> Patrick J Draper wrote: > > How do I stop my Debian 2.1 machine kicking straight into X windows or > how do I get out once it has. > > I'm having problems and wish to boot to the command line. > > > Many thanks All > > > > > > > > > Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >
( Hint - It's a good idea to not leave the subject line blank.) X Window (not X Windows, plural) is starting automatically at bootup via a little program called wdm (or xdm, or gdm, or several others). Probably. There are other ways to automate it also, but this is likely the case. To get out of X when it's running, you need to shut down the xdm (or whatever) program first. xdm is started in your startup routine. Your default run level is probably 2, so the directory you're interested in is /etc/rc2.d. In that directory are several files starting with S or K. The S files start stuff; the K files kill stuff. You probably won't find any K files in this directory. During startup (or a change of run level), the K files are run first, in numerical/alphabetical order, followed by the S files in order. xdm will probably be within one or two of being the last files. There are several ways of stopping wdm. You could do a "ps ax|more" and look for xdm (or gdm, etc), and then kill the PID to that app. Better, and probably the cleanest, is to (as root) run "/etc/rc2.d/S[whatevernumber]xdm stop". Then you can exit X in the normal manner (Ctrl-Alt-Backspace for an unclean exit, or however your window manager provides, such as with "Debian/Close/Exit Window Manager" on IceWM. xdm will restart on your next boot (but no need to reboot), or you can start it manually by running "/etc/rc2.d/S[whatevernum]xdm start". If you want to semi-permanently turn off xdm, rename the S script to something like "NOS[whatevernum]xdm", or move it to a temporary directory, etc. Some people change the S to a K so that xdm will be killed instead of started. Rename it back when you want to re-enable it. To permanently turn off xdm, use dselect (or dpkg, or apt-get, etc) to remove the xdm package. Kent