Permission denied errors when unable to boot in VMWare Guest

Solution Unverified - Updated -

Issue

  • The server is unable to boot. When trying to chroot manually from rescue mode, the following error is encountered:
    chroot: failed to run command '/bin/sh': Permission denied
  • After removing rhgb and quiet from the grub line, the following error is observed in the startup messages:
    Failed to execute /sbin/init, giving up: Permission denied
  • Permissions on /bin, /sbin, /lib, /lib64 have been verified

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
  • VMWare Guest

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