How to disable Linux FC graphical boot (start in text mode)

For those of you wondering how to make Fedora Linux boot into text mode – here’s how to disable the graphics boot/login screen:

If you are running an older distribution you need to edit the file /etc/inittab (must be root) and change

id:5:initdefault:
    to
id:3:initdefault:

If you are running a NEWER distribution can disable the graphical boot by editing your boot loader kernel params. You can verify that your disrtibution is of the newer breed if your /etc/inittab file starts with a big comment saying:

# inittab is no longer used when using systemd.
#
# ADDING CONFIGURATION HERE WILL HAVE NO EFFECT ON YOUR SYSTEM.

If this is the case then edit the file /boot/grub/grub.conf (again – root access will be required) and look for the block of lines booting your distro. On a new installation it is usually the first block that looks lie this:

title FC15-WD1TB (2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.i686)
    root (hd0,0)
    kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.i686 ro root=UUID=902efd28-c5f3-423f-8051-6a369df24848 rd_NO_LVM rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet
    initrd /initramfs-2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.i686.img

Delete rhgb quiet from the end of the kernel entry and add text 3

One thought on “How to disable Linux FC graphical boot (start in text mode)

  1. In recent Fedora versions (at least as early as fc22, possibly earlier) the inittab file contains instructions how to set your default boot target, namely:

    # inittab is no longer used.
    #
    # ADDING CONFIGURATION HERE WILL HAVE NO EFFECT ON YOUR SYSTEM.
    #
    # Ctrl-Alt-Delete is handled by /usr/lib/systemd/system/ctrl-alt-del.target
    #
    # systemd uses 'targets' instead of runlevels. By default, there are two main targets:
    #
    # multi-user.target: analogous to runlevel 3
    # graphical.target: analogous to runlevel 5
    #
    # To view current default target, run:
    # systemctl get-default
    #
    # To set a default target, run:
    # systemctl set-default TARGET.target

    … so just do:
    systemctl set-default multi-user.target

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