Booting witout the GUI in Etch.
 

Hi: I have just installed Debian Etch (that is, Debian version 4). When the system finishes booting, I find myself in the GUI. From what file is the GUI launched? I'd like to set things such that it is me who lauches the GUI and not the system after booting. Thanks

Check the sysvinit runlevel in /etc/inittab. It might be at 4 or 5 depending on what runlevel Debian was using at that time. Also check rc.local.

Set it to 3 and comment out anything in rc.local if it exists.

May I ask why you want to use such an old release? Enquiring minds want to know.:)

I already had set the default runlevel to 3, then to 4 and 5, but in all of them the GUI was forced. Then I saw, in the boot messages on the console, the service is named gdm. So I went to /etc/rc2.d and following instructions in that directory's README, I renamed S21gdm to K79gdm (100 - 21 = 79). Now I am booted in the virtual terminal #1, as I wanted.

@Randicus: it's the only one I have. Anyways, theres a lot of things I must learn, one of them how the init scripts work and, for that, the simpler the better.

Hi,

No, this is Debian. Unless the user/admin has done some fiddling, runlevels 3, 4, and 5 will be identical.

Evo2.

You could simply remove your display manager (gdm, kdm what ever it is). This would boot you to the tty login.

You obviously have an internet connection of some kind. Images for Debian that are actually supported are easily obtained.

It appears that Debian 6 will get long term support;
https://lists.debian.org/debian-secu.../msg00082.html

This will make it last about as long as Debian 7 unless that gets this support too.

If you are worried about some antique hardware that you may using for this I am on a Dell Latitude laptop right now, running Debian 7 (Wheezy) just fine. This box has no wifi capability but does have both DSL and Dial up connection built in. If it runs on here it will probably run on what you have.

You may, if you have a good connection want to try a Squeeze or Wheezy netinstall image. This gives you just enough system to boot to the tty prompt and finish your install, as you want to, from there.

I generally end up with a tty prompt login at the end of doing that because I forget to install any DM. Sometimes I don't bother as they all have irritating features.

If you are just learning Linux my advice would be to get Wheezy and install it. There would be very few, if any, good reasons to use an unsupported version while accessing the internet.

Widget pretty well has it covered, just uninstall the login manager and you will get the prompt as soon as the machine is ready to operate afer you login at the cli prompt. If you want a gui after this just type
to start the gui.

Having said that, you should really consider downloading wheezy, or even squeeze as widget pointed out.

One of the reasons: I wanted to make a simple audio recording, under slackware 14,last version of the slackware disto, by way of and it didn't work. When this had always worked in previous versions of slackware. Now, I repeated the test under etch, with a positive result. So, if I install a newer version of Debian, who guatanties me the procedure has not increased in complexity. Why to have to learn everything anew when what I already knew suffices to do the job? As another example, when I first ran my newly installed slackware 14.0 linux OS, in the middle of the booting process the fonts changed to something that had to be read with a looking glass. If they had wanted to make the letters smaller they wouldn't be able to do it. So I had to spend several days to find out how I could use the system with the normal size fonts! It is likely that a thing like this won't bother you, because sure enough you work in a terminal in the GUI. Well, I do not usually work in the GUI, and cant fix things by just pressing a button. These are just two examples among tens and tens.

All of that is reasonable.

The only problem is that Etch is not supported and is therefore not secure. This is our concern.

It is, in fact, your box. If you want to run Etch that is your choice.

It is, however, not responcible for us not to question that choice.

Seems like that command should work to me too. That could be checked in just about any distro before installing by simply running the Live Session from a Live CD/DVD and trying the command out.

This would boot you to the gui DE. I have never tried to boot a Live session to the tty. Seems like that should be able to be done. I may have to play with that someday.

Well thank you, widget. I have made up my mind to install etch revision 0 (4.0_r0) just to familiarize myselt with debian. I have already found many things I like in it.

The thing is that I only have CD 1, out of a set of 21. Most probably only a few more will do. First, I'd like to do the installation in the way I am used to: from CDs or DVDs, which means to get the DVD images for 4.0_r0. But this seems to be more difficult than I had forseen. In http://cdimage.debian.org/mirror/cdi...e/4.0_r0/i386/ I am presented with this directory: However, only under iso-cd do I find optical disk images. Where are the DVD images is a mistery to me and a question I dare to make here.

Looks to me like you need to download the CDs from under the
http://cdimage.debian.org/mirror/cdi...i386/jigdo-cd/

directory on that page.

There may something useful on the jigdo-dvd link too. The number of DVDs seems strange.

Problem is I know nothing really about jigdo. But there are these links that may be of help to you;
https://www.debian.org/CD/jigdo-cd/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jigdo

I am going to read them with interest.

You must keep in mind that while these antique images are hosted on a Debian server that the project is actually done by individuals on their own. They may have lost some of the package cd/dvd images to time.

With that in mind I would take a look at;
http://cdimage.debian.org/mirror/cdimage/archive/

carefully and realize that you are probably better off with;
http://cdimage.debian.org/mirror/cdi...rchive/4.0_r9/

simply because it is newer and the archive may be more complete. As it is also the latest of the Debian 4 series it will present you with packages that have all the bug fixes for the life of that version. Up to the day the images were released.

As for how to download any of them you will have to read that first link I posted. Scanning that looks like it explains the process pretty thoroughly.

I looked for jigdo in the Wheezy repo using the Synaptic installed on here and found the package jigdo-file with this description;
Seeing how this may not be available for you there are instructions on the download page for getting jigdo-lite from the homepage.

May be a good idea to look at this;
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Debian-Jigdo/

which described as a mini-how too. Doesn't look real mini to me but looks to have a lot of good information.

I hope you keep us up to date on this. I have wondered about jigdo but my usual install is from netinstall images that I just do a straight download of (for Debian 7 32bit that was 277 MB).

Going to have to read this myself.

Just put the number 3 at the end of the kernel line like in my
/boot/grub/menu.lst since Etch uses legacy grub like I do.
You should have a /boot/grub/menu.lst also.

That is my menu entry for console boot when I wish to use smxi script. The 3 after the ro does it for me.

My gui login manager is SLIM or XDG. Depending on which box.