after "do-release-upgrade", can't connect to system bus

[Robert P. J. Day]

(sorry about that last chopped note...)

   after running "do-release-upgrade" on my ubuntu 11.04 system, when  
i boot, i get to the point where fsck is checking /boot, after which i  
get hung up on:

unable to connect to system bus: Failed to connect to socket  
/var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket: Connection refused

i've rebooted a couple times and the result is the same.  i'm about to  
start googling but if anyone has some advice, i'm open to suggestions.

rday