windows, or did you set the machine up to be only ubuntu? If it is a dual boot, you should probably be looking at a menu that lets you select the system to boot when you first turn the machine on. You arrow down the menu to select the operating system. This menu should be grub2 for ubuntu. You can type e to edit the commands that boot that particular operating system. You will need to have a root="something" in the kernel command line. Ex:


linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-22-generic root=UUID=32304494-b7be-4da9-81c8-bb1a8fbfc25e ro single

this is an ubuntu boot which usually identifies the root partion by a long UUID string. You can also identify the root partion by device like: /dev/sda2. If you can boot some version of linux from a flash drive typing dmesg | grep sda should show you the partions found on your first hard drive. Typing
sudo mkdir /mnt/sdaX <Ret>
sudo mount -o ro /dev/sdaX /mnt/sdaX <Ret>
(Replace "X" with the number of the partion you install ubuntu on.) This will mount the partion read-only under /mnt/sdaX.
Type:
ls -l /mnt/sdaX/sbin/init
This should turn up something, at least a link. I haven't quite figured out upstart, which is what ubuntu uses instead of init if I remember. If you can't find something under /mnt/sdaX/sbin/init you should probably think of re-installing. Google your model number of acer, and get the most complete description of how someone got ubuntu installed that you can find.