[PLUG] Linux Mint 17.x machine brought to its knees after debauchery on my part

[Damon Getsman]

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	So I ended up taking up a friend on his recommendation that I
give Linux Mint a try.  I believe the version that I'm using is 17,
with cinnamon (originally). Unfortunately, it's on a machine that was
too limited on memory for the standard desktop environment and
virtualized servers that I was primarily running it for.  So I ended up
going on a google search for the way that Mint handled runlevels, and
modification thereof, so that I could remove the splash screen (I like
seeing my debugging @ boot output, by god) and boot into console-only
mode, saving the overhead of all X processes.  I mean, seriously,
there's always good old 'startx' when needed.  I got all of these things
working after removing a handful of scripts from the /etc/rc runlevel
directories, and switched to a much lower footprint/resource hog of a
window manager for when I did need to go into X.
	The first problem that I noticed is that maybe I shouldn't have
removed so many boot-up scripts.  Even when I did go back into the
standard Mint window manager, it was immediately complaining at me that
hardware acceleration was disabled, and yes, there was a performance
hit both on graphics responsiveness and on the CPU in general when the
window manager was active.  Not sure which script I need to reinstall
to get that working again, and I ended up without a list of the ones
that I removed due to not working with appropriate attention to detail
when I was seriously sleep deprived.
	This is where things start to get really interesting.  After
loading my new window manager, at some point I was unable to spawn
another shell.  A new gnome terminal or xterm simply would not spawn
anything.  The windows' text was the same color as the background for
some reason, and I was unable to see output.  Sleep deprivation made me
forget that I could highlight it in order to see it.  *insert Picard
facepalm meme here*
	Eventually that desktop window got closed and I was unable to
spawn another shell to replace it.  The xterm/gnome-terminal window
would pop up, but then close, without me able to see any input.
	Attempting a console login was another version of the same.  I
was able to switch to a terminal, get my username and password
validated, and see the login header and motd, but then the machine
would die (presumably upon attempting to spawn the shell).  I made the
mistake of rebooting it to try to fix this.  Whoopsie.  No logins means
no more information.  I guess I didn't have much of a chance at that
point, though, because of all of my login shells had perished, even via
remote.
	Does anybody have a list of standard runlevel 3 startup scripts
that I might be able to look at, or know where I might find one?  Also,
if anybody has any other tips on this I'd greatly appreciate it.  I
know that I can boot from a rescue if I need to and snag my virtual
machines and other data, but I really don't want to have to install
over from scratch.  Then again, I always have been about a more minimal
installation, and Mint was way too much for me, especially on that
machine.  Maybe dropping back to debian is a good idea.  I don't know.
I'm open to anything y'all might have for me.
	Thanks for your time and consideration.

	-Damon Getsman
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