I made the silly mistake of rebooting after a full upgrade in smxi today, with the result that I now get a black screen because I did not re-install FGLRX before re-booting. At one time, this would not have been a problem as I could add 3 to the kernel line, run sgfxi and all would be good. That no longer works, maybe because squeeze uses grub2? I see kdm trying to load and then black screen, with the only option being a hard reset.

So, my question is, how do I now boot to runlevel 3 to run sgfxi? Using recovery mode drops me to a bash shell where smxi/sgfxi will not run.

Thanks.
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isn't grub2 great!! so much less usability, so much more complex, just what the Linux desktop ecosystem needed, no?

To boot to init 2 assuming your default is 5 (debian default is 2, which makes the boot very difficult if you have your issue, requires several changes), at grub, type e, for edit, then go to the end of the kernel arguments line and add 2, then hit the command to boot, don't remember it, it says though in the edit window.

Then run sgfxi, then it will restart your system.

Debian users sadly are largely screwed if this happens, they have to go into single user mode, ie, init 1, edit /etc/inittab, change default run level to 3, then change kdm/gdm default start level to 3, then do: init 2.

Why debian stubbornly insists on making all things start in init 2 including desktop when there are such clear advantages to starting in 2 then 3, 3 for gui, or 3 and 5, is beyond me.

Just fyi, there is no repeat no difference functionally between starting in 2 for console and 3 for x and starting in 3 for console and 5 for x, that's just a convention that makes no real logical sense, but may have had some meaning in unix days possibly.

smxi features tools to change init levels of kdm/gdm by the way in miscellaneous tweaks.
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Thanks techadmin, thats useful to know. I guess I was thinking runlevel 3 from when I used to use sidux.

After posting, I had an idea for an ugly workaround and removed kdm and gdm at the bash prompt which forced it to drop to a shell in the next reboot and that allowed me to use smxi.

FGLRX 10-10 now safely installed and working fine......
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I could add few more annoyances to that statement. For an ex-Sid user (previously successful) now considering running soon-to-be oldstable as main OS it must be serious.

I too prefer runlevel 2 to not start the desktop. I tried changing runlevels in Squeeze and get tons of errors because of insserv (not matching LSB defaults) I don't know how to deal with that.

If smxi runlevel tweak option still works at all, it won't here, as I use Trinity desktop which smxi does not support (yet....?)

Is it still possible to tweak runlevels manually in otherwise standard Debian squeeze/sid?
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try sysv-rc-conf to change runlevels, I'm not positive it works with the new stuff but I think it does.

It lets you set runlevels manually per init level. Let me know if it works just for my own information.
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I just tried again with sysv-rc-conf, changing kdm-trinity, then manually editing inittab for init 5 default. (kdm-trinity is not significantly different from Lenny kdm)

there was a warning after use but that's all and it's now working as expected, default init 5, init 3 is no desktop

But update-rc.d commands entered manually refuse to work at all, attempting to change anything from default. After a sysv-rc-conf tweak, <update-rc.d service defaults> does nothing but spit error messages

Same result with some other initscripts, so can't see how gdm or kde4's kdm should be different. Surely the smxi option to change runlevels can no longer work, as it uses update-rc.d ?
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oh, thanks, that must mean the smxi runlevel tweak tool is broken now too, sigh.
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miks, I guess you could have just hit ctrl+alt+f1 and updated you graphics driver.
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Actually, that was the first thing I tried. Normal boot produced a black screen which I think I got out of by RSEIUB with the B producing the only response. I have never tried to use recovery mode before, so I was not sure what that shell was capable of running, but it certainly would not run smxi/sgfxi.

I did try changing my runlevels with the smxi tool once it was sorted out, but as dzz pointed out, that no longer works. I have not tried sysv-rc-conf yet as I am worried I will screw something up. I have not found much info on how to use it, so until I find some clear step by step instructions, I am leaving the runlevels for now. Stuff changes so rapidly I am never sure whether any instructions I find are still current.
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sorry, I'll update the runlevel tool to use sysv-rc-conf because I have no idea how the new method actually works.
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