Selecting the form Debian Begins In
 

I have just installed Debian 4.0r5. I was successful, and it looks beautiful. After reading many of the posts here and elsewhere, I think it would be a good idea for the OS to boot up to a simple terminal screen, which would allow me to start a GUI if I deem it necessary to do so. I know this is possible, as I have seen it done before. I have looked through the various menus and searched in as many ways as I can think of through the documentation.

QUESTION: How do I alter my Debian 4.0r5 to come up in the command line terminal mode from which I can start X Windows if I choose?

aptitude install sysv-rc-conf

From a command line, run that tool using sudo or root access. Then uncheck the box next to gdm/kdm/xdm for runlevel 2 (the default runlevel in Debian). Then when you boot up, you get a terminal. If you want X, you can startx or startkde or gnome-session depending on what desktop you run. I believe startx will start whatever is in ~/.xinitrc.

Should be /etc/inittab

Should be a line like id:5:initdefault: just change the 5 to 3 to default to init run level 3 instead of 5. I dunno debian but a quick google search on "start debian in telinit 3" seems to indicate this, not sure about going up to init run level 5 in debian. Usually the command is telinit I believe but it might require a path to be configured as it's not always set-up for none root accounts on some distros.

Bah =P, beaten to it. oh well.

Thank you both for your responses. I will try them out as soon as I get home to my Debian machine.

Thanks for your help and patients

Debian does not use the runlevel 3 and 5 like the other Distros.. the previous post that stated Runlevel 2 is where the change needs to be made (using the suggested tool) is correct. Just fyi.