I have installed Debian 3.1 Sarge r1 from a pair of DVDs and later on installed the kernel 2.4.27-3-686-smp.

I wish to have the option to boot kernels into a multiuser console mode (a shared wish it seems). My plan is to add an entry to /boot/grub/menu.lst so that the kernel passes the option 3 to init. Something like:

Then make the required changes in /etc/rc3.d, like removing or renaming to lower case the links S99kdm and S99gdm that I have there. Presumably I should add also a link to a script that starts the console login in this multiuser mode.

Please advice on whether this scheme is sound, which is the proper multiuser console login script that I should link to, and any further step that should be made.

Regards, Alejandro

all actions you describe are completely ok, Debian by default configures all multiuser runlevels as the same, so using 2,3 or 5 will result in mutliuser with network and X11.

so simply remove the X start entries stated by you from /etc/rc3.d and bott with kernel parameter "3".
there is no script to launch the console logins, as they already are launched by your init process (for more info see "man inittab" and /etc/inittab (be cautionous!)

btw. you can switch from a running X-Window to one of your consoles by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1 through Ctrl+Alt+F6
(tty1 to tty6) the X normally runs on tty7.

When you are on a tty, you can switch them using Alt+Fn (so Alt+F7 will take you back into X)

If enabled in /etc/syslog.conf (see last but one comment section) you can see your syslog on tty8

I added this line at the very end of by /etc/inittab, so i have a process monitor running on tty9:
this will start top in secure mode in runlevel 2,3,4 and 5 and pipes all input and output to tty9. When the process ends, it will be restarted (=respawn)

HTH,
Florian