Need to disable gdm

**linuxuser9999** · October 30th, 2009

Does anybody know how to disable gdm (gnome) so I can boot to the command line in 9.10?

**jeffus_il** · October 30th, 2009

One of the ways is to run

Code:

sudo sysv-rc-conf

in a terminal and remove the X's using the space bar in the line starting with gdm.

Alternatively you can access a console using <Ctrl><Alt><F1> when gdm is running.

Good Luck

**minaev** · October 30th, 2009

I'm afraid that developers have totally mutilated the runlevel system of Ubuntu. Perhaps, playing with /etc/init/gdm.conf might help.

**dj-toonz** · October 30th, 2009

or hold shift down while the systems booting & it brings up the menu

**dcc24** · October 30th, 2009

I've tried /etc/init.d/gdm off but it says upstart doesn't support "off". Any ideas?

**minaev** · October 30th, 2009

dcc24,

To stop GDM, you have to give the command `stop', not `off':

Code:

/etc/init.d/gdm stop

But it will only stop gdm for this session. It will still be started after reboot.

Perhaps, if you edit the file /etc/init/gdm.conf and replace the line

Code:

stop on runlevel [016]

with

Code:

stop on runlevel [0126]

it might work. Cannot check the idea right now, sorry... Or just make some more or less random changes in this script so it would not run GDM

I mean, like, change `/usr/sbin/gdm' to `/no/more/gdm'.

**dcc24** · October 30th, 2009

Yeah, but I don't want to "stop" it, I want it off. Before 9.10 "/etc/init.d/gdm off" worked just fine.

But, I guess you're right, messing up the init script seems to be the only way.