Redhat fails to boot!

[Bob McClure Jr]

On Sat, Jul 16, 2005 at 10:02:09PM +0100, Christopher Malton wrote:
> I have installed Redhat 9, but when the OS boots it says:
> 
>  
> 
>     Press I to enter interactive startup.
> 
> Configuring Kernel parameters.    [OK]
> 
>  
> 
> And then stops!
> 
>  
> 
> The keyboard stops responding and nothing works.  A reset produces the same
> result.
> 
>  
> 
> The PC is an AMD K6 processor with 160 MB of RAM.

How much swap space?  Should be about 320MB.

> It is trying to boot graphically.

That may be too tight a space to fit a GUI, at least GNOME or KDE.
Have you tried to boot to a text prompt?  You can do that from the
GRUB screen when it starts counting down to boot the default kernel.
At that time hit "a" to append to the boot line, and then put a space
and a "3", and hit return.  If that boots ok, your installation is ok,
but too small for a fat GUI.

If it won't boot to text mode, check your memory.  Boot from the RH 9
CD and put "memtest86" at the boot prompt.

If that's the machine you're stuck with, consider a lighter-weight
window manager such as AfterStep (what I'm using):

http://www.afterstep.org/

AS has grown quite a bit over the years and may still be a struggle.
I used to have 256MB and had to wait for apps to swap in and out.  Now
I have 512MB and don't have to wait.  Lighter-weight WMs than AS
include IceWM, BlackBox, and several others

http://www.icewm.org/
http://blackboxwm.sourceforge.net/

> Please help!
> 
>  
> 
> Chris

All that said, must you run RH 9?  It was end-of-lifed a couple years
ago.  You should be running Fedora Core 2, 3, or 4.

Cheers,
-- 
Bob McClure, Jr.             Bobcat Open Systems, Inc.
robertmcclure at earthlink.net  http://www.bobcatos.com
God doesn't have (or need) a Plan B.