New CentOS boot hangs

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Author: Victor Odhner
Date:  
To: plug-discuss
Subject: New CentOS boot hangs
I have some angles to pursue, but I thought I'd
toss this out in case anybody sees an obvious
problem.

I did my CentOS 4.0 install last night but the
boot hangs after this message:

Warning: Unable to open an initial console.

After that message it displays two lines about
unregistering SELinux hooks (I have SELinux
disabled due to my multi-boot setup), then becomes
unresponsive and I have to press my reset button
to proceed.

Although CentOS installed for grub (which I want
to switch to shortly), I'm currently booting with
lilo. I told the install to put the bootloader
at /dev/hdc1, just so it would give me a full
boot setup. My /dev/hda1 is Windows XP, and hda7
has System Rescue CD which I use for hacking the
others. That's where lilo is installed.

Since the initial part of the boot seems to be good,
I am guessing the .EL suffix on the image did not
stop lilo from loading it. Here's my lilo.conf:

lba32
boot = /dev/hda
map = /boot/.map
prompt
install = /boot/boot-menu.b
# VESA console with size 1280x1024x16:
vga = 794  (I also tried 773, but not normal)
other = /dev/hda1
    label = win
    table = /dev/hda
image = /boot/vmlinuz1
    root = /dev/hda7
    label = SysRescueCD
    read-only
image = /hdc1/vmlinuz-2.6.9-5.0.3.EL  << is EL significant?
    root = /dev/hdc2
    label = CentOS-4.0
    read-only
image = /hdb3/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.7
    root = /dev/hdb3
    label = Mepis2.6.7
    read-only


Here's an ls of /hdc1:

-rw-r--r--  1 root root  712690 Feb 20 01:18 /hdc1/System.map-2.6.9-5.0.3.EL
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   48181 Feb 20 01:18 /hdc1/config-2.6.9-5.0.3.EL
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root    1024 May 19  2005 /hdc1/grub
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  396725 May 19 05:47 
/hdc1/initrd-2.6.9-5.0.3.EL.img
drwx------  2 root root   12288 May 18 22:42 /hdc1/lost+found
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   10213 Feb 26 17:39 /hdc1/message
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   10213 Feb 26 17:39 /hdc1/message.ja
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 1433883 Feb 20 01:18 /hdc1/vmlinuz-2.6.9-5.0.3.EL


I have not yet examined my CentOS grub config for
clues. But I am guessing that my problem is in
the CentOS installation, not in the boot loader.

Final questions:

Should there be a log somewhere on disk that will show
this part of the boot? I poked around and found none.

The CentOS /etc/fstab is in terms of labels, not
device names. Where can I view what partition is
associated with var, for example? It should be
hdc7, but I can't see anything to confirm that.

Thanks,

Vic
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