Booting to command line instead of GNOME

[itguy12]

Hello all.

I need to be able to boot into the command line, instead of booting automatically into the GUI. I have Red Hat 5, Fedora 12, and also a Suse 11 box that I would like to do this in.

In addition, once at the command line, is there any way to change the command line resolution and refresh rate. I know how to do this in the GUI, but would like to view different resolutions/refresh rates at the command line screen as well.

Thanks.

[Mad Professor]

you need to edit /etc/inittab and change it from a 5 to a 3, this will boot the system directly into run level 3, forcing it into text mode.

Then to change the resolution you need to put a kernel option in grub

which is /boot/grub/menu.lst

and at then end of vmlinuz add

vga=

VESA BIOS Extensions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

has a list of modes to try.

to be honest use vga=791 which is 16bit at 1024x768.

Centos/Redhat will use whats under "Linux video mode numbers" in the wiki

While Opensuse will use whats under "Other commonly available modes" of the wiki.

I don't know what set of modes fedora uses but try both.

[itguy12]

Thanks for the help, and it has worked so far, but does anyone know the VESA Linux codes for the following resolutions:

640x350@85hz
720x350@70hz
640x400@85hz
720x400@70hz
720x400@85hz

[Mad Professor]

refresh rate in vesa will always be 60hz.