still not sure how to resue my old instance .

can't even rescue the data from the hard drive (not even by using a livecd - for some wierd reason livecds can no longer read that hard drive)

when doing a normal boots it keeps starting X (need to work out how to prevent running all that to work out whats wriong on there because as soon after it X starts the keyboard and mouse die.

even when I start in single user mode a few minutes after boot the machine crashes and starts beeping in a very wierd way and won't boot at all for a few hours. (but after that it can do that all over again)

obviously something broke on that box but its very strange

I dont yest know how to deal with that new init stuff that came in some update to ubuntu the previous year (systemd,etc etc) - that stuff seems to need want everything to be done in the gui and thats not helpful when the keyboard and mouse stop working!

and theres no rs232 port.. seems none of thoe boxes in the last decade or so have that - also a pain

the only way to get any data seems to be by ssh/scp and theres only a minute or so after booting before it crashes and won't boot again for a few hours. .. not enough time to even find what I want let alone copy it to anywhere.

it might help iof I can work out how that new init system that some ubuntu update the brevious year brought in works (systemd, etc,etc - seems to want X for everything - surely there must be another way? .. can't really use the gui given that mouse always dies and soon after also the keyboard!)