First Boot Hangs

[Alan Warren <awarren uoguelph ca>]

Hi,

I'm trying to install RH 8.0 on a friend's laptop (PII Celeron 366,96MB,
laptop with SystemSoft Intel MobilePro BIOS).  The BIOS does not have an
option for PNPos.  The install process from CD works wonderfully,
However every boot hangs at

Mounting root filesystem
kjournald starting.  Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 212k freed

I believe this is right before INIT should be loaded.

I can however get into the system with the install CD's rescue option,
then chroot /mnt/sysimage start network and xfs and use it in X at a
tolerable speed, albeit with no swap disk (don't know how to manually
mount swap).

The things I've tried (some may be stupid)
-kernel options nopcmcia ide=nodma noapm (and a few others randomly)
-change initial runlevel to 3
-trade glibc-*-i686 for i386 (in case init was hanging on CMOV, which it
shouldn't)

I'm not sure what else might be of use to the list-gurus, but I would
really appreciate any help -- and if I can get it working for him he'll
be a convert :)

Cheers,
Alan