[Gllug] how to access virtual consoles?

Dermot Moynihan dermoyn at onetel.net.uk
Sun Nov 24 01:23:55 UTC 2002


Thanks Xander (and Walid, Dylan and Richard), 
Got that thing sorted out. All the advice gave me the courage to start 
experimenting. A temporary fix is to just add 3 to the end of the boot line 
when grub starts up - that takes me to a virtual console without waiting for  
KDE to load. Startx gets me into X if the mood should later take me. This is 
exactly the way I want things so I'll have a crack at editing /etc/inittab 
next.
Much appreciated.  Been wondering about this for a while. 
Dermot


On Sunday 24 November 2002 00:54, Xander D Harkness wrote:
> Dermot Moynihan wrote:
> >On Saturday 23 November 2002 23:16, Walid Shaari wrote:
> >>On Sat, 2002-11-23 at 23:11, Dermot Moynihan wrote:
> >>>I keep reading how if I press ALT+F1 or any F key up to F6 I can get
> >>>virtual consoles.
> >>>At the moment when I load SUSE 8.1 from a boot floppy (GRUB) it takes me
> >>>straight to a login screen and then I end up in KDE. When I hit ALT and
> >>>the F keys in here I just get menus.
> >>>So, I'm assuming the ALT F thing is available somewhere before KDE.
> >>>Basically, I want to learn the command line without having to wait for
> >>>KDE to do it's thing every time I boot up.
> >>>Any ideas?
> >>
> >>Check out the /etc/inittab file; there should be an entry for the
> >>default runlevel such as :
> >>
> >>id:5:initdefault:
> >
> >Yes this is what it says. Do I just change that 5 to a 3 (see below)?
> >What's the worse that can happen if I do this and it doesn't work? I'm a
> > bit worried about my mail.
> >
> >>you can change it from there to another runlevel that is not graphical I
> >>would presume its 3 under Suse, but better consult your manuals first.
> >
> >Just looking in the /etc/inittab file gives me the following:
> >
> ># runlevel 0  is  System halt   (Do not use this for initdefault!)
> ># runlevel 1  is  Single user mode
> ># runlevel 2  is  Local multiuser without remote network (e.g. NFS)
> ># runlevel 3  is  Full multiuser with network
> ># runlevel 4  is  Not used
> ># runlevel 5  is  Full multiuser with network and xdm
> ># runlevel 6  is  System reboot (Do not use this for initdefault!)
> >
> >Does 3 still look ok?  Or do I still need to check the manual?
>
> run level three will just give you the black window with a login prompt
> rather than the graphical login prompt.
>
> If you need to get back to the graphical once you are at run level three
> you can log in as root and type init 5 to get back to run level 5
>
> Kind regards
> Xander
>
> >Thanks
> >Dermot
> >
> >>or you can press Ctl+Alt+F1 F2 F3... from runlevel 5(Graphical) to the
> >>text console
> >>
> >>HTH
> >>
> >>Walid


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