Won't boot up

[Joel Hammer]

We had some severe weather here in Baltimore, which lasted
about 5 minutes, but it was wild. After the power failure
was fixed (about 24 hours), I restarted my gateway box
on my home computer network, my aging caldera 2.4 system.
It booted, but the cable service was down, and so it
couldn't configure itself properly against the comcast
servers. The firewall wouldn't configure itself without
an assigned IP. Prior to this failure, this box had been
up for about 2 months without a problem.

Well, the cable service is back on line. I was going to
restart the network services but low and behold, this box
was frozen, and had froze up about 8 hours after being
rebooted following the power failure. I can reboot this box,
but the booting stops when the "starting inetd services"
line appears. After that, nada.

Now, of interest, this box is able to function as
a gateway/router for my other computers on my home
network, so the other users are happy, even though the
booting process is incomplete (I cannot telnet into it,
for example).

This box will boot. I could boot an old redhat installation
I have on it. So, I am guessing it isn't a hardware
problem.

Any suggestions for how to fix this problem appreciated.

BTW, no rush, I have to get to my day job, and won't be
able to attend to this problem for about 12 hours.

Joel