I'll try answering these questions but I don't consider myself an expert user, rather an intermediate, so don't trust me blindly

1) There's obvously a problem in how you've setup your partitions...

First, your hda5 is a logical partition which resides WITHIN hda2, an extended partition. But somehow your logical partition is bigger than your extended...
It's like putting eight apples inside a box which can only hold three
A more correct use of an extended partition might look like this example:
hda2 10 GB Extended
hda5 2 GB Linux
hda6 5 GB Linux
hda7 3 GB Linux

2GB + 5GB + 3GB = 10GB

You don't use 2+5+3+10=20GB of your hard drive, only 10GB.

Second of all, you only need to make you root partition (/) bootable. In your case that's hda5, and not hda2 or the hda1 (swap) partition.


This may be why LILO freaks out.

Yes, it should be /dev/hda

Is the location of your kernel image really in the /dd/boot/ directory ?

Edit /etc/rc.d/rc.S . Look for something along this line:

echo "..." > /etc/motd

Delete the text inside the quotes and change it whatever you want. Alternatively delete the whole line itself and edit the motd-file. That way it will not change the contents of /etc/motd upon reboot.

If I were you I would do a reinstall, it seems like things got pretty messed right from the beginning.

Good luck

/J.P