I have recently installed Debian,
when i tried to install the nvidia driver i need to shutdown the xserver but the command :
telinit 3 dont work (as root!)
and telinit 0 works well !

i have tried to run at level 3 from the startup but also it's a failure.

thanks.

Debian has runlevels different from other distros, do "/etc/init.d/[gkx]dm stop" instead depending on if you use gdm, xdm or kdm.

You can start the system in text-mode editing the /etc/inittab file and puting the number "1" instead of "2" in the "The default runlevel" line.

I totally disagree with this solution because this would put you in single user mode and that is a completely different story. Besides that changing the inittab file makes the change permanent until another edit of the same file.

LE (2 year old thread): I know that this is a 2 year old post, but the thread wasn't closed and since I bumped into this I though I would make things a little bit clearer.

this topic is almost two years old..

I would also do
CTRL+ALT+F2 login as root
/etc/init.d/gdm stop install the drivers
/etc/init.d/gdm start and I'm back in business..

no reason to edit any files to get to text mode.. I usually disable gdm in runlevel 2 so I always boot to console mode, then I login and startx. Personal preference, it gives me an easy way to install new drivers after a kernel upgrade without ever having to fight the system, and I never end up booting to a black screen this way..


In Debian as you have discovered run levels 2-5 are all identical. Debian boots to runlevel 2 by default. if you want you could edit runlevel 3 and tell it to stop gdm(or kdm, xdm whatever your case may be), then your approach with telinit 3 would actually work. you can use sysv-rc-conf to easily edit your runlevels.

I'm confused...


/etc/init.d/gdm stop - actually STARTS another X in F8!!

How can I shut down all X servers?

thanks

I'm not confused anymore I had to log off from my X server first to shut it down.

How did you log off from the x server. I would really appreciate if you could write all thwe steps you made starting from having kdm/gnome up an running. Thanks in advance

If you want to boot say in runlevel 2 and you have grub,
Edit the line (e if I remember well), go at the end of the line and add 2
And you'll start in runlevel 2.

What I meant was going to the Menu 'System' (at least in debian) and 'Log Out username'

wierd.. X has never cared whether I was logged in or out of the desktop it just shutdown when I told it to..

at least you got it working, and that's what counts.

... and my X server cares!!! LOL

On a serious note, now it won't stop at all

# etc/init.d/gdm stop
Stopping Gnome display manager: GDM

but it actually doesn't stop it, when I want to run the NVidia script it says that X is running

any help on this?
thanks

have you tried using CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE to kill X after shutting down GDM ?

it's really odd that your system is acting this way.