[WBEL-users] Screwed by a CentOS4 install test

[Jack Glendening]

I have been happily using WhiteBoxEL3 since its inception, but
recently decided to see what is new in the way of OSes, so did test
installs of Fedora Core5, Ubuntu, and CentOS4.  Each was put on a
separate partition with the boot put on its first sector, to isolate
it from my normal Whitebox boot on hda1 (labelled boot).  I've not had
problems with that procedure before, but the CentOS4 install really
screwed me. I'm in deep doo-doo and could use some advice since I've
now lost my ability to load my WBEL3.

With all the other distros I've tested, using the above procedure had
always kept the ability to boot from the WB boot screen - to run the
testOS I would then add the needed testOS boot lines into
hda1/grub/grub.conf and choose that on re-boot.  However the CentOS4
install took control away, so booting instead went to the CentOS4 grub
installation at hda11/grub.conf.  Still, I could at least still boot
WBEL3 by putting the necessary lines into that grub.conf.

But then things got worse, as I went to the CentOS4 forum for help on
resolving the booting problem and the advice I followed resulted in
losing all ability to boot.  I was able to recover from that by
re-installing CentOS4 - but in the process somehow my WBEL3 got affected
such that now when I try to load WBEL3 I get multiple failures, X does
not start, etc. - much of the load screen error messages scroll pasty
too quickly to follow, but many of the errors speak of a "read only
file system".

I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY would like to get my WBEL3 system back
working, since that is the system I use, but am unsure how to approach
things since I now have two problems: (1) loading WBEL3 fails (2)
booting is occurring from hda11 instead of hda1.  To me (1) seems like
the biggest problem so should be tackled first - but perhaps somehow
fixing (2) would also fix (1).

FWIW the kernel/image files at hda1 have not been altered (based on
their timestamp) - which seems like a good thing but leaves me
clueless as to what is causing the problem. I do see that a
zero-length file kernel.h is being created in hda1 at load time
which looks suspicious, but I don't know what is normal.  I cannot
find a log file being created at load time (the read-only file
system??).

Any useful advice would be greatly appreciated, since these problems are
beyond my Linux experience and knowledge.

                       Jack


PS please excuse any glitches as am having to write/send this from my
laptop which is not fully setup.