[plug] cannot get system to run init on bootup

[Craig Ringer]

> I've tried the linux init=/bin/bash and this works okay.

Good.

> I had a look
> around and everything looks okay.  All data looks to be intact, etc. The
> physical drive checks out okay also.  So I'm really at a lost on this. 

Did this just suddenly happen one day? Had you changed anything recently?

> If I'm right init wants to run a set of scripts all of which looks
> intact.  Is there a command that I can run to start the scripts.  Which
> script should be run first and idea?

it runs /etc/rcS.d/ first then /etc/rc?.d/ where ?=your default 
runlevel, usually "5" for X11 login in RH, "3" for textmode login in RH, 
or "2" for all in Debian.

It might be interesting to just run "exec /sbin/init" and see what happens.

Craig