Out of memory while booting?

[Charles G Montgomery]

I appreciate the suggestions that various people have provided.

Memory tests have been run without finding problems, but not for a 
full 24 hours.  More exhaustive tests may be worth trying.

Both the kernels on the hard drive had booted successfully in the 
past.  Since I posted, an attempt to boot from a Knoppix CD was 
also unsuccessful, but with no helpful error messages -- it just 
never managed to boot.  Failure of tow different kernels and two 
different live CDs makes me think it must somehow be a hardware 
problem, but I don't know where.

Later today I will get a chance to try booting single user or with 
init=/bin/sh.  That may be useful if it works.  I think the first 
reports of problems came during the loading of modules, probably 
by /etc/init.d/kerneld.  Of course the trouble could have started 
earlier.

If I learn anything interesting, I'll let you know.

Thanks again   cgm