Newbie - booting without loading X 1

[Nelviticus]

Hello, I've installed Fedora Core 1 on a spare partitiion on my Windows box and it works fine. It was a default installation so it boots into the X GUI. I'd like to install the current nVidia drivers for my GeForce FX card but when I run the installer it tells me that I need to boot without loading X.

I recall managing to do this with a previous installation of Red Hat 8, but it took me hours of experimenting and re-installing when I ended up disabling X completely. In the end I think I made a copy of the /etc/inittab file, edited the original, re-booted, installed the package, deleted the original inittab, renamed the copy with the original file name then re-booted again.

I can do this again but is there an easier way of booting without loading X?

Cheers

Nelviticus

 

[sleipnir214]

/etc/inittab is the file that tells Linux what is the default runlevel. You have to edit it.

Near the beginning of the file, you'll see a line which reads:

id:5:initdefault:

Change it to read:

id:3:initdefault:





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[Nelviticus]

That must be the part that I changed last time. Ah well, I hoped there was an easier way of doing it but I guess I'll learn more this way!

Thanks for the input.

Nelviticus

 

[sleipnir214]

What could be easier than changing one character in a text file? Even if there's some app that changes the default runlevel for you, what that app will do is edit that file.



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[Nelviticus]

I think the problem that I ran into last time was editing the file back to the original. I didn't have a problem when doing it in X - right-click on the file, open it with an editor, change it and save it - but when I was at the command line I suddenly realised that I didn't know how to change it back. The only way I knew how to re-enable X was to re-install the whole shebang, which didn't matter too much as it was a fresh install that day.

The solution I came up with was to make a back-up of the original file when I was in X. That way I could just delete my modified one then rename the backup.

I did try editing it from the shell using vi but I couldn't remember the commands for either saving it or exiting vi. It was a while ago and I was even more of a newbie than I am now - I couldn't even get out of a man page without re-booting!

Nelviticus

 

[stefanwagner]

mc alias midnight-commander is always a great tool if you're not an experienced shell-user, giving you a file-browser, editor, ...
I guess it's mostly installed when using a common distro and choosing a kind of 'typic installation'.
Just test 'mc' on the commandline.

Other editors are: vi, emacs, joe, vim, ed, ... but I guess in few minutes someone will show you how to solve this problem with 'sed' and with 'awk'.

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[stefanwagner]

If modifying one line, I would prefer

# modified DATE
#
# id:5:initdefault:
#
id:4:initdefault:

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[Nelviticus]

My original question should really have been "is it possible to temporarily override the settings in inittab by, for instance, passing kernel parameters". When I start my machine up, Grub gives me the option to boot as normal or to boot with parameters. I just wondered whether you could temporarily skip loading X that way.

I made a backup copy of the file because I could remember the commands for deleting and renaming files, so I would be able to restore my original settings from the shell. If I had just commented out the original settings and entered new ones, without making a backup of the original file, I wouldn't have been able to restore my settings because I don't know my way around vi well enough.

Stefan, I tried mc but it doesn't seem to be installed. Cheers anyway!

Nelviticus

 

[stefanwagner]

Mir ist bekannt, daß man mit einem schlichten 'S' in den SingleUsermode booten kann.
Womöglich wird ein schlichtes '4' in den runlevel 4 booten.
Ansonsten bliebe noch die 'S' - Option, um dann

init 4

aufzurufen (was auch in den Runlevel 4 wechselt, und ein paar Sekunden dauern wird, verbunden mit ein paar Ausgaben auf der Konsole).

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