cat >/dev/null_

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/grub file, 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-grub afterwards 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
                    ;;

(UPDATE 20100302)

I wanted to change the default runlevel on my 9.10 Netbook Remix to 3, hoping to get a text-only login prompt.
I knew about the switch to upstart, so I did a bit of googling and I found this page, instructing me to change DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL in /etc/init/rc-sysinit.conf.

But, after switching to default runlevel 3, gdm was still popping up.

That’s when I noticed this in /etc/init/gdm.conf:

start on (filesystem
and started hal
and tty-device-added KERNEL=tty7
and (graphics-device-added or stopped udevtrigger))
stop on runlevel [016]

Adding runlevel 3 to the stop on directive did the trick, but apparently only when I passed the runlevel via bootloader.
The correct action was to specify the exclusion of my new default runlevel on the start on directive.

To sum it up:

in /etc/init/rc-sysinit.conf:
env DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=3

in /etc/init/gdm.conf:
start on (filesystem
and started hal
and tty-device-added KERNEL=tty7
and (graphics-device-added or stopped udevtrigger)
and runlevel [!3])
stop on runlevel [016]

Gotta love this transition to upstart!!!

Update: this seems to work on 9.10 desktop.

It’s Unix Timestamp 1234567890. Enjoy the moment!!!

Thanks to jochen for the photo!

Less than a month past my first trip to Düsseldorf, including the obligatory geek shot in front of where Kling Klang used to be, I am struck by the news that Florian is leaving Kraftwerk.

I am really caught between the serene understanding that all good things eventually come to an end, that of course this is not going to wipe away the many hours of good music, and the feeling that no, it can’t be.

Sheiße.

I just finished watching The Mist and I can’t help but write about it.

I can’t believe I wasted my time on this… I don’t even know how to define it, it’s just one wrong letter away from the perfect anagram. I must confess it is definitely not my favourite genre, but this is so lame it’s hardly bearable. 7.4 out of 10? Are you serious, IMDb? This may not be the worst movie I’ve ever seen, but goes straight into my Top Ten, and I get the feeling that if I ever have the guts to watch it again, which is unlikely, it might end up at a close second place.

But the real mistery is that it’s been directed by Frank Darabont, just like The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, both also based on novels by King. Maybe the man needs prisons to make good movies, so let’s throw him into one, just to make sure he doesn’t get lost in The Mist again.

I just lost a fight this morning.

Apparently, talking about people you’d like to sleep with does not qualify as oral sex.

Am I the only one in the world thinking that nothing is going to change anyway?

Poor, silly, deluded me.

“But aren’t you the one who’s always saying there is no right and wrong, it’s a duality, and dualities are an illusion?”

“How does that apply?”

“You tell me! I don’t even know what it means!!”

Dharma & Greg – Good Cop Bad Daughter (3×14)

Since my life is a complete bore lately, I decided to get a kick and upgraded my notebook to Kubuntu 8.10.

I have to confess a serious case of love-hate relationship with Ubuntu. The more I get suspicious about it and its makers, the more gracefully it runs on all my hardware. I think it does that on purpose. Just like last time, when I upgraded from 7.04 to 8.04, I was secretly hoping the upgrade would leave me with a heap of smoking ashes. And, just like last time, the process went as smooth as silk.

I must say I was pleasantly surprised by KDE 4.1. I didn’t like, or even understand, most of what I saw of the first dot zero releases, but I sure like what I see now. Of course there is a lot of eye candy, which I don’t care about in the slightest as long as I can disable it (I can’t afford it on my relatively slow hardware, and losing cycles for no good reason tends to bother me anyway in the long run). But it feels like there also is a lot of sensible stuff behind the scenes. I’m still playing around, but most of what I’ve seen has been improved. I always thought KDE was a terrific piece of software; this new release surely carries on the good tradition and probably ups the ante.

Anyway, it’s not like I haven’t had my little problems. The Alt+F2 thingie that used to be called MiniCLI has now been replaced by this wonderful new thing called KRunner. I like it very much, but it seems to have a nasty bug, it does not store settings nor the command history. This is a big pain, since I use the thing a lot. I see the bug has been fixed in SVN, I hope the fix gets to binary soon.

Also, VLC video output defaults to XVideo extension, which seems to cause a major screwup with my graphics card (Intel Corporation 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02), xserver-xorg-video-intel X.Org video driver, version 2.4.1 whatnot). After a handful of seconds of video play, the display goes completely berserk and there is no way to get anything back but doing the Three-Finger Salute. Forcing VLC video output to OpenGL fixed the problem. And by the way, VLC 0.9.4 totally rocks.

I had to uninstall NetworkManager since it messed with my wireless card and my own scripts. OK, I have to be honest here: me and NetworkManager, we don’t get along very well. I don’t like it and the feeling seems to be mutual. No big deal, I can’t be friends with anyone, can I.

Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without.

The Merovingian, Matrix: reloaded