linux problems, yeah the kernel

if this is being received, then the helmet is back up for the moment.
there's an electric storm brewing though. if a power outage shuts it down
again, logins and services may be back down again.

the first problem was that LILO wasn't starting.  it was getting stuck at
"LI".  i was able to get a boot disk and rerun LILO.  the boot process was
able to proceed, but then the kernel had trouble supporting the removable
ext3fs file system.  yeah, apaprently it got upgraded.  and now there are
still outstanding problems related to /proc/partitiosn and the kernel
using devfsd.

debian is awesome, but don't let it get away with doing all the work for
you.  i should have checked to see if the kernel and file system changes
made in an upgrade worked upon being restarted, rather than letting a
power outage tell us all.

/a