Boot without X

[Derek Broughton]

ZIYAD A. M. AL-BATLY wrote:

> On Fri, 2005-07-29 at 19:30 +0200, Thomas Kaiser wrote:
>> Hello All
>> 
>> How can I boot Ubuntu without Xserver? (just console)
>> 
>> I tried the recovery mode from the GRUB boot menu, but it still starts
>> with X.
>> Then I changed the runlevel in inittab to 1 and failed at the prompt
>> "please enter root password or press Control-D" to continue. There is no
>> root password in default Ubuntu and with Control-D I came back to the
>> same question!
>> 
> Recovery mode should run without X!!!  Please, check your system as this
> is a very good idecation there's something not right!
> 
> 
> Anyway, change the default run-level in "/etc/inittab" to "2" not "1"!
> Run-level "2" is the normal run-level without X.

Huh?  run level 2, in both Ubuntu and Debian, runs with X.  If he chose
"recovery mode" from grub, it should have run with the "single" option,
which would take him to the password prompt.  Then if you ctrl-D, you
switch to runlevel 2.  I rather suspect (but have never tried) that setting
inittab to runlevel 1, and using "single" starts you in runlevel 1, then
ctrl-D switches you to ... (wait for it) ... runlevel 1.  Giving exactly
what he got.

I think he's saying that because there's no root password he originally just
used ctrl-D - and ended up in runlevel 2, as we would expect.  He _didn't_
try just hitting enter (it's not intuitive, but is apparently what you're
supposed to do instead of putting a password on root).
-- 
derek