Today's article is about booting to text mode...

[KGIII]

There was a chance that this article wouldn't be written. The upstream folks worked on the site again this morning. Given the issues, I'm impressed.

I'm now in a new data center, right in New York. I use a CDN, so you probably won't notice - or ever actually visit the real server.

So, at the crack of dawn I was up writing an article. I wrote a lovely article about time zones. Just after I finished, the server ate it. I discovered I had a copy in my cache and that was just about the exact time I realized that I've covered this subject before - twice.

Which means that I had to write another article. I was sorely tempted to not do so, but I did.

The next article I wrote was very long - but it includes handy pictures! That's the article you're actually getting. You're getting an article that has you booting straight into text mode, instead of a GUI. It's a temporary thing, not something that you need to undo or anything.

Boot To Text Mode In Linux • Linux Tips

Today's article will be a quick and easy article, so easy that a newbie can follow it, and will cover how to boot to text mode in Linux.

linux-tips.us

Ah well...

 

[BigBadBeef]

The power and freedom granted to your system by Linux has downside - it won't protect you from the mistakes you make. If its gone so far that you need to boot in text mode, then you're at your last ditch effort to regain control of your distro. If you can't save it from there, all you have left then is to collapse in tears and start looking for that installation media!

 

[sphen]

This Linux Tips hint does not work as written with Linux Mint. Linux Mint is a popular distro.

Linux Mint hides the boot menu. To get to the menu, you must press CTRL-Alt-Del at boot time. Neither the Shift key nor the Esc key works with Linux Mint "Vera". I tested with both BIOS and UEFI with a VMware host.

The Shift key works with Linux Mint Debian Edition 5 (LMDE 5) with BIOS. I did not test LMDE 5 with UEFI.

 

[KGIII]

This Linux Tips hint does not work as written with Linux Mint. Linux Mint is a popular distro.

Linux Mint hides the boot menu. To get to the menu, you must press CTRL-Alt-Del at boot time. Neither the Shift key nor the Esc key works with Linux Mint "Vera". I tested with both BIOS and UEFI with a VMware host.

The Shift key works with Linux Mint Debian Edition 5 (LMDE 5) with BIOS. I did not test LMDE 5 with UEFI.

It should - try it again outside of a VM. It works here with whichever Linux Mint is current. Legacy BIOS using the shift key. I don't have a UEFI install to test it on. That was the laptop I had beside me when writing the article and was where I double-checked to make sure it worked.

If you can't get it to work, that'd be weird. It's a systemd thing. Not really a Mint thing. I'm not even sure how they could go about messing that up.

If you'd like, you can try systemd.unit=multi-user.target which would be the same thing as a 3 but spelling it out in text. Then, let me know if that works. If it does, I can add it as a contingency.

If you can't save it from there, all you have left then is to collapse in tears and start looking for that installation media!

LOL It's definitely not going to be my first step - unless I know for a fact that that's what I need to do.