help: graphical login screen --> text login prompt

[Christofer C. Bell]

On Mon, 5 Jul 2004 02:15:09 -0400, Joe(theWordy)Philbrook wrote
>
> Hmmm perhaps ctrl-alt-backspace restarts X when you start up in 
> runlevel 5 but when you start up in runlevel 3 and use startx to 
> fire up the gui, ctrl-alt-backspace causes X to shut down while 
> complaining about losing the connection to the x server, and dumps 
> you back in  runlevel 3 in the still running shell from which you 
> did the startx command. At least thats how it's always worked for 
> me. I'm guessing that if there isn't a parent shell to fall back to 
> when X is reset, it automatically restarts. But that if its a child 
> process of a shell, the parent shell resumes instead?

When you are in runlevel 5, the X server is a child process of an X display
manager (either xdm, gdm, or kdm, dependant on system configuration).  This
process watches for the X server exiting and automatically restarts it.  

When you press CTRL-ALT-BS in runlevel 5, the same thing is happening as in
runlevel 3 -- the X server itself is actually shutting down and exiting.  The
 X server appears to "restart itself" but what's actually happening is the
display manager starting a new X server instance.

In runlevel 3, there is no display manager running so when the X server exits,
it must be restarted manually (from the command line prompt like was used to
start the previous instance).

Hope this is useful information!

--
Chris

"Build a man a fire and he will be warm for the rest of the night.  Set 
a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life."  -- Unknown