Haha, now you have to ask a question to keep this thread going!

:laugh:

Yeah, I'm not sure why Ubuntu did away with inittab (I know some groups want to use event.d as the new method). That is something worth research, and I might just do that. But either way, they did...they moved everything into /etc/event.d to control their runlevel scripts.

If you look at /etc/event.d, inside that directory is a file called "rc-default"

The code inside says:

# rc - runlevel compatibility
#
# This task guesses what the "default runlevel" should be and starts the
# appropriate script.

start on stopped rcS

script
runlevel --reboot || true

if grep -q -w -- "-s\|single\|S" /proc/cmdline; then
telinit S
elif [ -r /etc/inittab ]; then
RL="$(sed -n -e "/^id:[0-9]*:initdefault:/{s/^id://;s/:.*//;p}" /etc/inittab || true)"
if [ -n "$RL" ]; then
telinit $RL
else
telinit 2
fi
else
telinit 2
fi
end script

That is telling Ubuntu to enter into runlevel 2 at start up. Sweet...so we now know what runlevel it will boot up to at start, but now how do we kill off the GUI?

Inside the /etc/rc2.d directory (the directory that init will read and start up all scripts listed inside) you'll see the display manager call...usually looks like:

root@kryptikos:/etc/rc2.d# ls
README S20apport S50avahi-daemon S70dns-clean S99laptop-mode
S01policykit S20dkms_autoinstaller S50cups S70pppd-dns S99ondemand
S10acpid S20hotkey-setup S50NetworkManager S89anacron S99rc.local
S10apmd S20powernowd S50pulseaudio S89atd S99rmnologin
S10powernowd.early S20winbind S50rsync S89cron S99stop-readahead
S10sysklogd S24hal S50saned S90binfmt-support
S11klogd S25bluetooth S50system-tools-backends S98usplash
S12dbus [b] S30gdm [/b] S70bootlogs.sh S99acpi-support

If you check the README file in that directory it says to change the "S" to a "K"

The scripts in this directory are executed each time the system enters
this runlevel.

The scripts are all symbolic links whose targets are located in
/etc/init.d/ .

[b]To disable a service in this runlevel, rename its script in this directory
so that the new name begins with a 'K' and a two-digit number, where the
number is the difference between the two-digit number following the 'S'
in its current name, and 100. To re-enable the service, rename the script
back to its original name beginning with 'S'.[/b]

For a more information see /etc/init.d/README.

So the quickest way is to issue the command:

mv /etc/rc2.d/S30gdm /etc/rc2.d/K30gdm

I know that answer is a little longer than probably needed, but it gives a good background :)

The easiest way I do it is to change the runlevel setting real-time by letting init handle it.

Say I want to jump into the GUI mode (on most Linux distros):

telinit 5

Remember on Ubuntu they do it a little differently. You'd have to check where the SXXgdm script was sitting. Since the default is usually runlevel 2, and runlevel 3 probably starts the SXXgdm scritp you'd tell Ubuntu : telinit 3

To jump back to the regular non GUI:

telinit 3

(or in Ubuntu with your script that has already been controlled from the previous examples of this post): telinit 2

I also reboot the box in this manner or shut it down too:

telinit 6 = reboot
telinit 0 = shutdown

:)