I've solved the problem. It was all me being an idiot . The console output was directed to COM1. The black screen with blue cursor just meant there is nothing to display. Debian was still running, and through the console I could do everything.

Thanks to all who tried to help.

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Hey,

I am running a Debian Etch distribution from an SD card on an Embedded ARM board. The SD card image was provided.

My goal is to ideally run Debian without X so that it is faster. I have tried to use update-rc.d to remove xdm from the rc scripts. This did nothing. Running xdm stop does nothing for me as well.

So, I decided I will "force" the X server to close. I did this in two ways:
1. kill the process
2. Ctrl+Alt+[Backspace]
The result was, well, weird. It seems that the X server did close, but I was left with a black background screen, with a blue cursor. There was no prompt, and I could not provide any input (besides pulling the plug).

I then found out the script that the board uses to do things when it is powered up (like display their logo, play start-up wav, ...). Near the end, it executes Xorg. When I commented this line, the board would "boot" into the same black screen with blue cursor.

I don't know what is it that I missing here, but I just refuse to believe that I have to run XWindows. After all, Xorg is just another process. I am not very experience with Linux, but for what is worth, here are few things that might help you help me :
Any input that might help me solve this problem is appreciated.

Thanks,
ib

ctrl+alt+f1 to switch to tty1. ctrl+alt+f7 to switch to tty7 (usually X). sysv-rc-conf to control what starts at boot.

You're asking for conflicting things. Do you want X (icewm) or not?

Can you get to any other shells with CTRL+ALT+F1-F4? Also, is the SD card mounted read write when you make your changes to the init scripts?

Thanks for the quick reply.

I am not able to switch to the other terminals. That is, Ctrl+Alt+[F1-7] does nothing.

The SD card is mounted as read-write. I can also confirm that the changes are still there when I reboot.

Just to clarify, I am trying to run without X.

Regards,
ib