Re: How to break to console on Mint Linux VM

Mount the Mint Mate VM as a secondary disk on some convenient VM and 
edit the password file to blank the password then dismount it and 
attempt to restart it again.  You might also edit ssh config to turn on 
ssh so you can ssh into it once it's started.  Or edit the X configs to 
get rid of X and boot to a command line login (I assume it's booting to 
X login)

virtual machine - Mounting another VM's .vdi in VirtualBox - Unix & 
Linux Stack Exchange 
<https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/105430/mounting-another-vms-vdi-in-virtualbox>

Ted

On 4/29/2023 6:32 PM, Kevin Oberman wrote:
> This morning I updated my Mint Mate VM and rebooted as directed. The 
> system came up to the login screen and I entered the password. The 
> screen expanded to its normal size, but the login screen just appeared 
> again. Any entry of the password led me nowhere. I tried to boot 
> headless, but could find no way to get to a login prompt.
>
> The system just returned:
> ptavv> VBoxManage startvm Mint --type headless
> Waiting for VM "Mint" to power on...
> VM "Mint" has been successfully started.
> ptavv>
>
> I am not a Linux expert and I'm mostly clueless about admin since 
> systemd, and I don't make much use of this VM, but it is handy now and 
> then.
>
> Can anyone provide a clue on how to try to rescue the system? Clearly, 
> something is causing my session to exit on startup, but I have no idea 
> what and, without command line access, I'm unlikely to find it
> -- 
> Kevin Oberman, Part time kid herder and retired Network Engineer
> E-mail: rkoberman@gmail.com
> PGP Fingerprint: D03FB98AFA78E3B78C1694B318AB39EF1B055683