I have installed Red Hat Linux 9 on a Packard Bell Easy Note laptop. When i have finished installing it says congratulatons etc and tells me to reboot the system to begin. I do this and everything starts up ok, i then get a black screen with white writing while it performs various checks. The writing then starts scrolling very fast which i have read is supposed to happen. Unfortunately this doesn't stop, eventually it will just restart and do it again. I have noticed that while it is doing the checks it puts "ok" in green letters after various stages. One of the stages, though, has the word "Failed" in red letters. This happens just before the scrolling starts and is a job to see what it says but i think it has something to do with ip tables. I will be grateful for any advice given.
Thankyou

Hard to say. Try reinstalling. It's not like you have anything of value there yet, is it.

Regards
Martin

The thing with iptables happens sometimes if there are problems with networking. It doesn't seem like anything that would cause the system to crash or reboot, though one never knows. Are you getting any other output right before the screen goes blank?

One thing about the PB computers is that they are full of crummy proprietary hardware that's all integrated into the mobo. So you can expect some problems configuring some of the devices to work. I do run OpenBSD on an old PB cyrix 266 PC, and it runs well (though I don't use X or sound) as a server.

If you can get more output from the system before it crashes, it will help us diagnose it. If not, then you may have to reinstall. I would advise against using a graphical login if you get prompted to use that during the next install.... you should wait until you properly configure the hardware on that machine...this might be what's causing the problem.

I have just seen something to do with eth0. This is what is failing during boot

eth0 is a network card. So there's some issue with your networking. I can't really imagine why it's causing a system crash though. is it an onboard LAN adapter or is it a PCMCIA adapter (an add-on card --like the credit card sized ones)? And what kind is it?

I'm not too sure. There is a lan port next to the modem. I have reinstalled it and disabled eth0 from booting during starting and i am no longer getting a failed message but the scrolling continues to happen. I can get to a command shell from install disk