virtualbox.org

Host: Windows 10
Guest: Fedora 21 64-bits
the virtual machine is there for about a year already

How did this happen?

unclean shut down due to battery power

VirtualBox version: 5.0.28 and 5.1.8, do not work

tried rescue mode as well

also tried turning on/off "enable 3D accelaration"

Is there anyway to fix this? or log in without graphics?

Thank you.

I think that you should be looking at Fedora's forums for a solution. A "Failed to start Journal Service" doesn't sound good. I'd look for recovery for the client and forget for a minute that it runs on a Virtual Machine; treat it as you would a real computer.

Thank you, I'll ask in the fedora forum.

This might be old but did not have a valid answer. While someone thought the issue could be related to OS itself and recommended a Fedora forum.

But, I have faced the same problem today and after digging a bit deeper I found the root cause and fixed it.

Issue: (Ubuntu/Fedora) You see a failure message in the boot log - Failed to start Gnome Display Manager
and you don't get access to terminal

Do this:
1. Power On the Virtual machine, Once you hit the error and stuck
2. Press Ctrl+Alt+F2 or Ctrl+Alt+F3 to get a new terminal
3. Login using root / user name and password
4. Run "df -h" to list all partitions with their usage information
5. Check if "/" root partition or any other partition is "Use" above 95%
6. If there's low disk space in any of the partitions - delete some data and free some memory - List directory wise usage "du -d1 -h"
7. Reboot.

This worked for me, my root partition "/" was at "Use" 100% that's why GDM could not start.
Once I freed some memory, it started working fine.

Hope this helps.