Can anyone explain the use of init3

[Erik Hemdal]

On Sun, 2006-04-16 at 05:34 -0400, fedora-list-request at redhat.com wrote:
> 
> Init3 is used to get to a command line interface.  The how is from a
> terminal 
> in a graphical interface.  That's in you only want an ocassional cli
> mode, to 
> make it permanent, edit /etc/initab changing the 5 in the line 
> "id:5:initdefault:" to a 3.
> 
> HTH
> Tom
> 
> 
> -- 
> Tom Taylor
> Linux user #263467
> Federal Way, WA 

Bear in mind, that this is changing the runlevel, too.  If you do this
on a machine that provides some network services, such as a Web server
or similar things, that changing the runlevel might also be turning
those off. Alternatively, you might be turning on some servers that you
don't really want to run.  This is system-specific.  The command

chkconfig --list

will show you what runs in each runlevel.  My point is that changing the
runlevel may have side effects beyond simply presenting you a shell
prompt.

Erik