[CentOS] Boot CentOS 5 to command line

[Brett Serkez]

On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 2:46 PM, ABBAS KHAN <bashukhan at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi fellows,
>
> Pretty new to CentOS.
> I was trying to find a way to boot CentOS into command prompt instead of GUI
> (or without loading any services).
> Tried using 'Crl+Alt+F1' at the boot process, but, that holds the screen at
> mounting and doing fstab and doesn't proceed further.
> Is there anyother way to boot CentOS into command prompt without using
> Rescue option from the installation CD?

You can change to multi-processing command line mode with 'init 3' and
single user mode with the command 'init 1'.  Modes can be changed
dynamically in a running system.

See the file /etc/inittab, it lists all the possible modes, the first
line of this file defines the default mode:

id:5:initdefault:

which defaults to running the GUI at boot, change it to:

id:3:initdefault:

to not run the GUI at boot.

Brett