Newbie needs help - How to boot to the console

[Peter Garrett]

On Mon, 19 Dec 2005 18:39:24 +0000 (UTC)
Richard Kessler <richard.kessler at matteicos.com> wrote:

> I frequently prefer to work at the command line, but have not found how to get
> Ubuntu to boot to the console. In other Linuxes I thought just changing the run
> level did the trick, but I do not find a spot to do that in the inittab.
> 
> Embarrassinly simple question, but how do I just get it to boot to the console
> so that I can startx later if I need to.

There are several ways ;) Using runlevels is not necessary and would be
more complicated.

Quick and dirty way:

sudo gedit /etc/X11/default-display-manager

comment out 
/usr/sbin/gdm

or just remove it, or put in the word "false" or "goaway" or whateveryou
fancy . (It's the only entry in this file. If you use another *dm like
kdm, that's what you would remove - /usr/bin/kdm) You can put it back if
you change your mind...

More acceptable Debian Way (tm)  ;-)

sudo update-rc.d -f gdm remove

removes the symlink for gdm start-up . From the "man" for update-rc.d:

  -f     Force removal of symlinks even if /etc/init.d/name still exists



There are no doubt other ways.

Ubuntu and Debian don't play the same runlevel games as Red Hat , Mandriva
et al. In Ubuntu the default runlevel is 2, and X runs in that runlevel,
not runlevel 5. Runlevel 3 is not a default CLI.

Peter


 -- Unix is hard to learn. The process of learning it is one of multiple
small epiphanies. -- Neal Stephenson