Runlevel 5
 

I have a Red Hat 9 which is a gateway server for my home network. The machine is a Pentium 3 and is a bit past it. When doing the installation I installed X just incase I wanted to use.

I am sure that during installation I was never asked about booting into text mode.

When booting in I get the graphical login screen. I want to change this to be the console.

I have checked my /etc/inittab file and have the following:

id:3:initdefault:

Which I assume would boot me into the console and would be:

id:5:initdefault:

If ot was to use the Graphical login.

Is there anything else which defines this? Does anyone have any ideas why this is.

I have checked the /etc/inittab file while logged in over SSH from outside but I'm sure this doesn't have any effect and that the /etc/inittab is global.

changing the default to runlevel 3 will do, just make sure the services you want to run is configured to run in runlevel3 as wll.

True but it is already set at 3 but still I get the graphical login screen.

what does the last line in /etc/inittab say?
it should look something like

x:5:respawn:/etc/X11/prefdm -nodaemon

make sure 5 is the only number after x:

I checked the last line looks exactly like:

x:5:respawn:/etc/X11/prefdm -nodaemon

I can't check it from here but would it be possible that the runlevel has been changed in GRUB so that it forces level 5?

yea maybe, check /boot/grub/grub.conf and see if '5' is appended to the kernel parameter.

No, Kernel parameter doesn't force the runlevel. This seems strange to me, I have checked my inittab file against another Red Hat 9 installation I have at work which doesn't have X installed they are identical.

STOP in true Newbie fashion I have just realised what I have done. The PuTTY screens are confusing me. On my gateway machine the inittab reads:

id:5:initdefault:

I must of been looking at the wrong file. At least now I know why its booting in Graphical mode and everything makes sense again.

Thanks very much for sticking with me!

James