I have an Etch installation with xfce4 as the desktop. Everything works OK. Etch boots to a gdm login window, then to the xfce desktop. I want to boot to a command line login and then to the command line prompt. Then I want to use startx to boot the xfce desktop. (Don't ask why, I just like to fiddle.)

Some distros use different run levels to accomplish this task. I just edit /etc/inittab to change the default run level from 5 to 3 and I then get a command line rather than the xfce desktop. To switch back to booting directly to xfce. I change the default run level back to 5. Debian doesn't distinguish between run levels 2-5, so how do I change from booting GUI to booting command line?

Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks, jimbo

How about booting to runlevel 1? Of course, you'd miss the network stuff etc, but hey: you're booting to the cli!

You might also go into the /etc/rc2 directory and remove the graphical startup sym-links.

I used aptitude to install sysv-rc-conf on Sarge. Run that as root from the CLI. Then you can just use the space bar to unselect gdm from runlevel 3 startup. Then booting into init3 will start at the CLI.

Thanks for the replies. Exactly what I was looking for. I can now easily change from booting to CLI to booting to GUI by editing /etc/inittab.

Thanks, jimbo