Like to start up at tty console instead of X windows

[Peter Garrett]

On Tue, 19 Jun 2007 23:22:21 -0700
Richard E Miles <r.godzilla at comcast.net> wrote:

> I would like to start ubuntu feisty faun and have it run at run level 3 rather than starting on the X server. Is there a way to have it start at run level 3.

On Debian-based distributions like Ubuntu, X runs in runlevel 2 , and
there is no distinction between this and running without X.

> I am new to ubuntu. My previous distro was Centos 4.5. On that system there was an /etc/inittab to set the start up run level. But on ubuntu this file does not exist. I would greatly appreciate any help on this issue.

There are several ways to make the system boot to a tty prompt without
starting X. The most direct way is to edit the file

 /etc/X11/default-display-manager 

and comment out the "/usr/sbin/gdm" or equivalent "kdm" line . Substitute
"false" without quotes. You could also simply clobber it with

echo "false" | sudo tee /etc/X11/default-display-manager     

:-)

Alternatively, if you are sure you will never need gdm/kdm , you can
uninstall either or both.

It is possible to customise your runlevels, but, as you say, /etc/inittab
no longer exists in Feisty, so how that would be done I don't personally
know. The above is easier anyway, and easily reversible.

Peter