On Wed, Feb 21, 2018 at 05:45:51PM +0000, Kleene, Steven (kleenesj) wrote: > With sysvinit, I would set initdefault to runlevel 3 > in /etc/inittab. In /etc/rc3.d, I would rename gdm3 so that I would boot > into a terminal interface (command line) instead of Gnome. Then I would > quickly install fvwm, call startx, and happily finish building. > > I know systemd doesn't have inittab. Will the default installation leave me > with a terminal interface whenever I boot? If not, how will I accomplish > that?
Systemd does not have runlevels, but it is being developed primarily by and for Red Hat systems, and therefore it *mimics* the Red Hat runlevels remarkably. Instead of runlevels, systemd has a "default target", which is the set of services that should be brought up at boot time. Which is basically a runlevel by a different name. The default target of systemd in Debian is "graphical.target", which means that if you have installed a Display Manager (gdm3, lightdm, etc.) it will be started at boot time. If you don't want that, the other default target you can use is named "multi-user.target". This one will not run a Display Manager. You can check your default target by running "systemctl get-default". You can set your default target by running "systemctl set-default foo". If you simply want to boot *once* into multi-user.target without changing the default target, you can edit the kernel command line and add the option "systemd.unit=multi-user.target". Which is a whole lot more typing than adding the option "2" used to be, but is otherwise almost 100% equivalent. Another way you can achieve the goal of "not booting into a Display Manager" is to remove your Display Manager package. You can always add it back later.
