I'm expanding my horizons, and need help. We have (2) old iMac machines. These are the old G3 with a blue case. We have installed Debian Sarge with a good install, except for X. When I typed startx, I got the error "Command not found". I installed GDM, xserver and xfree86 via apt, and tried it again with errors. We ran dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86 and configured the display. Now when we try to boot, the kernel loads normally, and at the last minute, the screen goes black. I want to remove gdm so we boot to the command line, but I don't know how to keep the machine from booting into the GUI. If anyone can help me on this, it would be greatly appreciated. I have googled this, but haven't found any good help for the old-world macs, just the newer G5's.

Thanks,

We fixed the problem. I gues after 2 days of trying, it took posting here to find the answer. Here is what we found:

To boot into a command line, at the Yaboot prompt, type "linux single'.

To configure Xfree86, at the root prompt: xf86cfg -textmode -xf86config /etc/X11/XF86Config -4

That brought us to a configuration page that allowed us to configure the monitor and video card. We put in our own custom sync settings that we got from an Apple page, and used "FBDev" as our video card.

I hope this helps anyone else who might have problems with Xfree running on an old G3 PowerPC.