How to boot without X Windows?

[Elvio Caruana]

Charles,

When X starts and fails, press CRTL+ALT+F1 to go to console mode.
Log in as root, then edit /etc/inittab with your favourite editor.

Find the line 

id:5:initdefault:

and change it to

id:3:initdefault:


and reboot.


You probably didn't know that you can go to a console by CTL+ALT+F[1-6] 
.. and that will solve you many problems.





On Thu, 2004-04-22 at 06:11, Charles Landau wrote:
> I'm trying to install Fedora Core 1 on an off-brand PC. (It's a 
> "Great Quality PC" from Fry's Electronics.) Apparently the 
> installation process mis-identifies my video hardware, because as 
> soon as it tries to start X Windows, the screen goes blank (or, if I 
> connect a more intelligent monitor, it says "Input signal out of 
> range").
> 
> By the way, the video hardware is on the motherboard, which is an 
> Elitegroup L7VMM3. The documentation provided is sketchy, but the 
> computer came with Lindows 4.5 installed; it was using a "savage" 
> video driver for X Windows and works fine.
> 
> I'm thinking that if I could boot Fedora without having it start X 
> Windows, I could run enough to explore the X configuration and 
> experiment with changing it to try to get it to work with my 
> hardware. I'm hoping there's a generic video driver that will work 
> OK. (I don't care about the video hardware's fancy 2D and 3D 
> graphics.) So how do I keep X Windows from starting? I can *install* 
> in text mode, but I don't know how to stay in text mode when booting.