[rhn-users] unintentional reinstallation of RedHat OS

[Adam Retchless]

Hello,

Today, I had a very strange (even spooky) experience with Red Hat
Enterprise Linux, Version 3. I would appreciate any comments that would
illuminate this situation.

I'll provide some background in a moment, but the core of it was this:

My colleague was having trouble with the system and tried to reboot it.
It failed to complete the reboot and he took it into diagnostic mode.
When I entered, he left diagnostic mode and the system restarted. The
boot-loader appeared, and offered four choices: three linux kernels and DOS.

On a whim, I chose "DOS". The system immediately reformatted the hard
disk and reinstalled Red Hat Linux (thereby loosing important data).

The spooky thing is that the installation disks were not in the CD
drive, and this did not look at all like a regular installation (it
never asked for permission to continue, for one). Another odd thing is
that Windows had never been installed on this system, so I have no idea
of where the "DOS" option came from in the boot loader.

If anyone has any idea why the OS was reinstalled, or why there was a
"DOS" option on the boot-loader, I would love to know.

Background:

The computer initially hung when we tried to install a couple of
packages from the installation disk. All existing processes continued,
but it was unable to install the packages and we were unable to shut
down the installation windows. When we tried to reboot, it would not,
and we entered into the above situation.

Any thoughts are appreciated,
Thanks,
adam