LinuxQuestions.org - Booting Directly Into CLI?

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Booting Directly Into CLI?

Hi searched all over the net to see if it's possible and nothing yet. It's good to be here at LQ.O

Hi, welcome to LQ!

Which distro, and what do you mean by "directly into CLI"?
Not to see a GUI, or being logged into a full-screen console
automatically?

Cheers,
Tink

You just have to change the runlevel you boot into.

To do this, edit /etc/inittab and find the line

Code:

id:#:initdefault

(the # will be a number 1 through 6)
Change it to

Code:

id:3:initdefault

to boot directly into CLI.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cultist (Post 4396499)

You just have to change the runlevel you boot into.

To do this, edit /etc/inittab and find the line

Code:

id:#:initdefault

(the # will be a number 1 through 6)
Change it to

Code:

id:3:initdefault

to boot directly into CLI.

Not true for debian, *buntu and their derivatives. They fire up X (by
default) in all runlevels from 2-5.

Cheers,
Tink

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cultist (Post 4396499)

You just have to change the runlevel you boot into.

This is generally true, but not always. For example, my understanding is that, for Debian, runlevels 3-5 all invoke the GUI if a Graphical Display Manager (GUI Log in screen) is installed. I think Ubuntu works the same way.

It will help if you tell us what distro you are using.

Hi -

Quote:

Q: [Can you] boot directly Into CLI?

A: Sure. It's called "init 3" ;)

http://linux.die.net/man/5/inittab

One way is to manually edit /etc/inittab:

Code:

id:3:initdefault:

The "runlevels" for most *nix systems (including most Linux distros) are broken down like this:

Code:

http://www.linuxtopia.org/HowToGuides/runlevel.html



# Default runlevel. The runlevels used by RHS are:

#  0 - halt (Do NOT set initdefault to this)

#  1 - Single user mode

#  2 - Multiuser, without NFS (The same as 3, if you do not have networking)

#  3 - Full multiuser mode

#  4 - unused

#  5 - X11

#  6 - reboot (Do NOT set initdefault to this)

#

The basic idea is this:
* The GUI "look and feel" (e.g. Gnome, KDE or XFCE) sit on top of X Windows
* X Windows sits on top of the multi-user OS
* Basic kernel capabilities are available in either Single-user or Multi-user modes

'Hope that helps .. PSM

PS:
Note: for some distros, like Ubuntu, you might have to do slightly different things:

http://nixcraft.com/linux-software/2...c-inittab.html

Many do have terminals up at start. Usually you can press a key combo to access them. Like alt+F2 or some set of keys.