-SOLVED- How do I boot directly into text mode instead of GUI? (Assume broken unusable GUI)

uConsole
1

So, long story short: I can’t get into desktop because a shellscript that executesshutdown now is called just before the login screen and my uConsole turns off before I can do anything.
I want to edit the shellscript to remove that line, but I don’t know how to get to the terminal before GDM starts (or finished) to load.

I tried holding ESC and/or SHIFT but nothing happened. I tried Ctrl-C when I see that gdm is loading, I tried pressing ESC like crazy the whole time, but no thing happens. It always completes the boot sequence and tries to load the desktop.

So… how can I boot directly into text mode before the GUI loads? … or how can I interrupt the GUI from loading and enter text mode?

I can give more detail on how I ended like this if you want to, it will probably make you chuckle, but for siplicity, I decided to just ask the question.

2

the simplest way is to mount sd card to a computer and modify configuration files this way

/ run chroot on mounted sd card and call raspi-config

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Yeah, I think I will end up doing that. Good thing the whole thing is on a SDCard. Will have to wait to get home but it’s an easy fix

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4

also, can you please try to load as far as it go and press

ctrl + alt + fn + f1/f2/f3

It may switch you to tty

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I wish I could say I know what happened… but I don’t.
I was pressing Ctrl+Alt+Fn+1, 2, 3 (Fn+1 == F1 and so on) and I noticed that F3 the combination Ctrl+Alt+F3 hid the Splash screen right before the desktop, and showed me just a blak screen with a blinking cursor.
I decided to let it be and I was greeted again by the splash screen again followed by the login screen. I clicked my user, entered the password and everything started up normally excepto for the keyboard shortcuts. They were not working.

That’s ok and actually, that’s why I was able to login, since keyboards shortcuts were (from my perspective) disabled, the power-off shortcut wasn’t able to run its course and the uConsole was able to start normally.

Now, out of curiosity, I clicked Ctrl+Alt+F3 in GUI mode and the screen now turned into a text only login screen.

Debian GNU/Linux 12 clockworkpi tty3
My IP address is 127.0.1.1 ::ffff:127.0.1.1
clockworkpi login:

_

I typed my info and I’m in text mode. I typed reboot to see if things were back to normal , and they were.
I believe the first time was a fluke, because I tried it again (when the Splash Screen showed) and I went directly to the terminal screen mentioned above, basically bypassing the GUI and going straight to tty (which was what I wanted)

Soooooooooooooooooooooooo
TL;DR version:
Thank you white-round-square, Ctrl-Alt-Fn-3 (Ctrl-Alt-F3) did the trick and helped me to fix my issue :smiley:

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6

<3

by default you have six TTY + f7 usually used to run your WM (it was X11 way, wayland may differ)

so you can switch any time between TTY1-6 and TTY7

(in TTY itself it’s enough to press alt+fn+f1..7 ot even alt + <left/right>)

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