Well, a couple of days ago I was playing around with the configuration files while trying to get a Canon camera work as a web cam on Fedora 8 ( will be posting soon as soon as I get it working ). I don’t know what went wrong where but I guess I again messed up something somewhere. I booted my machine but the GRUB screen did not show up at all. I thought I screwed up my bootloader once again 
but rebooting the machine the second time I observed that the bootloader appeared, but only for a fraction of a second. From there onwards, it wasn’t rocket science to figure out what was going wrong. 
The start up time in the bootloader config file had changed somehow ( how I dont know ). I just opened : /boot/grub/grub.conf
# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd0,5)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
default=0
timeout=.1265375487234752873524368426354987123594872135041235182053-481253784
splashimage=(hd0,5)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora (2.6.23.1-42.fc8 )
root (hd0,5)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.23.1-42.fc8 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.23.1-42.fc8.img
title Other
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
~
~
If you notice the timeout in the above file it is some decimal number. 
I have absolutely no idea how it changed
I just cleared the decimal and entered the time which I wanted the GRUB screen to display at bootup.
P.S. About the canon camera. I mailed the tech support for Canon and they replied back that using your canon digital camera as a webcam is not advisable as it heats up pretty quickly within 5 to 6 minutes of continuous use. Anyways you get web cams a hell lot cheaper, so why compromise on something that cost you a fortune as compared to web cams.
By the way I am trying out the above just to see if it is possible. Will post as soon as I get it working.
