How do I stop GUI from autoloading?

Hi,

Basically, you need to edit your ``/etc/inittab'' file, and change your default runlevel to 3 (it's currently 5). What this means to you is: change the line that says

id:5:initdefault:

to

id:3:initdefault:

This will be a simple search-and-replace operation from any text editor.

But you need to be able to access the file to be able to edit it, and you can't do that when you're stuck in a messy GUI. You need to access it from a text-based command prompt. This is actually quite possible, and it gets easier each time you do it:

1. Boot from your Linux installation CD. Go through the preliminary steps of the installation (nothing that involves overwriting anything), then press [Alt]-[F3]. I think you need to press the [Alt] button that's on the left side of your keyboard. This will put you into a command prompt (probably ``bash'') with full system access.

2. Mount the filesystem that contains your Linux installation's ``/etc/inittab'' file. To do this, you need to determine two things: where to mount the filesystem, and what partition to mount. Don't get disheartened! The first requirement is very easy: make a directory ``/mnt'':

cd /
mkdir mnt
cd mnt

So now you're in the directory ``/mnt''. Now you need to find out the partition your Linux installation is in; probably ``/dev/hda1'' (since you implied that Linux is the only OS on the PC). So mount it:

mount -t auto /dev/hda1 .

Notice that there actually was a space followed by a dot on the command line above. Now you should be able to access all the files in your installation, including ``/etc/inittab''. Note that because you've mounted it onto a temporary Linux system right now, this file will, for you, actually be ``/mnt/etc/inittab''.

3. Now edit said file. Most likely you'll only have the ``vi'' editor available to you, so invoke it thusly (assuming that you're still in /mnt):

vi etc/inittab

You should see the critical line I mentioned earlier somewhere near the top of the screen. Move the text editing cursor to it using the arrow keys, and move the cursor so that it covers the ``5'' in that line. Now, to replace the ``5'' with a ``3''. Type

r3

and the replacement takes place. Now to save and exit. Type

ZZ

and you are returned to the command prompt.

4. Now you must unmount your Linux installation's filesystem and restart the computer. Type these commands:

cd /
umount /mnt

Then take out your installation CD and simply hit your system unit's reset button.

HTH,
Yawar Amin
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These instructions sound rather convoluted. Why would this individual need to boot from an installation CD just to edit a file? I assume one needs root priviledges to edit /etc/innitab, but wouldn't it be alot easier to open a console, then su to root, then invoke a word processor and open the file with it? Or invoke MC from that root console, navigate to the file using it, then use MC's editor to edit the runlevel argument? Please clarify on the need to do the editing from other bootable media.

Thanks, James

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Howdy:

...and along this line of thought;
couldn't one use 'vi' or 'joe' from a console.
Perhaps even a one line 'sed' command.
:-|

HTH, Chuck

<snip>
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Whether "Amin" gave convoluted instructions is not the first concern. First ask whether he gave correct advice.

I did not see the original posting, and I can't find it anywhere. Amin's response does not indicate whether the original posting mentioned the Linux distro involved, and he does not do so. And Amin's advice is not distro-neutral; not all distros use the runlevel setting to launch xdm (or gdm). Debian, for example, uses a script in /etc/init.d that gets called from runlevel 2 (which it uses as its default runlevel).

That said, whatever change is needed can almost certainly be done without a boot/init from a rescue disk or CD. Just log in via xdm (of gdm), open an xterm, su to root, make the needed changes as root, and reboot the system. The needed changes might be ...

edit /etc/inittab to change the default runlevel from 5 to 2 or 3 edit /etc/rc2.d to remove the symlink S99xdm

... or maybe something else that is distro specific.

Amin made reference to a "messy GUI" in his reply. Since I never saw the original message, and he did not quote any of it, it is possible that the original questioner indicated some reason why he or she could not actually use the GUI interface to open an xterm (or possibly even to log in). In that case ... typically, distros that run xdm also open a hidden console on /dev/tty1, which one can access by pressing CTRL-ALT-F1 when the xdm display is active. You can then log in, make any needed changes, and reboot.

Finally, if even that does not work, at the lilo prompt (assuming we're talking about an install that uses lilo), instead of accepting the default load, you can usually enter "linux single" to boot/init into single-user mode with a console rather than X presented.

Only after trying these options would I turn to using a rescur disk or CD, as Amin advices.

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Sorry, I found the original post in Google Groups:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=mlist.linux.newbie&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search

And here it is:

From: Workman ([email protected])
Subject: How do I stop GUI from autoloading?
Newsgroups: mlist.linux.newbie
This is the only article in this thread
View: Original Format
Date: 2003-03-30 08:00:16 PST

I've FINALLY freed up one of my Pentiums to use as a Linux platform. (I gotta get away from Microsoft!)

I fought with it for an hour trying to get the install program to work, only to find out that my CD drive was screwed up (I think removable media drives are the weakest link in computers and CD drives are one of the worst).

Swapped in a different CD drive and the installation took off like gangbusters. Turbolinux Server 6.0 - Lite. Right now it's set up and seems to be working fine except that I tried to load the GUI (Gnome - I think) and I must have entered the wrong values for the monitor Vsync and Hsync. So the GUI comes up and it's messed up. I can't do anything in it. Damn! Looking back I see that my big mistake was in making the loading of the GUI automatic - so now I have to figure out how to stop it from loading so I can use one of the CLI configuration tools to alter the Vsync and Hsync values.

Well - I've heard of the problem in the Linux discussion groups (trouble getting the monitor values right) so I know this isn't unusual but I think the other people were smart enough not to have the GUI load automatically and prevent the accessing of the CLI configuration tools. The documentation says that pressing Control-Alt-Backspace will kill the GUI but it doesn't work for me. It's locked up when the GUI displays. Control-Alt-Delete won't reboot it.

Well I wanted to learn about Linux, I guess I AM!

I know I'll need to read more documentation. Meanwhile, any ideas, criticism, or encouragement?

Sorry, I didn't know about this. I assumed it was controlled by ``inittab''.

That is a good idea, but I was afraid that it would mess around with X. I tried it once (I'm using RH8.0), and it seemed to hose my X server.

I assumed Linux was the lone OS on the PC, so there was no bootloader.

HTH,
Yawar Amin
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Thanks for finding the original message. It did not occur to me that it might be 6 weeks old ... I don't normally keep list traffic anywhere close to that long. The original message tells us two things:

1. The poster was using TurboLinux 6.0 Lite. I don't know how that distro starts xdm, and I wonder if anyone here has used it and knows.

2. The X setup is bad enough that he cannot use it to login and open an xterm.

With that background ...

... there is one other candidate approach I forgot to mention. If the system is on a network and accepts remote connections (via telnet or ssh), the easiest way to fix this is simply to login remotely and make the needed changes. I don't know why I didn't think to mention it, since it is the actual way I usually fix X-display problems.

At 10:09 PM 5/10/2003 +0600, Amin wrote:
[...]

Right. That's (as I recall) how Red Hat does it, and it is the most common method ... just not a universal one.

Especially here on a list for beginners, knowing what parts of a setup are distro specific and what parts (reasonably) standard across distros is tricky. That's why I always tell people they HAVE to mention what distro and version they are using to get meaningful help ... and why you will often see me qualify my answers as describing the Debian approach to some setup issue. Remember the old joke about "assume".

I don't know what you mean by "mess around". This approach leaves X for a vt console, and you never go back to X. Depending on details incidental to the original question, switching to a vt then trying to switch BACK to X might cause problems you could characterize as "seemed to hose my X server". But since the purpose is to allow the user to disable launching of xdm, who cares? Any "hosing" will not survive a reboot. And how much more "hosed" can this X get than what the original poster described?

BTW, it is possible that the "hidden console" is on some other vt, not F1, so this experiment should try at least all of F1-F6 before giving up. (I seem to recall that Slackware used to put it on F6, but I'm not sure, and it has been a long time since I switched away from Slackware).

This comment is meaningless; every system has a bootloader (otherwise it will not boot) ... or, to be exact, every system that boots from a hard disk does. (You *can* create a rescue floppy that loads the Linux kernel directly, but this is hardly a normal boot method, even for systems that run a single OS.)

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Actually, it's not unusual to have six differnt console screens available;
it depends on the settings in inittab, at least on the distros I'm currently familiar with... (X Windows comes up on the next available screen...)

Jame

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Howdy, Y'all:

I have some very long filenames that I would like to shorten.
The filenames contain 'spaces' and some characters with tics or apostrophes, and tildes over them. I tried to change them from a console session, but I don't know how to generate those special characters from the keyboard...and I really don't want to type the long filenames anyway. :-|
OBTW, I have no GUI (X windows) on this computer.

Is there a way to remove all characters < 023h && > 06fh
from these filenames?

find - sed - mv ???

Regards, Chuck
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You precede the special character with a backslash, in general. Sometimes, you put the name in quotes instead of, or in addition, to that. Examples:

touch "some name"
will create a file with the two-word name "some name"

mv some\ name some\ other\ name
will change its name to the 3-word name "some other name".

Well, if I had this problem, I'd use a Perl program to iterate through the filenames in the directory, change each one to its special-character-free equivalent, and do a mv from the old name to the new name. Using Perl would also give me a language powerful enough easily to check each revised name for uniqueness before doing he mv, so I didn't accidently overwrite a file.

Chapter 9 of _Perl Cookbook_ (an ORA book) has some examples of how to use Perl to process filenames, though on a quick scan, I didn't see an example that was an exact fit to your problem.

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My solution would be something like:

for i in * ; do mv "./$i" "echo ./$i | tr -d '\00-\042\173-\377<>|' " ; done

Note: I'm deleting characters starting at 7bH, not 6fH -- 6F is in the middle of the lower case alphabet, so it doesn't make sense.

Other things to note:
I'm using octal (base 8) characters in the string, not hex the backquote (`) says to run the command and use the output as the parameter to (in this case) the 'mv' command.

I'm using './filename' to handle the possibility of a filename starting with
a '-' and being mistaken for an option. './' says "in the current directory",
so it's something of a no-op, but guarantees that the name won't start with a '-'.

the double quotes around "./$i" make sure that spaces (and other greeblies) in the original filename don't get interpreted as work breaks.

Stephen Samuel +1(604)876-0426                [email protected]
		   http://www.bcgreen.com/~samuel/
Powerful committed communication, reaching through fear, uncertainty and
doubt to touch the jewel within each person and bring it to life.

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Hi, Stephen:

Hey, this looks great! Thanks. I'll read up with
"man tr". I am thinking that I would like to translate spaces to underscores and non-alphanumeric to null.

<snip>

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.....

ctrl-alt-F1 should not mess with X (It's messed up, anyways, so who cares). It simply moves you to a different virtual terminal. X is still running. ctrl-altF7 (on redhat) will move you back to the X screen. It might be a differnt screen number for Turbo Linux... (just go through all 12 ctrl-alt-F[n] sequences if you can't find it).

There will be a boot loader... be it Lilo, GRUB, or whatever. watch the boot sequence closely.

Stephen Samuel +1(604)876-0426                [email protected]
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NOt having been around much latly i missed ost of this thread, however i did read the above message in google, As Far As I Can See, the best thing to do here is to boot into either runlevel 1 or 3, as mentioned there will be a boot loader presant, be it lilo or grub, (i dont use grub) but i can give an example of howto do it with lilo.

At the lilo boot prompt "Hit any key" to stop the boot(ing) timer, you now have time to think, what one needs to do is to choose the "linux Option" and enter either a "1" or "3" after it, example;

You can choose from
Linux
or
Dos

choose Linux it will be highlighted at the :Boot" prompt, add a "1" or a "3" after it, 1 or 3 is the runlevel if any askes...
When booted into one or 3 they are both console modes, do the following;

cd /etc
vi inittab
(Got to something like line 20) a line which looks like); id:4:initdefault:
{OR}
id:5:initdefault:
Edit that line to;
id:3:initdefault:
save the file, now on the next boot linux will boot into console mode.

Find your problem at ease now and then when you are sure you can boot properly change /etc/inittab back to runlevel 4 or 5 which ever your distro uses.

--
Regards Richard.
[email protected]
http://people.zeelandnet.nl/pa3gcu/

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This solution presumes that X startup is controlled by the runlevel. I presume that you know about TurboLinux. I really only know RedHat. Apparently, some versions of Linux use methods other than run level to control X-Windows startup.

Stephen Samuel +1(604)876-0426                [email protected]
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Name one that does not use /etc/inittab, i do not posess to know everything, but i have never seen one which does not use the inittab method.

Regards Richard
[email protected]
http://people.zeelandnet.nl/pa3gcu/



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I don't personally know of one, but I'm aware that it's definitely possible, and there's no reason to not do it (other than the fact that it'd confuse oldies like you and me). Since I haven't played with that many flavours of Linux, I can only accept as truth that there are some that do it in different ways.

I'm not talking about the initstate value in inittab, here. I'm talking about there being an xdm startup entry in inittab for level 5 .

Solaris is a non-linux example where the 'normal' states are 2 (non-networked) and 3(networked) and the use of X is determined via a different mechanism. Somebody who wanted to put together a version of Linux that looked as much like Solaris as posible would then be following the Solaris mechanism.

Stephen Samuel +1(604)876-0426                [email protected]
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There is no doubt about the means to do it in many ways, thats the heart of linux.

Not in Slackware theres not, at least not directly mentioned, all slackware does is call /etc/rc.d/rc.4 when runlevel 4 is defined as initdefault4, note slackware uses init 4 for X and not 5.
/etc/rc.d/rc.4 is editable to start which ever enviroment one wants, just like SysVinit systems allow in thier files which are in /etc/sysconfig i belive.

On another note it used to be like you say, however things change, i seemingly like you think about how it used to be but upon deeper study one sees the changes which we have never seen.

Thanks anyway for you input.

I have never used solaris so i cannot compare the two, anyway we are taking linux here and not another operating system.

Regards Richard
[email protected]
http://people.zeelandnet.nl/pa3gcu/



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A normal Debian install (Woody or Sid, maybe older versions too) starts xdm from an /etc/init.d script that is symlinked to runlevels the usual way. The standard practice is to leave the system at runlevel 2 and run an S99xdm .

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But does Debian define the runlevel in /etc/inittab ?.

Regards Richard
[email protected]
http://people.zeelandnet.nl/pa3gcu/



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What does "define the runlevel" mean, Richard?

The usual practice (RH and its offshoots, Slackware) is to define in /etc/inittab a distinct runlevel that starts an xdm process directly from a line of this form:

        6:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty6

(the example starts a tty, so it's only illustrative). As I recall, RH and its ilk do it from runlevel 5, while Slackware does it from runlevel 4.

So to start xdm from these distros, you change this line in inittab --

id:2:initdefault:

-- to read either

id:5:initdefault:
or
id:4:initdefault:

Debian, in contrast, creates a script /etc/init.d/xdm that starts the xdm process on the next available vt (usually 7, in practice). It them symlinks that script to the standard multiuser runlevel, runlevel 2 and does not change the initdefault line in inittab.

This has operational consequences. The important one, for purposes of this thread, is that you cannot change the X startup either by editing inittab or by specifying a runlevels a lilo parameter (the symlinks are the same for runlevels 2, 3, 4, and 5 on a standard Debian install). You must change or remove the symlink to xdm in runlevel 2 (again, on a standard Debian install). This is inconvenient in the cases where xdm so trashes the video subsystem that you cannot CTRL-ALT-F* back to a console (it happens) ... your only option (unless you have a remote login capability, say through ssh) is to boot/init into runlevel 1 and fix things there.

I don't know if any distro other than Debian does it that way. I'd speculate that the Debian derivatives do, but there are not nearly so many of them as there are RH derivatives, so it may not actually come up much.

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# These are the default runlevels in Slackware:

#   0 = halt
#   1 = single user mode
#   2 = unused (but configured the same as runlevel 3)
#   3 = multiuser mode (default Slackware runlevel)
#   4 = X11 with KDM/GDM/XDM (session managers)
#   5 = unused (but configured the same as runlevel 3)
#   6 = reboot

# Default runlevel. (Do not set to 0 or 6)
id:3:initdefault:

HTH, Chuck
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Hi Chuck.

On Red Hat, they are as follows...

0 = halt
1 = single user mode
2 = non-network text mode
3 = networked text mode
4 = unused
5 = X-Windows
6 = halt

...and either 3 or 5 can be the default.

Best wishes from Riley.
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My reasoning was, the original poster couldn't get into a graphical console (such as ``xterm'') because his/her X configuration was incorrect and graphical environment was unworkable. Also, if he/she tried to do a [Ctrl]-[Alt]-[Backspace] to go to text mode, the only effect that had was, X restarted itself --- because ``inittab'' only allows the system to run in runlevel 5.

For the same reason, the OP couldn't boot into text mode when the system started up. So, I thought he/she should access the file by using the installation CD.

Yawar Amin
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So C-A-Bksp was restarting X properly (even if X wasn't working), yes? Then why not use C-A-F1 to get to a text console, login, do the edit, and restart???

.brian

Brian P. Bilbrey <[email protected]>
Orb Designs

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