[GRLUG] gui on a server

[Roberto Villarreal]

On Friday, April 06, 2012 04:54:13 PM John-Thomas Richards wrote:

> > For Debian at least, it's still conceptually the same.  In my install at
> > least, you'll be put into runlevel 2 (/etc/inittab should tell you
> > yours).
> > 
> > There is a command that lets you alter what runs in what runlevels, and I
> > for the life of me can't remember what it is, because I usually cheat. 
> > In /etc there are directories named rc[0123456].d which symlink to
> > scripts in /etc/init.d.  So the 'cheat' way is to just delete the script
> > in rc2.d (for me, it's called S99kdm).  Then, if you are in runlevel2,
> > it will not start by default.  If you want to start it on demand, you
> > can call /etc/init.d/kdm start (or whatever display manager you use).
> 
> As with most things, it's intuitive, once you know it.  The command is
> `update-rc.d'.  The manpage is most informative for syntax.

That's it.  Adam's was very familiar as well from when I used to run Redhat 
(and appears to still be it).

> "Cheating" as you call it, is actually a good and effective way.  The
> files in those directories are simply symlinks to the actual scripts.
> The naming determines what it does.  Links beginning with K are killed
> when entering that runlevel and links beginning with S are started.
> This is done in numeric order (S1foo is started before S25bar).

Effective until you upgrade at least!  That bit me a number of times, as I had 
a computer that would lock up solid if X was started, but never cared too much 
since it was primarily used as a server (there was something manual I could do 
after startup to run X manually (and not freeze) when I needed to; don't 
remember what though).  But... those few times when getting a new kernel and 
kdm in the same upgrade caused trouble, as the link would be restored and the 
reboot would then kill the computer (you could not even ssh into it... it 
required a hard reboot).

Roberto