Drop to a console after boot, and then start the GUI when required

Question

I am running Ubuntu 14.04 with Gnome as the Desktop Environment. When I boot, I want it to be quick, and drop into a shell.

I'll enter my username and password, and if I require, I will start the GUI.

What this necessarily means is that I want to start the GUI. whenever I run startx, The full GUI is not loaded. All my icons are there, the wallpaper is there, and I believe the window manager is also there. But the top pane is not there. How do I do this?

@muru, my problem is when I start the GUI. I've updated the question — daltonfury42, Jul 05 '15 at 15:25
That seems to be a drastic change to the question. Why cant you just do sudo service lightdm start and then login normally? — muru, Jul 05 '15 at 15:30
@muru, that's not true, it was mentioned in the question, right from the start. You can check the edits. sudo service lightdm start works, but when I start gdm instead of lightdm, it doen't work. Any idea why? — daltonfury42, Jul 05 '15 at 15:39
I have checked the revisions, and it seems to me you're shifting your problem from starting the GUI on demand to debugging why the GUI isn't starting properly. Do you have GDM installed? — muru, Jul 05 '15 at 15:40
@muru Sorry for the misunderstanding. What actually happened is that startx did not work. So I asked here how to do it. Now I see the answer, but I wonder why gdm does not work. It is installed, and it is the dm used when I boot normally. — daltonfury42, Jul 05 '15 at 15:47
IMHO you should ask a new question, linking to this one for context. Have you checked the logs of GDM (should be in /var/log/gdm)? — muru, Jul 05 '15 at 15:48

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 05 '15 at 15:31

This is done by booting into text mode:

make a backup by running the command below:

sudo cp -n /etc/default/grub /etc/default/grub.orig

If for some reason you want to revert to original settings, just run command below in terminal:

sudo mv /etc/default/grub.orig /etc/default/grub && sudo update-grub

To get started, press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal. When it opens, follow the below steps:

Copy and paste below command into terminal and hit enter:
```
sudo gedit /etc/default/grub
```
This opens Grub boot loader config file with text editor.
Do below changes:

Comment the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash”, by adding # at the beginning, which will disable the Ubuntu purple screen.

Change GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="text", this makes Ubuntu boot directly into Text Mode.

Uncomment this line #GRUB_TERMINAL=console, by removing the # at the beginning, this makes Grub Menu into real black & white Text Mode (without background image)
After saved the changes, update grub via command:
```
sudo update-grub
```

Restart your computer and see the result.

Read this for more information.

Thankyou, I can now boot into console, but whenever I run startx, The full gui is not loaded. All my icons are there, the wallpaper is there, and I believe the window manager is also there. But the top pane is not there. — daltonfury42, Jul 05 '15 at 11:53

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 05 '15 at 12:13

1

Try to start the full login daemon if neccessary via

sudo service lightdm start

answered Jul 05 '15 at 12:13

Tom Freudenberg

141
3

Drop to a console after boot, and then start the GUI when required

2 Answers2