Hi,

I'm getting the following error on boot in Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop:


Could not start the X
server (your graphical environment)
due to some internal error.
Please contact your system administrator
or check your syslog to diagnose.
In the meantime this display will be
disabled. Please restart GDM when
the problem is corrected.

I can then drop out to prompt. However, trying anything as root/sudo gives me the error that the file system is read-only so I can't change any files or run any commands which change files. I believe the problem occurred after installing VirtualBox 2.1 and rebooting.

I have tried:

Booting into recovery mode and running xfix - no change.
Removing /etc/X11/ config files - I cant do this because the filesystem is read only (even as root)

Please can someone tell me how to get the filesystem back so that it is writable and / or give me some advise on how to get gdm back?

The syslog contains errors relating to gdmgreeter but i cant paste the syslog as I am not on that machine.

Thanks!