Yeah, got it up!!!

[Micah Yoder <yodermk@xxxxxxxx>]

[micah@nova micah]$ uname -a
Linux nova 2.4.6-pre2-xfs #2 SMP Tue Jun 12 13:58:47 EDT 2001 i686 unknown

No help from co-lo people required.  All RPMs also updated (thanks Steve).  
Hopefully now I'll be able to sleep at night.  :-)

Eric,
> Is that the technical term?  :)   Was it full of null characters?  i.e.
> ^0^0^0^0^0^0....

Yeah.  I think less showed it as ^@ characters.  I did edit the file before 
attempting to reboot.