8.1.4 "Let me disable X on boot!"
Chasing unstable/sid is fun, but buggy xdm,
gdm, kdm, and wdm started during the
boot process can bite you bad.
First get the root shell by entering the following at the boot prompt:
boot: Linux vga=normal s
Here, Linux is the label for the kernel image you are booting;
"vga=normal" will make sure lilo runs in normal VGA
screen, and "s" (or "S") is the parameter passed to
init to invoke single-user mode. Enter the root password at the
prompt.
There are few ways to disable all the X starting daemons:
Here, number in rc2.d must correspond to the runlevel
specified in the /etc/inittab. Also ?dm
means that you need to run the command multiple times by substituting it with
all of the xdm, gdm, kdm, and
wdm.
Only the first one in the list is "the one true way" in Debian. The
last one is easy but only works on Debian and requires you to set the display
manager again later using dpkg-reconfigure. Others are generic
methods to disable daemons.
You can still start X with the startx command from any console
shell.
