Cannot boot because: Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

There you go /sbin/init: No such file or directory. Looks like it can't find a /sbin/init on /dev/sda6.

Maybe have a look from a Live CD, and see what is on sda6? Is it the right partition? Is just that file missing?

You can probably fix it from a Live CD, but I'm not sure what caused it, so I can't give instructions. Reinstalling is probably easier, if you don't know how to fix it, yourself.


I had a lot of trouble with that same exact problem and it took me a while but i managed to fix my problem with the following solution. I installed Boot repair and repaired my file system. I have LVM(logical volume mangement) and i couldnt run fsck. you can follow how to install it from https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair or

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair
sudo sed 's/trusty/saucy/g' -i /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yannubuntu-boot-repair-trusty.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair && (boot-repair &)

after that, boot-repair should open automatically

  1. click the "advanced options" to expand
  2. in the "Main options" tab, check "Reinstall GRUB" and "Repair file systems" Repairing file systems is the most important part as the kernel panics happen because of some file system error.
  3. int the "Grub options" tab, check "Purge GRUB before reinstalling it"
  4. and of course you must have internet connection as you will be installing new files. and finally click Apply.

From my experience, I think that this problem is caused by upgrading to a newer kernel version.

Force shutdown and then power on again. Select the Advance option for Ubuntu or Elementary. In the next tab, just choose a previous kernel version and hit Enter and it will go to desktop normally.