Rescue Ubuntu 10.04 graphics crash after grub

This is a note to self, in case I run into this problem again. Obviously a (beta) problem with the nvidia -driver.

The symptoms is that you get the grub chooser showing just fine, but get a distorted strange looking graphics crash screen directly after - when it's supposed to show the boot splash. Turned out I had to disable nvidia to find my underlying problem which prevented me booting. This was a error in /etc/fstab, my own fault entirely.

This is a very generic and nice way to mount up and rescue your system, and using chroot you've almost got your system running as if you've booted it off your hard drive. (well, not entirely true)

Boot off the Ubuntu the 10.04 CD and open a terminal

#mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

#mount -o bind /proc /mnt/proc

#mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev

#sudo chroot /mnt

#apt-get remove nvidia-96 --purge

#apt-get remove nvidia-173 --purge

#reboot