On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 11:37:06AM -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
5 comes after 1,2,3, etc.
I do hope you were making a joke and not really claiming that the system progresses through runlevels 2, 3, and 4 on its way to runlevel 5.
Progressing through the run levels is the way it is supposed to work to ensure that the complex and necessary sequence of processes started by init are done in the right order when you change levels either direction. At least that's the way it was designed in unix. Linux sometimes cheats - and using runlevel 5 to start X was sort of an afterthought. I guess you could wade through the /etc/rc script to see what it does these days.
It's not really "cheating" -- or "these days", for that matter. Runlevels in Red Hat and related distros have always been discrete steps, rather than cumulative.