I have a remote machine running Debian 8 (Jessie) with lightdm installed. I want it to start in no-GUI mode, but I don’t want to remove all X-related stuff to still be able to run it though SSH with the -X parameter. So how to disable X server autostart without removing it?
I tried systemctl stop lightdm, it stops the lightdm, but it runs again after reboot. I also tried systemctl disable lightdm, but it basically does nothing. It renames lightdm’s scripts in /etc/rc*.d directories, but it still starts after reboot, so what am I doing wrong? And I can’t just update-rc.d lightdm stop, because it’s deprecated and doesn’t work.
Answers:
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Method 1
The disable didn’t work because the Debian /etc/X11/default-display-manager logic is winding up overriding it.
In order to make text boot the default under systemd (regardless of which distro, really):
systemctl set-default multi-user.target
To change back to booting to the GUI,
systemctl set-default graphical.target
I confirmed those work on my Jessie VM and Slashback confirmed it on Stretch, too.
PS: You don’t actually need the X server on your machine to run X clients over ssh. The X server is only needed where the display (monitor) is.
Method 2
you can also add systemd.unit=multi-user.target to the kernel command line, if you can’t access the running system.
Method 3
I don’t know much about Debian, but on my Ubuntu 14.04 laptop, here is the standard procedure I use when I want to disable X and boot to command prompt for troubleshooting:
- Edit the file
/etc/default/grubin superuser mode and set
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="text"
Optionally, also uncomment this line: #GRUB_TERMINAL=console
and then do sudo update-grub. The machine will boot in text mode.
- To start the graphical interface from there, you then do
sudo service lightdm start#could be gdm or startx in some situations
Source: https://askubuntu.com/questions/52089/how-do-i-boot-to-a-command-line-interface-instead-of-a-gui
Method 4
I had to do this:
systemtcl disable *dm
where * is a g or a k maybe an x.
Method 5
Try the following command:
echo "manual" | sudo tee -a /etc/init/lightdm.override
All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0