Yep been booting via a liveCD and copying files as I said in my OP. Just seems crazy that everytime someone suggests something like running fsck etc, whenever I reboot the server, the "EXT3-fs mounted filesystem is mounted with ordered data" yet it still forces a file system check on boot, and that takes DAYS to complete, if it completes. Last time I let it run, it finished and suggested a manual fsck, which I did (and it took over a day) and still produced problems, and got stuck in this loop. Just trying to use some gui tools to check some settings etc and scroll through logs rather than having to page through lengthy screens via the text console, as not all contribs working on the new version (like dansguardian pam auth) and automatic proxy distribution for web browsers, and changing monitor plugs around. I have a laptop, and an all-in-one desktop machine already on the desk, and the server(s) which don't normally require a monitor, so deskspace is getting tight.
Yes backups would be great if they actually restore all the contribs properly, but they don't. Trying to find out some file permissions on some customised files using a third party boot disk is hard when all the file and group owners are just raw numbers.
Don't worry about his anymore, I have all the main things working, the rest is not urgent. Just thought my first simple question of how to change the IPaddress via command line would have been easy, but it appears not to be the case. Probably why no-one has answered that question. Instead I got all the answers I already knew (like booting from Live CDs, that don't give me a gui as my server doesn't seem to allow any of them to start [HP ML110 G4 server]) and I thought I could save some of my limited time to get things pretty again.