Hi,
I am not strictly a newbie, but today I did something that ought to qualify me as one and I am embarrassed...!

I am running KDE under Arch Linux and starting a system update I was told it could not be executed because two files were already in my system, belonging to the packages kgamma5 and plasma-meta, respectively. So I removed the two packages, made a seemingly successful update and wanted to reinstall kgamma5 and plasma-meta. This could not be done, because the two files belonging to them were already in my system. I then made the fatal error of rm'ing them, expecting they would be regenerated by kgamma5 and plasma-meta. Stupid, because on reboot, the system now stops at "Reached target Graphical Interface." Because of this, I can't get at my log and find out which exact files I deleted.

So I tried booting with Parted Magic rescue and tool disk, but my system ignores the DVD. This has never happened to me before, and I checked boot and disk order in BIOS, which looked right. Parted Magic booted without problems six months ago...

Arch used to present a rescue boot option, but I don't see it anymore.

Can somebody please help me out of this (self-inflicted) mess?

Interrupt the boot and add "systemd.target=rescue" (no quotes) to the kernel line. Effectively runlevel 1 in old=speak.
Should have all the tools you need (not sure about network, never checked) - maybe try "systemd.target=multi-user" for runlevel 3.

Thank you, syg00!

Well, it finally dawned on me that I could use "Ctl+Alt+F2", log in, and then issue "startx".
This was my normal login routine for years - guess smoother systems makes for poorer memory...
The files I deleted are
'usr/share/doc/HTML/en/kcontrol/kgamma/index.cache.bz2' and
'usr/share/doc/HTML/en/kcontrol/kgamma/index.docbook'
and they were actually regenerated.

However, something is missing. "exec startkde" is still in .xinitrc, but KDE does not appear automatically.
Perhaps a link or something got lost when I erased the two files. I don't know. Will try and check systemd
and KDE configs. The system appears to be fine otherwise.

Also, I am still puzzled about why my system has stopped booting DVDs. Oh well.

Thanks again!