Target Filesystem doesn't have /sbin/init

[Transmutable]

Oh this is maddening, when I boot from the 8.10 LiveCD, it doesn't boot all the way. I get the Ubuntu logo with the orange status bar below it; the orange bounces back and forth for a while and then starts to fill up. When the bar is full the screen flashes a few times like it used to and then... nothing. Just a backlit black screen. Meanwhile, 10.04 is still thinking about white and orange dots.

I'm almost thinking of just backing up my hard drive and doing a complete reinstall, but restoring my data has been utter chaos every time I've had to do that before. There just has to be an easier way.

[georges2051]

Re: Target Filesystem doesn't have /sbin/init
This solution solved my problem as well on 10.04, boot failed and I didn't even make it to Grub.

I had the warning:

Quote:
target filesystem doesn't have /sbin/init
No init found try passing init = bootarg

Per the other posts I ran the live cd.
While booted into the live CD for 10.04, my boot drive wouldn't mount either.


While running the live cd disc I went to the applications / accessories and terminal
and typed sudo (space) and the following command as directed by the previous posts
e2fsck -f -y -v /dev/sdb1
Thanks to 9047boy and spoolboyy for their notes...saved my bacon !!!
Much apprceiated !!!

George

[El_Cucuy]

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo e2fsck -f -y -v /dev/sdb1
e2fsck 1.41.11 (14-Mar-2010)
e2fsck: Superblock invalid, trying backup blocks...
e2fsck: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sdb1

The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2
filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2
filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock
is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
e2fsck -b 8193 <device>

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

Looks like my HD is dead

[GriFF3n]

Ok . I managed to fix the problem by checking the partition with the partition editor from the live cd , which is basically :

e2fsck -f -y -v /dev/sda2

This seems to have solved the problem .

Had the same problem and this worked for me as well. Anyone know what causes this problem?

[zahanm]

If the 10.04 live disk refuses to load past the little dots stage.
Hit the right arrow key and you might see this: GLib-WARNING **: getpwuid_r(): failed due to unknown user id (0) ) - then just use an older Ubuntu distro.

Karmic works well, for instance.
I didn't try 10.10 as I just assumed it would be even more buggy.

From then on out

sudo gparted

and you know the rest.

Thanks for the help!

[skakillers]

I'm getting the same error as the OP on boot. I've booted to a livecd to try to repair my partition, but when I run
sudo e2fsck -f -y -v /dev/sda2
I get the output
e2fsck: Device or resource busy while trying to open /dev/sda2
Filesystem mounted or opened exclusively by another program?

If I look in my /dev folder there's nothing there, and executing
sudo umount /dev/sda2
returns
umount: /dev/sda2: not mounted
I also cannot open gparted, if I try from the system menu it just closes, but if I open from the command line with
sudo gparted
it returns
glibmm-ERROR **:
unhandled exception (type std::exception) in signal handler:
what: basic_string::_s_create

what do I do?

[skakillers]

Further info:
gparted won't launch from the livecd, but disk utility will. I've been able to run the check and repair function from there, but all it returns is

This filesystem is NOT clean!

and it doesn't seem to do anything else. I thought the drive might be failing, so I did a read speed test, again using disk utility, and it worked fine. This indicates that there is nothing physically wrong with the disc. I'm just unsure of what is wrong with my filesystem, or what it is that's going on. I can't even get the disk to mount so I can get my files off and go for a reinstall.

[skakillers]

I really need help with this, the problem is on my laptop, and I'm about to go home for Thanksgiving where it will be my only machine. I have schoolwork I absolutely have to get done this week that requires the use of LaTeX, and I also have files on the laptop that are not backed up. All of my schoolwork is in my dropbox, so that's not an issue, but I'd prefer not to lose a bunch of photographs if I have to do a clean reinstall.

[ezzie]

I had the same problem as skakillers, I attempted to start ubuntu and got the error "target filesystem doesn't have /sbin/init."
So I booted ubuntu off my USB drive to run fsck as I had a similar problem before and this had worked for me. But fsck returned "Device or resource busy while trying to open /dev/sdc1 Filesystem mounted or opened exclusively by another program?"
When I ran " e2fsck -f -y -v /dev/sdc1" I got the same error.

I gave up last night and this morning I started at it again, and ubuntu notified me of a crash of "gvfs-gdu-volume-monitor" I thought this may be what was making the drive busy, so I ran "fsck -f /dev/sdc1" again and it worked.

So skakillers, you could try going system>administration>system monitor. Then going to processes and killing gvfs-gdu-volume-monitor if that doesn't work then try killing the other "*-volume-monitor" ones.

Let me know if it works. Although, if it doesn't then I have no idea what else to do, I was out of ideas when this happened, I was just lucky.

[Gruu]

I had the same problem as skakillers, I attempted to start ubuntu and got the error "target filesystem doesn't have /sbin/init."
So I booted ubuntu off my USB drive to run fsck as I had a similar problem before and this had worked for me. But fsck returned "Device or resource busy while trying to open /dev/sdc1 Filesystem mounted or opened exclusively by another program?"
When I ran " e2fsck -f -y -v /dev/sdc1" I got the same error.

I gave up last night and this morning I started at it again, and ubuntu notified me of a crash of "gvfs-gdu-volume-monitor" I thought this may be what was making the drive busy, so I ran "fsck -f /dev/sdc1" again and it worked.

So skakillers, you could try going system>administration>system monitor. Then going to processes and killing gvfs-gdu-volume-monitor if that doesn't work then try killing the other "*-volume-monitor" ones.

Let me know if it works. Although, if it doesn't then I have no idea what else to do, I was out of ideas when this happened, I was just lucky.

I had the same problem as you did, but I couldn't get it to work using an Ubuntu LiveCD, since Ubuntu always mounts the drive. Instead, I used slax (http://www.slax.org/) and ran the same e2fsck command, which worked perfectly and solved my problem.