Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!



When the kernel gets into a situation where it does not know how to proceed (most often during booting, but at other times), it issues a kernel panic by calling the panic(msg) routine defined in
kernel/panic.c. (Good name, huh?) This is a call from which No One Ever Returns.

The panic() routine adds text to the front of the message, telling you more about what the system was actually doing when the panic occurred ... basically how big and bad the trail of debris in the filesystem is likely to be. This is where the "not syncing" part comes from, and when you see that, it's good. (panic() doessinc() system-call to push all buffered data out to the hard-disks before it goes down.)

The second part of the message is what was provided by the original call to panic(). For example, we find panic("Tried to kill init!") it
tries  to issue a kernel/exit.c.

So, what does this actually mean? Well, in this case it really doesn't mean that someone tried to kill the magical init process (process #1...), but simply that it tried to die. ( This process is not allowed to die or to be killed. )

When you see this message, it's almost always at boot-time, and the real messages ... the cause of the actual failure ... will be found in the startup messages immediately preceding this one. This is often the case with kernel-panics. init encountered something "really bad," and it didn't know what to do, so it died, so the kernel died too.

BTW, the kernel-panic code is rather cute. It can blink lights and beep the system-speaker in Morse code. It can reboot the system automagically. Obviously the people who wrote this stuff encountered it a lot...

In diagnosing, or at least understanding, kernel-panics, I find it extremely helpful to have on-hand a copy of the Linux source-code, which is usually stored someplace like
/usr/src/linux-2.x. You can use the grep utility to locate the actual code which caused the panic to occur.



Things to know about linux

What is the minimum number of partitions you need to install Linux? What command can you use to review boot messages? only need 2 partitions to install Linux one is the root partition / and other is the swap partition ,you can install linux without creating /boot ,it will automatically created under / dmesg will show you the logged messages at boot time .most information is about detected hardware at boot time
what is stored at /lib/modules ?
It contains all the kernel modules that needed to be loaded
into kernel (booting etc). there will some .map, .dep
(dependency files) files present.

When the kernel needs a feature that is not resident in the
kernel, the kernel module daemon kmod[1] execs modprobe to
load the module in.

You can see what modules are already loaded into the kernel
by running lsmod, which gets its information by reading the
file /proc/modules



How to Load a Linux kernel module automatically at boot time

When the kernel needs a feature that is not resident in the kernel, the kernel module
 daemon kmod[1] execs modprobe to load the module in.
modprobe first searches a files called  File /etc/modules.conf  is configuration file for loading kernel modules.
 what is stored in /proc ?
what is significance of /proc in linux ?
 Mainly hardware related information such as CPU
information, Memory (RAM) information stored under /proc
directory
example:
# cat /proc/cpuinfo (show the information of CPU of that
particular hardware)
# cat /proc/meminfo (show the information of Memory i.e.
RAM of that particular hardware)
 why the kernel panic error was appering?

Kernel panic error occurs when a Linux OS files system goes curroupt or it cannot read the file system

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