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Sometimes I would like to boot my laptop running Debian with GNOME 3 normally, however sometimes I would like to boot into text mode without having to manually stop the gdm3 service. Currently, I have to either manually stop gdm3 when the computer is booted or I have to boot into text mode and manually start the service.

How can I add an option (perhaps in the GRUB menu?) that will allow me to boot into a different mode if I choose?

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  • A less invasive option is to just boot into Gnome3 and then hit Ctrl-Alt-F1, that will give you a text-based terminal (Ctrl-Alt-F7 to get back). The drawback is that gdm3 will still be running in the background.
    – NZD
    Aug 11, 2015 at 1:58
  • @NZD I was aware of that but the goal of text mode is to eliminate the processing associated with gdm3.
    – jstrieb
    Aug 11, 2015 at 2:27
  • Were you able to try changing the grub boot line or adding a new entry to the menu? Aug 12, 2015 at 19:08

1 Answer 1

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Create an extra menuentry in /boot/grub/grub.cfg that copies your existing menuentry for Debian (the non-recovery one)

Change the line the begin with linux (e.g. linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-29-generic root=/dev/sda1 ) and add a space and then the runlevel to the end.

The above line changed to boot runlevel 3 would be: linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-29-generic root=/dev/sda1 3

You can also change the runlevel during bootup by hitting e at the grub screen to enter edit mode. Once in edit mode, go to the end of the linux line, add a space and your runlevel then hit F10 or Control+x to boot.

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  • Modifying inittab is not the same as the grub modification above. Aug 10, 2015 at 23:57
  • Just got around to trying this but it worked great. Thanks!
    – jstrieb
    Aug 26, 2015 at 17:45

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