Debian Linux without X?
 

Hi All

I am using Debian Linux. I am using a the machine as a Samba PDC. It works great. My problem is that the memory on this machine is limited (only 128 M). Most of the memory is used for X and KDE. I really have no use for X and KDE as I use the box as a headless server.

How do I disable loading X at boot? Samba needs to work as is...

Thanx for the response..

-Wishwesh

What window manager do you have coming up for the graphical login screen? gdm, kdm, xwm? Lets say it's gdm for this example, that's the one Debian usually uses as the default. I'm assuming you are coming into a graphical login, most likely.

Go into the directory /etc/rc2.d/ and delete the link file that says something like S99gdm, (it may be different on your setup but should have a name similar, *gdm*, it points to the file /etc/init.d/gdm) This is a link pointing to the gdm startup script in /etc/init.d/ as I said.

DO NOT delete the /etc/init.d/gdm file, leave it alone. That way you can get X to start again at a later time if you want it back. Then goto dir /etc/rc0.d/ and copy the K0gdm file, or something similar, to the /etc/rc2.d/ directory, this isn't absolutely needed but can help stop the X login from loading which I've seen it do even without the startup file that you just deleted.

Use the command cp -pd *gdm* ../rc2.d/ and this will copy the K0gdm file and preserve the link to the file it points to. After this you can kill the login manager or simply reboot, if you really wanna. This will start the computer at the console login and X will not be running. Once you login you can start X with the startx command, do whatever you need to in X and logout of X and be back at the nice shiny commandline.

If you have any more questions about this, ex. you don't see a file I mentioned or whatever, don't hesitate to ask. I'll do what I can to help.

In a console in x do apt-get install rcconf.. AFter it installs do rcconf and remove what you want.. It will remove the stuff in the files for u.

Or......edit /etc/inittab to default to runlevel 3 instead of 5 and your GUI will not start.

That is for a distro such as Red Hat or Mandrake. Debian is not set up that way. Runlevels 2-5 are user configurable. The Default is runlevel 2 and in at least Woody all three are the same until you change them.

muxman gave you instructoins on how to do it the commandline way. For a gui use
ksysv
you can just move gdm from Start to Kill in runlevel 2, save, exit, and then kill gdm. Next time you have to reboot it should come up to the commandline.

I didn't even know about rcconf and ksysv, thanks guys. I've been doing it the hard way. But sometimes that is not bad, you learn and you know your system better for doing it that way.

For me that's the hardest thing about any distro, even knowing what tools and progs there are out there to use. There are so many and you never know what there is available.

Thanks again,
-=MuX=-

If you dont really need X why dont you just uninstall it.

apt-get remove x-window-system

Thanx much for all the responses. It worked!! ksysv is incredibly simple.