Kernel Panic: init not found
 

A live distro has been installed to my laptop. This is a triple boot configuration with Ubuntu, Windows XP, and Back TRack. The live distro, Back Track, is now booting but getting a kernel panic. The kernel panic is giving the error "no init found try passing init= option to kernel". Adding init=3 to kernel parameters does nothing.

sda configuration:
I've tried the following:
adding init=3 to kernel parameters of menu.lst entry
adding and removing initrd = /boot/initrd.gz

Any other ideas would be great. As all fixes provided from google have been exhausted.

Thank you.

Can you boot into Ubuntu or Windows?

Which is the last OS installed, and did you install GRUB at that time? (We need to know which Linux "owns" GRUB.)

If you can boot into Ubuntu, find the correct GRUB config. file (/boot/grub/menu.lst).

For example, if GRUB was installed from Ubuntu, then the file will be in the Ubuntu partition. If you installed BackTrack last, and installed GRUB with it, the the correct file will be on the Backtrack partition.

When you find the right one, post the entry for Backtrack.

If you can't get into any Linux, you can do all of this from the Live CD.

PS: What was "init=3" intended to do? (It sounds like it might control the runlevel)

The typical menu.lst entry will look something like this:
title Kubuntu
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda5
initrd /boot/initrd
boot

The first "root" statement tell GRUB where its files are ("(hd0,4)" is grubese for /dev/sda5)
The second "root" statement tells the kernel where "/" is. In this example, it's the same place

Thanks so much for your help guys. I figured it out though. initrd was compressed as initrd.gz. Just unzipped it and put it in /boot.

As for init=3. I've got no idea how that could be a fix. Several posts found through google have that as a successful fix.

for the kernel line, you don't need to write init=3, just a simple 3 will do:Of course changing the parameters as needed.