4.2: Boot -> reboot -> reboot -> ...

[Peter Wiemer-Hastings <Peter irvin psyc memphis edu>]

Hi,
I've had Redhat 4.1 running on my Dell 486 (Optiplex 466 MTe) for
several months now, crammed in with Windoze 95 on a 500M IDE disk.
Finally I got the department to spring for a big (6.5G IDE) disk, and
thought I'd go ahead and install the newer version (4.2) on that
disk. 
Got through the whole installation process fine, but when it rebooted
to start up again, I get this behavior:

   General information about the machine.
   Memory Check
   LILO: boot
   Loading LINUX
   Uncompressing LINUX
   Now booting
   Console something-or-other (flashed too quick to read)
REBOOT!?!?!
That is, it starts the whole process again.

In my troubleshooting activities, I got the newer version of the
Redhat installation boot disk, and found that it does the same thing.
When I tell it to boot from floppy, it goes for a while and reboots.

As a result of further troubleshooting, I can now boot 4.2 using the
old LILO which I reinstalled.  But it seems to be confused about the
version number.  After booting up, it says it's running 4.2 Biltmore,
with kernel version 2.0.27!  And this misinformation about the version
number seems to be messing up the boot.  It can't find the proper
modules, and consequently (I'm guessing) has trouble with networking
setup.  Whatever the cause, I can't access anything on the network
when I boot up with 4.2 now.  (I still can with 4.1.)

Any hope of getting this old guy running with 4.2, or should I just go
back to 4.1?

Thanks,
Peter

-- 
Peter Wiemer-Hastings
Departments of Psychology and Mathematical Sciences
University of Memphis
Memphis TN 38152
pwmrhstn memphis edu