OCI - Instance Unable to Boot Due to Missing Symlinks (softlinks)

Applies to:

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure - Version N/A and later

Linux x86-64

Symptoms

The system fails to boot and the following is seen at the serial console:

[  OK  ] Started Plymouth switch root service.
         Starting Switch Root...
[  !!  ] Failed to execute /sbin/init
[!!!!!!] Failed to execute fallback shell, freezing.

Cause

The following symlinks are missing:

lrwxrwxrwx.   1 root root    7 Mar  7  2019 lib -> usr/lib
lrwxrwxrwx.   1 root root    9 Mar  7  2019 lib64 -> usr/lib64
lrwxrwxrwx.   1 root root    8 Mar  7  2019 sbin -> usr/sbin
lrwxrwxrwx.   1 root root    7 Mar  7  2019 bin -> usr/bin

Solution

In order to boot the system, the first step is to boot to single user mode and restore the links.