Starting up w/o X, and virtual terminals.

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: Starting up w/o X, and virtual terminals.
started by: GAZ082

Posted by GAZ082 on April 17 2006,03:32

Hi, i just made a HD install to setup a web server in a crappy pc of my own. As i find myself always doing some CLI stuff, i find the X system useless. Is there a way to start up without X?

Other thing, i loved the ALT + Fn of Gentoo, why i dont have something like this in DSL and im must use something like Screen? I tried with CTRL+ALT and several keys but no luck.

Thanks! :*

Posted by mikshaw on April 17 2006,13:36

For no automatic X, edit /home/dsl .bash_profile, removing or commenting the startx line.

For multiple terminals, edit /etc/inittab. You'll see near the end of the file a list of actions that occur depending on your runlevel. If you add "5" to one or more of the additional "respawn" lines, you'll get one or more new virtual terminals.

You could also boot into runlevel 2 to get four terminals and avoid having to edit and backup any files. If you choose this option, you will be logged in as root.

Also, you could do a bit more work in order to get terminals that will not automatically be logged in (a password is needed).
< http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....;t=7936 >

Posted by GAZ082 on April 17 2006,15:05

Awesome man, i'll try this out as soon as i get home. Thanks!

Posted by GAZ082 on April 17 2006,23:43

Sorry, but its obiously i dont know how to handle the restore and backup process in my (now) frugal installation, because all the editing i made with "sudo nano", were over written by the restore process

Posted by mikshaw on April 18 2006,03:31

The restore process should overwrite the originals with your own files, not the other way around. With a frugal system all changes are lost on reboot, which is where backup/restore comes in. In order for it to work, you need to specify a target partition for the backup (can be done through the desktop menu). Additionally any file you want backed up will need to be added to /home/dsl/.filetool.lst. This list already contains /home/dsl and a couple of other files, but not the files needed to keep a multi-terminal frugal system persistent.