Hi,

How can I kill X server efficiently? When I boot up my Linux, xdm opens the graphical login screen. If I try to change to console (ie. ctrl-alt-1) the monitor just switches off (meaning there is no siganl from display adapter). Why is this, and how can I fix it? If I kill the X server, will there be console?

why I wan't to kill it?
Well, the problem is that I don't have any window manager installed and my mouse don't work,so it makes using the computer somewhat hard...

You can kill the X server with ctrl+alt+backspace, but this won't necessarily make a text console appear on tty1-tty6 (ctrl+alt+f1-f6). For a text console to appear on a terminal there has to be a getty process listening on it. Usually this is set up by init.

Probably the easiest thing to do is edit your /etc/inittab file to boot into runlevel 3 instead of runlevel 5. There should be a line like:

id:5:initdefault:

in your /etc/inittab -- change that to a 3 and reboot. You can edit the inittab file in single user mode if you don't have any better way of doing it from your current set-up. There are lots of threads here describing how to go to signle user mode.

Yes, ctrl-alt-backspace kills X but it is restarted again right after.

Changing runlevel didn't help in my case. I'm using Debian (Woody) and so the default runlevel is 2. And isn't Debian's runlevels 2-5 all the same by default?

How can I get getty to listen a terminal?

I'll defer your runlevels question to somebody who knows Debian, but to get a getty process listening on tty1 add a line to your /etc/inittab that looks like:

c1:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty1 linux

Replece /sbin/agetty with your systems getty program (some use mingetty or some other getty).