Monday, June 11, 2012

Ubuntu 12.04 tip: booting to text mode (run level 3) and no X

Ubuntu is usually very stable (especially 12.04 LTS) and can boots on almost every one machine. But sometimes, there are cases when video driver crashed or not detected at all, or something other happened and X fails to start. This is the time you need to boot to text mode or so called run level 3.




Here is how: (warning: non-professional skills required to boot, high level of skills required to fix the things)
Just follow the next simple instructions:
1. reboot your Ubuntu or just power-off and power-on again.


2. In your GRUB boot screen select the first option and press key 'e'. Sometimes, if you have installed Ubuntu alone, there is no GRUB boot screen because there is no boot delay. In this case, you should find the way to edit the /etc/default/grub file and apply the changes.
3. Edit the line starting with linux as shown to the picture by replacing the words quiet splash with text


4. Boot by pressing F10 key

Now your Ubuntu should boots without graphical mode (called X server) and you could enter your username and password on the login screen and start fixing the things, like installing new drivers or something else.

All pictures are grabbed from my fresh Ubuntu 12.04 install on VirtualBox.
That's all. Enjoy.

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14 comments:

This starts my 12.04 system without X, but the runlevel is still 2.

The runlevel is indeed 2, because in Ubuntu/Debian Runlevel 2,3,4,5 are the same, and 2 is default. 0=poweroff, 1=sigle-user, text mode,no networking, 6=reboot

I did as you described, but it is stuck on a purple screen without login screen, just nothing happened. Seek Help!!!

Hi, i have ubuntu 12.04 LTS with cacti installed.
But i want to have a graphical user interface, is there any command that i can use to enable a graphical interface ?

Now im working in text modem

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop
or
sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

Having installed kubuntu-desktop I have no way of forcing boot to console and then selectively starting via "startx". Been looking around with no luck.

Found it:

echo "manual"|sudo tee -a /etc/init/kdm.override

will work for 12.04

:(

In the section "2. In your GRUB boot screen" -- if you don't see your boot menu, you can hold Left Shift key to cause grub to expose the menu before booting.

You need to hold it down pretty much as soon as your PC is powered on, otherwise it will proceed to boot as usual.

Details are already shown, sorry, I cannot publish more, I have'nt Ubuntu 12.04 any more, now I'm with 13.04

I INSTALLED THE UBANTU 11.4,after some day got an issue that showing black screen in hP LAPTOP

Hey just wamted to give you a quick heads up. The words
in your content seem to be ruynning off the screen iin Opera.
I'm not sure if this is a format issue or something to do
wit web browser compatibility but I thought I'd post tto let
you know. The layout look great though! Hoppe you geet
the issue fixed soon. Kudos

my blog vérification CV

edit /etc/defautl/grub and
# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal (grub-pc only)
GRUB_TERMINAL=console

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