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Quote:

edit /etc/inittab and set your default runlevel to 3 instead of five.

Actually only most distributions use 3 for text and 5 for graphical. You can test if 3 is your number like this: give (in terminal) command

Code:

init 3

and if it brings you to text-login, 3 is your number. If not, try other numbers from 2 to 5 until you bump into a text-login. One of those is for graphical, at least, and numbers 1 and 6 are reserved for shutdown etc. so just try 2-5.

After that open your /etc/inittab with a text editor for editing (like odcheck said):

Code:

texteditor /etc/inittab

Where texteditor is your favourite editor: vim, joe, nano, pico, ...

Then find a line that says something about initdefault. There is a number on that line - usually 5, like said - put the number you tried (3) instead of that number, save and exit - that's it.

EDIT: if you later want to revert, remember the number that was on the initdefault line, or write it to a comment line to the same file, so later you can just switch the numbers back and get a graphical login.

If you change the initdefault value, you'll always get a text-login instead of a graphical one when you boot. If you only wanted to get into text-login mode this single time, use the init 3 -method; that gets you to to runlevel 3 (text), but next time you boot (or issue init 5) you'll be back to graphical login.

The whole thing is about runlevels: like said, 1 and 6 are not for normal usage. Number 2 is usually used for a single-user login if I remember correctly, then 3 and 4 are used for text logins (but on some systems 3 and 5) and 5 for graphical login (on some systems 4). It simply means 3-5 are "normal multiuser runlevels", but on level 5 it is defined that a graphical login app should be run by default. The file /etc/inittab describes these all, and reading that file you'll get to know which one of the runlevels is for which use (normal multiuser, single user, graphical, ...)