Get rid of X and boot to command line

[computer dork]

Running RH 7.1

During install I told system to boot into KDE.

Now I want to boot to the command line and get rid of X and KDE. How do I do that?

Thanks in Advance,
Jeff

[Siskmarek]

Get rid of it as in just go into a console mode and not even have X and thus KDE running, or actually delete X and KDE off of your system? I'm assuming you just want to get into console mode and not even have X running. If that is all you want, then all you need to do is start up a console, go into root and then type "init 3", then hit enter. X and KDE should then shut down and you should be left with nothing but a pretty console login.

Enjoy!

~ Siskie

[fracture]

To actually boot to the console every time you'll need to change this line, found at the end of your /etc/inittab file:
id:5:initdefault:

change it to:
id:3:initdefault:
and you'll be booting into run level 3, the beloved command-line! ;)

Here's a quick rundown of the run levels:
0 - halt
1 - single user mode
2 - multi-user mode, without NFS
3 - full multi-user mode without X
4 - not used
5 - full multi-user mode with X
6 - reboot
7,8,9 - not used

You can use any of them with init or in inittab. Don't use 0 or 6 in inittab, or you'll have to boot with a floppy cause your machine will start running in circles. :D (I've always wanted to try this, but never had the time.)

Note that this doesn't wipe KDE from your system. To do that you'd probably need to rpm -e quite a few packages and edit this block:
# Run xdm in runlevel5
# xdm is now a seperate service
x:5:respawn:/etc/X11/prefdm -nodaemon
found at the end of /etc/inittab. I don't know what you'd need to change, but you might be able to find documentation at the linux documentation project (http://www.linuxdoc.org).

Really though, since you're booting into runlevel 3, you should probably just leave that part alone in case you ever want to go back again.

Oh, and from the command prompt you can type startx to get into a KDE session.

Frac

[ 30 November 2001: Message edited by: fracture ]

[ 30 November 2001: Message edited by: fracture ]

[scott_R]

also, you can use linuxconf. Select boot, then default boot mode, then select graphic or text mode.

[PuterFreaK]

you also can run Xconfiguator (redhat only?) and when it loads X up to test it select 'no' in the messagebox.