/sbin/init: Can't access tty; Job control turned off

(I'm a total beginner, so everything is say here should be taken with a grain of salt.)

I think I need to rebuild/ reinstall the boot sequence. What docs are there about Edgy's boot sequence, and the best way to capture it (can I find that in the /var/log directory ?)? I also heard there might be a rescue system for boot problems. Does that exist?

My Edgy boot fails with the /sbin/init error message. That symptom is discussed here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=292533&page=5 and on many, many other pages.

As another user says:
[QUOTE]I think I had ran apt-get autoremove, which someone mentioned could have removed some important package. Also, my system didn't shutdown correctly from X, and since I forgot how to use 'reboot' to reboot from a ctrl-alt-f# terminal, I had just powered down. [/QUOTE]

In my case I can boot all the way to init_bottom, but it hangs after that.

Below, I give some of my setup's specs (fdisk, menu.lst, fstabs).

I notice that there is no /sbin/init ; in fact, init doesn't exist anywhere as far as I can tell.

There are no uuid device names in /dev (should there be?)

I can boot from the cd and see my files on the hard drive;
I have done a get-apt install ubuntu-minimal, standard, Desktop, with no change.
I have done a fsck check. The disk is clean.

On my list of things to try, in all the various combinations, is:
A. In grub:
1) increase the ramdisk size: ramdisk=8192
2) add a label : real_root=/dev/hda2
3) synchronize fstabs and menu.lst: fstabs uses uuid and menu.lst uses /dev/hda2 (tried that too -- no luck)
B. From the CD
4) copy sbin/init to my sbin/init (tried that: the boot continues, but hangs when it does not find /sbin/logd )

My menu.lst file seems normal otherwise (I have one configuration with uuid, the other without):

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.17-11-generic
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz- 2.6.17-11-generic root=UUID=e77a8fce-f839-49bd-8dde-06acb9ca1c2b ro splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.17-11-generic
# quiet
savedefault
boot

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.17-11-generic (recovery mode)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.17-11-generic root=/dev/hda2 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img- 2.6.17-11-generic
boot

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.17-10-generic
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.17-10-generic root=/dev/hda2 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.17-10-generic
quiet
savedefault
boot

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.17-10-generic (recovery mode)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.17-10-generic root=/dev/hda2 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img- 2.6.17-10-generic
boot

title Ubuntu, memtest86+
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet
boot

FSTABS:

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# Entry for /dev/hda2 :
UUID=e77a8fce-f839-49bd-8dde-06acb9ca1c2b / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# Entry for /dev/hda5 :
UUID=7cdf83ef-3425-499d-893b-920ba36cb91f none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/hda1 /media/Windows ntfs umask=222,utf8 0 0

FDISK:

Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 5287 42467796 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 5288 9544 34194352+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 9545 9729 1486012+ 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 9545 9729 1485981 82 Linux swap / Solaris