Ubuntu 9:10 Won't boot to GUI
I have been running Ubuntu 9:10 in a VM Fusion virtual machine on an OS-X "Hackintosh" for the last year with no problems. Recently I have had a dialogue box come up saying I was low on memory. I increased the Virtual Machine Memory from 20GB to 72 GB, and then decided to back up my emails (Evolution) and home folder, and install Ubuntu 10:10 in the Virtual Machine.
I had previously been able to backup to my NAS drive, so I wasn't expecting any problems, however after (apparently successfully) copying the Evolution files, I tried backing up my home folder to a USB, a dialogue box came up saying it was backing up in the background, so I left it alone for a couple of hours. Turns out that neither the USB backup nor the NAS backup have any files across, just the respective folders.
I rebooted the VM and received the following error message :"The configuration defaults for GNOME Power Manager have not been installed correctly. Please contact your system administator"
Looks like my Gnome installation has fallen over, from other posts on forums, it seems this happens when a memory shortage is experienced.
I cannot get into the "Gnome Failsafe" mode, nor into "xterm" which are the options offered at boot up. For some reason I find I also cannot log in as root, as my password isn't working.
I have booted to the terminal, and would like to set the boot process up to enable me to run off a CD in "Trial mode", which should let me get to my files. My intention was to partition and format the surplus space in the Virtual machine and move some files across to the new partition which hopefully might either let the machine boot up, or at least let me retrieve my data files.
I assume this will have to be done through the terminal, and have no idea how to go about it. If it isn't possible to get a CD to take over the boot, I will need to partition the available space and move the files in terminal - any help greatly appreciated.
Sorry for the length of this post
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