diff --git a/init/main.c b/init/main.c
index 9c51ee7..2a9b88a 100644
--- a/init/main.c
+++ b/init/main.c
@@ -209,8 +209,19 @@
 
 static int __init loglevel(char *str)
 {
-	get_option(&str, &console_loglevel);
-	return 0;
+	int newlevel;
+
+	/*
+	 * Only update loglevel value when a correct setting was passed,
+	 * to prevent blind crashes (when loglevel being set to 0) that
+	 * are quite hard to debug
+	 */
+	if (get_option(&str, &newlevel)) {
+		console_loglevel = newlevel;
+		return 0;
+	}
+
+	return -EINVAL;
 }
 
 early_param("loglevel", loglevel);