Re: GDM black screen issue.

[Kent West <westk@acu.edu>]

vincent young wrote:
>  Sorry but I am new to this, this is the issue I
> encounter, first I manage to install Debian
> succesfully on an Sun Ultra 5 and I wanted to get the
> GUI running and installed GDM.
>  After using apt-get to install gdm, and restart, with
> kernel loading and all, when it comes to GDM, the
> screen turns black and nothing. I have to power off.
>  Each time I power on, the system would automatically
> run GDM. 
>  Is there a way to stop loading GDM and use the
> command line to log in instead?
>   

When the screen is black, try pressing Ctrl-Alt-F1 to move to the first
text-based virtual terminal.

If that doesn't work, try Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to see if that will kill X
(although it's likely to start back up again automatically, so this
probably won't do you much good).

Or you can start Debian in single-user mode. At the lilo/grub prompt,
entering "linux single" should do the trick. Once logged in as root, you
can deactivate GDM in a number of ways; if you don't want it all you can
remove it (aptitude remove gdm); my personal preference is to put the
single line "exit 0" as the first non-comment line in "/etc/init.d/gdm".

-- 
Kent