i just ran an aptitude update && aptitude dist-upgrade in lenny. i had recently installed second life. after the upgrade, i installed amsn and skype.

second life froze, and wouldn´t shut down. i removed the second life files (probably a bad idea) and rebooted. the result was that i had four kernels rather than two to choose from when the machine started up again.

i chose the newest, 2.6.21-2-686, rather than 2.6.18-2-686, which i have used before.

the startup process stalled at X, and the screen went black. when i pressed a few keys, the non-gui login screen appeared, but it was impossible to write anything. this happened with three of the four kernel options (the two others were single user options of the two others).

the single user 2.6.18 lets me run the system without X.