Ubuntu 10.04 “Lucid Lynx” has been released, and what I wrote in my last post is still relevant.
I did another search to find another good way to boot the OS in text mode, getting rid of gdm at boot.
Inbetween several instances of advice like removing /etc/rc2.d/S30gdm, which does not exist any longer since gdm has been moved to upstart, or getting rid of gdm altogether by uninstalling it, which I didn’t want to do, I found something interesting in a comment to an article:
You need to open the
/etc/default/grubfile, locate the following line:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"and change it to:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash text"and don’t forget to run
update-grubafterwards to update.
In more general terms, you may want to add the text parameter to the GRUB entry for which you want a text-mode boot. Changing the default GRUB command line postfix, which is appended to all entries, rather than changing a single entry, seems like a brutal solution, but it is also the quickest, and may be just what you want.
A little bit of explanation: the upstart script /etc/init/gdm checks the kernel command-line for inhibitors such as text, and quits if it finds one:
for ARG in $(cat /proc/cmdline)
do
case "${ARG}" in
text|-s|s|S|single)
plymouth quit || : # We have the ball here
exit 0
;;
cat >/dev/null is 
Links 8/5/2010: Wine 1.1.44 is Out, RHEL 6 Beta Reviewed | Techrights
[...] boot ubuntu 10.04 “Lucid Lynx” in text mode [...]
RG
The starts up in 80×25 text mode. How can this be set to 132×50 ?
andrew
@RG: take a look here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=340664
kOoLiNuS
thanks man! I needed this one!
grateful
thanks.
cw81
I’m new to Ubuntu so maybe your trying to do something different but I needed to install some nVidia drivers and you can get to a CLI on boot very easily without modifying any configuration.
1. Hold down shift at boot.
2. Select recovery mode for your kernel build.
3. Select Root command prompt (can select with networking if needed)
4. Switch to runlevel 3 with the command “telinit 3″
Do your thing
Shai's technical blog » Blog Archive » How to boot Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 in text mode
[...] boot ubuntu 10.04 “Lucid Lynx” in text mode [...]
myrrdin
Thank you cw81! I’m still getting over the fact that I found what I was looking for in a thread of a forum only semi related B-)
andrew
@cw81: that is a bit different indeed, I meant to *always* boot into text mode.
@myrrdin: you are right. that’s why I wrote this post. I had a hard time finding this information myself. I guess things have changed meanwhile.