Why the Red Hat Enterprise Linux installation failed on z/VM with "Kernel panic - not syncing: No init found"

Solution Verified - Updated -

Issue

  • The installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 failed on z/VM (s390x) with the following messages.
00: Uncompressing Linux...                                                                                                                                      
00: Ok, booting the kernel.
... snip ...
0.638327| Unpacking initramfs...                                                                                                                          
3.137402| Initramfs unpacking failed: XZ-compressed data is corrupt
... snip ...
3.228569| Failed to execute /init                                                                                                        
3.228603| Kernel panic - not syncing: No init found.  Try passing init= option to kernel. See Linux Documentation/init.txt for guidance. 
3.228606| CPU: 3 PID: 1 Comm: swapper/0 Not tainted 3.10.0-862.el7.s390x #1                                                              
3.228608|        000000037ffcfd00 000000037ffcfd90 0000000000000002 0000000000000000                                                     
       000000037ffcfe30 000000037ffcfda8 000000037ffcfda8 00000000006d7a5e                                                                    
       0000000000bd87c8 00000000008ad1a8 00000000008905dc 000000000000000b                                                                    
       000000037ffcfdf0 000000037ffcfd90 0000000000000000 0000000000000000                                                                    
       00000000006f31f8 0000000000116f68 000000037ffcfd90 000000037ffcfdf0                                                                    
3.228620| Call Trace:                                                                                                                    
3.228621| (<0000000000116e44>| show_trace+0x104/0x158)                                                                                  
3.228625|  <0000000000116f1c>| show_stack+0x84/0x100                                                                                    
3.228627|  <00000000006d7846>| panic+0x106/0x2b0                                                                                        
3.228629|  <00000000006cfdb0>| smp_rescan_cpus+0x0/0xc8                                                                                 
3.228631|  <00000000006e6202>| kernel_thread_starter+0x6/0xc                                                                            
3.228634|  <00000000006e61fc>| kernel_thread_starter+0x0/0xc

Environment

Red Hat Enterprise Linux

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