I have done what you suggested, but it still is getting the fatal error in boot about the library mismatch. Here is the first line of dmesg after booting the 3 diskettes, hitting <ctl-c> then entering "loadlin linux root=/dev/hda1 ro"
Linux version 2.6.26.5 (root@vector.linux.net) (gcc version 4.2.3) #6 Tue Sep 16 22:53:35 MDT 2008
Isn't this an indication that the boot image on the diskettes is 2.6.26.5?
I got the diskette images from
ftp://ftp-osl.osuosl.org/pub/vectorlinux/veclinux-5.9/install/floppy/vlinst-bootfloppies/This is what my /dev/hda1/boot looks like:
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 37 Apr 14 23:58 README.initrd -> /usr/doc/mkinitrd-1.2.0/README.initrd@
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 24 Apr 14 23:59 System.map -> System.map-ide-2.6.22.19
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1184077 Mar 21 2008 System.map-2.6.22.19
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1184077 Mar 21 2008 System.map-ide-2.6.22.19
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 16 2008 bitmap/
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 193 Jan 22 2005 boot.label
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 Apr 14 23:59 config -> config-ide-2.6.22.19
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 68615 Mar 21 2008 config-2.6.22.19
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 68615 Mar 21 2008 config-ide-2.6.22.19
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 16 2008 grub/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 Apr 15 02:45 initrd -> /boot/initrd.img@
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 461436 Feb 25 2008 initrd.bad
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1937309 Apr 22 2008 initrd.img
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Apr 15 01:47 tamu/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 Apr 14 23:59 vmlinuz -> vmlinuz-ide-2.6.22.19
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4158296 Mar 21 2008 vmlinuz-2.6.22.19
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4158296 Mar 25 2008 vmlinuz-ide-2.6.22.19
Note that I changed initrd. I saw that my initrd was much smaller, so copied initrd.img off the cd and linked it. Don't know if this is a good thing to do, but it had no effect.
LILO install always fails no matter what options are selected, even making floppy boot disks. LILO looks like it never got installed. Not sure why.
Are there other loadlin options to try? I also have the Slackware 11 bare-i plus rootdisk.img (from cd/install/floppy). Using boot: mount root=/dev/hda1 makes the thing hang right after the "freeing kernel memory" message. Are there alternate command lines to try with this?
:-[Still determined and grateful

for your assistance!