How to boot in terminal only

Hello there!

Looks like you need to edit /etc/init/gdm.conf and change the startup-on line which reads [!06] to [!026] so the default runlevel 2 is also omitted.

If you then want to start gdm use sudo service gdm start.

Hi,

You could move /etc/init/gdm.conf somewhere else. When you reboot, the
x display will not start.

HTH,

Dave

On 06/30/2012 10:37 AM, name at domain wrote:
> Hello everybody!
>
> I have a question, how to boot in terminal without starting gdm, x11 on
> 5.5 version?
>
> I do not want to delete gdm or X, just would like to add or change some
> parameters to GRUB or other place to boot only in terminal and if I need
> X I always can "startx".
>
> I have tried:
>
> sudo nano /etc/default grub
>
> find
> GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
>
> and change it to
> GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash text"
>
> and of course
> sudo update-grub
>
> Unfortunately it did not work. Still booting into gdm login manager.
>
> Thank you for your help.
>
>

You could also mess with this file:

/etc/X11/default-display-manager

It might be nicer than moving the gdm.conf file.

I vote for lembas' solution that looks far less "cow-boy" than others. After all, a init script aims to decide what service to start/stop (and how to do so).

Shouldn't you simply be able to edit /etc/default/grub and change the line that reads "GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" to simply "text" then update grub?

This is what I've been able to do in Trisquel 4.0 and Trisquel 5.0.

Try adding in front of the kernel line (on the grub file) to add the number "3" since it is the runlevel 3 (for multiuser text mode).

Has anybody got any of these to actually work? I want to boot to terminal to install video drivers and cannot get these to work for me. I even tried to get recovery console at boot by commenting out GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY=true that Trisquel added and can't seem to get there. Yes I did sudo update-grub afterwords. What am I doing wrong?