Changing to runlevel 3 at boot with Debian

[Gary Cramblitt]

On Tuesday 25 July 2006 13:44, Christian wrote:
> Hello all,
> Where can I enter the init 3 to just start in text console on Debian? Not
> to have the gnome logon screen. Many thanks,
> Christian

At boot prompt, you can enter "linux 3".

The "Debian" way to permanently prevent an X desktop from starting at boot is 
do the following command (as root):

update-rc.d -f ?dm remove ; update-rc.d ?dm stop 99 1 2 3 4 5 6 .

For ?, substitute g for the Gnome Desktop Manager, k for the KDE Desktop 
Manager, x for the X11 Desktop manager, etc.  Example:

update-rc.d -f gdm remove ; update-rc.d gdm stop 99 1 2 3 4 5 6 .

Note period at the end.  You probably have to disable all of them.

The update-rc.d utility manages the symlinks in the rcN.d directories.

Once you've disabled automatic start of X at boot, you can still manually 
start the desktop by entering

startx

BTW, for answers to these and other Debian questions, the Debian Reference is 
a good source.

apt-get install debian-reference-en
lynx /usr/share/doc/Debian/reference/reference.en.html

I go the answer to your question in section 8.1.4.
-- 
Gary Cramblitt (aka PhantomsDad)