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I have a Mac with a Ubuntu 14.04 installed in VirtualBox.

During an update I lost my login window. Someone suggested I should uninstall and reinstall guest additions but that sounds like too much hassle. I just want to log in and move the files I want to my shared folder and then delete the whole thing and start over.

When I hold down the shift button I get the the GRUB menu and I can choose recovery mode. Now I'm in a shell "root@ virtualbox" but I can't get anywhere.

ls command does nothing. I don't even know where I am.

How do I find my user's home folder and move the files?

I also tried to mount the vdi image but its not working:

http://bluepilltech.blogspot.com/2010/03/how-to-mount-virtualbox-vdi-image-under.html https://unfinishedbitness.info/2017/02/06/mac-os-x-native-vdi-image-mounts/

Installing a new ubuntu in the VBox has worked great. Thank you! I can look at the old vdi just fine but the home folder is still encrypted. So I am wondering if I change the root password in the encrypted machine will it use the newly made pw to encrypt and therefore I can see the contents of the home folder again?

prism
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1 Answers1

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When you get to the prompt do:

 cd /home
 ls

what do you see? Also:

 lsblk

and

 fdisk -l

This should give you similar listings of available block devices and their partitions. Does any of those partitions look like your /home partition?

The ones that are interesting are listed as "Type Linux" or similar in the fdisk listing. F.ex., let's assume there is a /dev/sda1. Now what you can do is to mount that partition somewhere:

 mkdir test_dir
 mount /dev/sda1 test_dir
 ls test_dir

do not forget to unmount test_dir after you've rescued whatever you need to rescue:

 umount test_dir
Tomáš Pospíšek
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