How do I disable GDM in Xubuntu

[mike_yung]

I've been tinkering with Linux for over a decade but am brand new to Ubuntu & their forums. If this thread fits better in another Forum please let me know. I'm here to learn.

How does one disable GDM in Xubuntu 9.04 (correction 9.10) ? On startup I'd like to be presented with a login prompt on tty1 so the logged in user can bring up Xfce with startx if it's needed.

I thought this would be done by changing the default runlevel from five to three. I was quite surprised to find Ubuntu default's to two with many many services running. I was also quite surprised to find no link to GDM in etc/rc2.d when I tried to disable GDM there.

:confused:

[Warren Watts]

sudo apt-get remove gdm

that will remove GDM and you will boot to a tty login

[mike_yung]

Thanks for the quick response. This didn't work the way we expected. Instead of a login prompt on the console, I was surprised to see an error about a Xfce not being able to find a font & a dialog box offering the choice of Xfce in low graphics mode or a console.

I found with either option my screen blanked complaining of out of range signals. I was able to back to square one by putting gdm back in via ssh.

Taking the display manager out sounds a little extreme to me. It may be overkill, or may only seem that way to me due to my perspective. I'd been using Gentoo & Debian before. Both of these distro's use /etc/inittab & allow the display manager easily be be disabled.

If you are sure removing gdm altogether is the best approach I'll give it another try & make notes of the error messages.

Perhaps I should have mentioned, I'm not exactly running Xubuntu. I installed the Ubuntu server 9.10 first then put in xubuntu-desktop package.

[hariks0]

Just press Ctrl+Alt+F1

[mike_yung]

Just press Ctrl+Alt+F1

Pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1 switches to tty1. That's not what I want.

I want to set-up my system so one is presented with a login prompt on tty1 on startup. If Xfce is needed it can be started from the shell with startx.

[mike_yung]

Someone had the same question a couple of days later & recieved a completely different answer. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1305659

According to my understanding of that advice there are two options.


One is to edit /etc/init/gdm.conf adding a line telling gdm to start on run level 3.
The other is to edit /etc/default/grub changing GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="text"

That leaves me with four follow up questions.


Am I interpreting http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1305659 correctly?
What advantage does upstart have over System-V style init scripts?
Why have the development team neglected to mention their major off-road excursion into upstart in the 9.10 Ubuntu Server Guide?
Is this normal for Ubuntu? When I start poking under the hood am I to expect more poorly documented unsupportable wackiness?

[rippin]

Someone had the same question a couple of days later & recieved a completely different answer. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1305659

According to my understanding of that advice there are two options.


One is to edit /etc/init/gdm.conf adding a line telling gdm to start on run level 3.
The other is to edit /etc/default/grub changing GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="text"

<snip>


Hate not to be able to answer you directly for 9.10 as I use 9.04. I see no easy clean up for this want you first mentioned. I suggest, lacking a better guide, a more thorough plan of action and re-installing your system - if practicable - as a minimal install; I have so done. We have no login screen such as GDM and each user has a specially written script to login them in and out as suits them.

Examples:
.bashrc
<snipped>

alias xf='startx > /dev/null 2>&1'
--------------------------------------

.bash_profile
# ~/.bash_profile: executed by bash(1) for login shells.
# see /usr/share/doc/bash/examples/startup-files for examples.
# the files are located in the bash-doc package.

# the default umask is set in /etc/login.defs
#umask 022

# include .bashrc if it exists
if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
. ~/.bashrc
fi

# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d ~/bin ] ; then
PATH=~/bin:"${PATH}"
fi

startx
exit

------------------------

.bash_logout
# ~/.bash_logout: executed by bash(1) when login shell exits.

# when leaving the console clear the screen to increase privacy
# and history for brevity, plus .xsession-errors as it is not
# being automatically updated between login/out.

echo -n > .bash_history
echo -n > .xsession-errors

if [ "$SHLVL" = 1 ]; then
[ -x /usr/bin/clear_console ] && /usr/bin/clear_console -q
fi

[gsmanners]

...
What advantage does upstart have over System-V style init scripts?
Why have the development team neglected to mention their major off-road excursion into upstart in the 9.10 Ubuntu Server Guide?
Is this normal for Ubuntu? When I start poking under the hood am I to expect more poorly documented unsupportable wackiness?


Upstart is a custom init daemon designed to handle its job more flexibly than the old init. It isn't paraded around in the documentation, but it is documented (man init). See also http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/125977?theme=print

I have no idea who wrote the Ubuntu Server Guide. It probably does need a refresh and to mention things like this.

Yes, unfortunately Ubuntu developers do tend to leap before they look. See the recent decisions regard The GIMP for example.

[mike_yung]

Solved


edit /etc/init/gdm.conf adding a line telling gdm to start on run level 3.