How do I boot into text-only mode?

General system Newbie
1

I am running a Minecraft server on my machine which has EndeavourOS on it and since it can be quite demanding, I don’t want to waste any processing power on a GUI. I have look around the internet and I see conflicting solutions. One says run systemctl isolate multi-user.target and another says something else I can’t remember. I am confused. I don’t want to screw my PC up. Thank you.

2

Have a look here:

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3

Is it possible to have another entry for GUI mode and another for text mode?

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4

Perhaps you could make a custom.cfg for your non-gui mode with the appropriate kernel line in /boot/grub.

Example:

custom.cfg

menuentry 'EndeavourOS-text-mode' --class endeavouros --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'gnulinux-simple-ec6b03db-62c1-4c06-bd46-95c0618f9393' {
	load_video
	set gfxpayload=keep
	insmod gzio
	insmod part_gpt
	insmod btrfs
	if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then
	  search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root  ec6b03db-62c1-4c06-bd46-95c0618f9393
	else
	  search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root ec6b03db-62c1-4c06-bd46-95c0618f9393
	fi
	echo	'Loading kernel linux-zen ...'
	linux	/boot/vmlinuz-linux-zen root=UUID=ec6b03db-62c1-4c06-bd46-95c0618f9393 rw systemd.unit=multi-user.target loglevel=3 nowatchdog
	echo	'Loading initial ramdisk ...'
	initrd	/boot/amd-ucode.img /boot/initramfs-linux-zen.img
}

You could copy the relevant menuentry from grub.cfg, paste it in custom.cfg and make the change.

2 Likes
5

In most cases, it can be as simple as disabling your display manager (systemctl disable lightdm, for instance). Then the console login is displayed upon the next boot.
I do that typically when running wayland environments like sway or KDE-Wayland. I don’t need the overhead (or the wasted time of starting a display manager)

2 Likes
6

So I did what you said. I do boot into tty1 as expected. When I switch to tty2 to do startx, I. I get 3 xterms. If I close the big one, X kills itself. In the man page it says that that was the “magic” client window. How can I switch that to my WM? For example, metacity?

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7

Why are you doing this if you want to boot into text-only mode (i.e. disable the display manager and GUI etc.)?

8

One word:Discord

9

That still leaves the question, if you want to use a GUI application why are you booting into text-only mode?

10

Surely, there must be some kind of Discord cli client… If not, there are plenty of terminal-only IRC clients, so it might be a good idea to switch. Discord is bloat anyway.

1 Like
11

I run an MC server. I figured it out anyway.