topic title: MX-14 beta2 available.
Posts: 1,139
masinick
Joined: 26 Apr 2008
#31
bbwf wrote:Say,
how do I log out of X, into a black screen with the command prompt,

I tried several old school ways - not taking

I wish to update the system without x running

Thanks
From a normally running system, you can press the key sequence Ctrl Alt F1, (holding down the Ctrl and Alt keys on your keyboard while pressing F1); this should bring you to a console login prompt that has a banner login of some type followed by a login prompt ending in

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login:
From there, type in

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root
(the system administration account)

Then, from a

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Password:
prompt, type in the root system administration account password.

From there, you can type in the command

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smxi -piej3
and this will allow you to use the very flexible smxi system administration tool, which can be used to install software, upgrade the system, add, and remove packages, and configure your system.

The Web site
========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://smxi.org/"
linktext was:"http://smxi.org/"
====================================
can tell you a great deal about the capabilities of this excellent system administration program and provide much more detailed guidance.
Posts: 1,308
BitJam
Joined: 31 Aug 2009
#32
bbwf wrote:how do I log out of X, into a black screen with the command prompt,

I tried several old school ways - not taking

I wish to update the system without x running
On most systems you can use the boot parameter"3" to boot into the system without starting X but this is broken on MX-14-beta-2.

As masinick said, you can use Ctrl-Alt-Fn to move between virtual consoles. If smxi (which was a great suggestion!) does not work for you then here is how to shut down X manually as the root user. First log out of XFCE if you are still logged in. Then switch to a virtual console, log in as root and run either of these commands:

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telinit 3

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/ etc/init.d/lightdm stop
The inverse of these commands, to start up X again is:

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telinit 5

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/ etc/init.d/lightdm start
You don't need both. Just use one or the other. The telint command is the best way to do it but it mght not work on MX-14-beta-2. It will work on most systems and will work on later version of MX-14. I added a space between / and etc due to a bug on the forums.
Posts: 70
bbwf
Joined: 19 May 2013
#33
Megawatts of thanks
Posts: 1,139
masinick
Joined: 26 Apr 2008
#34
With pleasure. Have fun!