[Feisty] Normal ways to kill xserver don't work

[John L Fjellstad]

Ari Torhamo <ari.torhamo at saunalahti.fi> writes:

>> Where do you do this from?  Command line or inside Gnome (as in, inside
>> Terminal in Gnome)?
>
> That's a part of the problem - I can't get to the command line, other
> than inside Terminal in Gnome or by booting in recovery mode (which
> leads to runlevel 1, which prevents installation of Nvidia graphics
> driver).

In kdm, there is an option to login into the console.  Is there a
similar option in gdm? 

>> One option, delete /etc/rc3.d/S??gdm like this
>> sudo rm /etc/rc3.d/S*gdm
>>
>> Now you can login in runlevel 3 without X like this
>> sudo telinit 3
>>
>> (default for Debian and Ubuntu is 2)
>
> Aren't the files needed for anything. May I get some trouble later
> because of those files missing? It just sounds a little... crude to
> delete some system files just like that. Well, I'll propably re-install
> at some not so distant point anyway, so I'll give this a shot.

No. As mentioned earlier, you (as an administrator) are supposed to be
able to customize the different runlevels.  By default, Debian (and
Ubuntu) uses runlevel 2.  This means it will run all the scripts in
/etc/rcS.d
/etc/rc1.d
/etc/rc2.d
/etc/rc6.d

So, if you want, you can create a runlevel without networking, one
without X starting up at bootup etc

Of course, if you feel bad about it, you can always recreate the link
after you are done.

Just make a note the number in front of the gdm (the same link should be
in /etc/rc[2-5].d.  So, recreate the link like this:
cd /etc/rc3.d
sudo ln -s ../init.d/gdm S19gdm (or whatever the number is)

BTW, which video card are you using?

-- 
John L. Fjellstad
web: http://www.fjellstad.org/          Quis custodiet ipsos custodes