Can't login into Gnome after updates yersterday (10.04

[Rob]

On Thu, 2010-09-30 at 09:15 -0700, NoOp wrote:
> On 09/30/2010 07:58 AM, seanh wrote:
> > Hey,
> > 
> > I booted up my computer today and found that I cannot log into the
> > Gnome or Failsafe Gnome desktop sessions. The computer boots fine, GDM
> > seems to work fine, but on logging in it just shows the GDM background
> > and nothing else, nothing happens. My desktop background doesn't
> > appear, panels don't appear, right-clicking and left-clicking does
> > nothing, etc. I see one notifier message that reads:
> > 
> > "The configuration defaults for Gnome Power Manager have not been
> > installed correctly."
> 
> Boot to recovery mode. Run the dpkg option. Continue to login to the tty
> console & then:
> 
> $ sudo apt-get update
> $ sudo apt-get upgrade
> $ sudo apt-get install -f
> $ sudo dpkg --configure -a
> $ sudo apt-get update
> $ sudo apt-get upgrade
> 
> reboot & see if that clears things up.

Just out of curiousity, how does one "boot to the recovery mode"?

(and then just type "dpkg" in a terminal?)

R