Out of memory while booting? update

[VirginSnow at vfemail.net]

> From: Charles G Montgomery <cgm at physics.utoledo.edu>
> Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 15:13:19 -0400

> Booting single-user fails in the same way as a regular boot.
> I can get a shell with "init=/bin/sh".

I was hoping, from the shell, you would be able to run /usr/bin/free
or mount /proc and cat /proc/meminfo ...

> The problem seems to come during the loading of modules.  One that 

Did you recently update the kernel, or any of the modules?  If so, did
you forget to run depmod -a?

> Is there any way to stop init partway through, so I could at least 
> see if unreasonable amounts of memory seem to have been used, or 

At this point, it's not init that's doing the work... it's your
distro's init scripts.  Every distro has its own way of enabling/
disabling specific init scripts.

> activities?  Is there a way to get init to not load modules?

Edit /etc/modprobe.conf (or equivalent) and add a line of the form:

  blacklist <modulename>

That should prevent modulename from loading.  (Depending upon the
module, this could cause other steps in the startup to fail.)

If you want to prevent ALL modules from loading, all you have to do is
drastically break module autoloading in some easily fixable way by.
i.e., by renaming the modules directory, renaming /sbin/modprobe, etc.

Would you happen to be running and Windoze drivers, say via the NDIS
wrapper, on this system?