[SGVLUG] FC4 -- how to stop boot into graphics mode

[Emerson, Tom]

> -----Original Message-----
> Behalf Of Don Saxton
> 
> I screwed up a ModeLine and now ...
> How can I get to a text terminal?

As others have mentioned, <ctl><alt><f-key> will take you to a different "virtual terminal" in text mode where you can log on again.  Additionally, <ctl><alt><backspace> (if you haven't changed the default) will ABORT X, which will drop you back to your terminal session (provided you started with "startx") or attempt to restart ?dm (kdm, xdm, gdm, etc) which won't do much good if the modeline is screwed.

If you have another system connected (via a network) you could try ssh or (dare I mention it?) telnet.  An extension of this would be if you had a real "dumb" terminal (or even a so-called "smart" terminal) that makes a serial connection, you could likely hook it up to the serial port and log on that way (though chances are you have to set up the proper "getty" in advance as I'll bet most modern distros won't set it "by default" -- I could be wrong, so I'll defer this to perhaps the one person on our list who would have the most definitive answer: David Lawyer)

These are, of course, methods that you can employ "right away" without rebooting, but as this was posted days ago, and I imagine that this isn't a 24x7 server we're talking about, so rebooting is likely a viable option.  For that, I'd suggest starting in "mode 3" -- this is the full every-day/networking mode, but specifically WITHOUT X (at least, by default for most distros)  After you've repaired the problem, you can "switch" to the regular graphical mode by typing the following commands:

  $ sync
  $ telinit 5

(some consider the "sync" to be optional -- it's purpose is to ensure that any pending "writes" to disk drives have completed before potentially losing the disk buffers.)

Both Lilo and grub allow you a "command line" parameter as part of the boot process, so to get to mode 3 you simply need to type "linux 3" at the boot prompt.