Boot fedora in text or non graphical mode

The default installation of Fedora will boot you into GUI (Graphical user interface) mode. But many users want to be booted into text or non-graphical mode. If you are running a server out of the default installation then you would probably want to be booted directly to text mode. In this small howto, I will show you how to do that.

Following are the steps to configure your system to boot into text-mode as default. I have performed these steps successfully in my system running fedora 10 but similar steps can be taken to get the same result in other versions.

Open the file /etc/inittab (root privilages are required)

[chia]$ vim /etc/inittab

Look for the line containing the keyword id. In a default installation this line would look something like

id:5:initdefault:

Change the value of 5 to 3 in that line. So, now it will look like this

id:3:initdefault:

Save the file and reboot. Now, you will be booted directly into text mode.

These numbers 5 and 3 are actually called runlevels. They range from 0-7 and each denote a different state of machine.