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Quick Mandrake/Linux question.

S

Shadow07

Golden Member
I just got a box running with Mandrake Linux 8.1. The install happens to be within a VMWare Virtual Machine. Now, their installation steps to install the VMware Tools says to install the tools from the command line, and not a shell within the X interface. I've already went into Mandrake Control Center and removed the option to start the X-Server, but the X-Desktop keeps starting.

I don't know much about Linux (and I'm trying!), but I need to know how to stop X from starting so that I can install the VMware Tools. Now, the version of X I'm running is 4.0.3 (or a version of 4). I'm also running the KDE interface. This happens to have the 2.4.8 kernel on it.

If you need any further info, please let me know.

Thanks.
 
Thanks for replying. Let me ask you this: What will this do? What will happen? I'm going to try it, but I just want to know what this will do exactly.

Thanks.
 
This will take you to a console. On most Linux installations, you are set up with 6 consoles by default, though you could change it if you wanted. CTRL-ALT-F1 thru F6 are the consoles. Everything is in text mode, there are no pretty graphics. 🙂
CTRL-ALT-F7 is reserved for X windows.

If you do CTRL-ALT-F1 you should see a text login prompt. You should log in and run what you need to run.

I would assume that for the purposes of what you're trying to accomplish, you don't necessarily need to prevent X from starting, I think they are just suggesting that you not be in X when you do this stuff. If you actually do want to stop X from starting, you need to edit one line in the file /etc/inittab. I'll hold off on that until I know for sure what it is you want to do.


 
All you have to do is change the default runlevel... from 5 (Start with X automatically) to 3 (Start without X)...

Here is how you do that:
1) **Follow the intructions given above to go to a differnent virtual console and login as root**

2) Edit the /etc/inittab file

3) change the line that looks like this:
id:5:initdefault:

to this

id:3:initdefault:

In otherwords... change the 5 to a 3...

The runlevels are all documented in that file...

# Default runlevel. The runlevels used by RHS are:
# 0 - halt (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
# 1 - Single user mode
# 2 - Multiuser, without NFS (The same as 3, if you do not have networking)
# 3 - Full multiuser mode
# 4 - unused
# 5 - X11
# 6 - reboot (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
#

 
Cool. Thanks.

I just wanted to let you know that when I selected REBOOT, the machine didn't reboot. I just went back to the login screen. From there, I did a reboot, and X didn't load.

But all of the information here is very valuable. Thanks again.
 
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