2 questions that are bugging me.

[sam111]

Question 1)
I am using unetbootin , take iso image of linux distros and making live usb bootable os from them.
I am wondering why the usb or partition on the usb must be fat and cann't be ext2,3,4 , ntfs , or other filesystems?
It only makes my usb bootable if it is formatted as fat?
I know the filesystem doesn't matter to grub because grub supports them all.

Is the squash.fs / compressed linux filesystem that unetbootin makes from the iso only in fat? ( I am thinking this is the only reason why)
Because when I format the usb with another filesystem like ext3 or 4 the unetbootin doesn't even list it in the usb devices as a drive?

Question 2)
I am wondering is their away on ubuntu or other distro's that would allow you to boot to a console and not the x11 gui at startup. ( i.e set some configuration file so that init doesn't start the x11 session / desktop but just a black console login screen by default?

[atreyu]

1) I'm guessing b/c Unetbootin uses syslinux and syslinux wants FAT.

2) Yes, many ways to do this. A quick way to test is by passing the runlevel as a kernel parameter (assuming your distro is using SysVInit), i.e. at the grub prompt, add simply:

 1

to the end of the kernel line (that is the number one, not a lower case L). That will boot you into single-user mode. A 3 will boot you into multi-user, non-graphical mode. And runlevel 5 is multi-user graphical mode. You used to put this runlevel in /etc/inittab, but some systems are now using systemd and that uses a completely new convention for specifying runlevels. Still what you want is totally doable.

[sam111]

Thank you
I see that unetbootin has that fat restriction because of syslinux. All set with that one.

The other question I have
Was running multiple xsessions . i.e being able to do ctrl+alt+f7-12 with 6 different desktop environments running.
One for gnome, one for kde ,....etc

But when I try startx or xinit or anything else I get something like

Fatal server error:
Server is already active for display 0
	If this server is no longer running, remove /tmp/.X0-lock
	and start again.


Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support 
	 at http://wiki.x.org
 for help. 

 ddxSigGiveUp: Closing log

even when I do xinit --display0:2

Maybe I am not doing something correct

[atreyu]

I think the syntax would be:

startx -- :1

assuming the initial X server is on 0.

[sam111]

excellent thanks just what I needed

[jayd512]

Just FYI, here... If you ever want to change the default runlevels for Debian or Ubuntu, you can setup an /etc/inittab, and the system will pick it up from there.
Otherwise, take a look in /etc/init/rc-sysinit.conf and look for the env DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL setting.