boot to command line

hullo,

is there a way of booting linpus lite directly to the command line, i.e. not loading xorg?

i totally botched my OS's install - while trying to uninstall firefox i uninstalled xfce too, and thunar for that matter. problem is stupid as i was i rebooted and now i boot to a black screen with a good for nothing mouse cursor.

if i could get to the command line i'd (hopefully) be able to use yum to install the missing desktop environment.

- alt+f2 doesn't work for it is a keyboard shortcut from xfce
- ctrl+alt+f1 / f2 / etc doesn't get me to a virtual console as in other distros
- i'm on vacation so using the rescue cd is not an option (if only i had created a usb recovery...)

thanks in advance,
PMR

 

As far as I know, Acer modified the version of GRUB for Linpus so it displays no output at all, so it isn't very useful for making changes to the boot options, so your only option here is to boot another Linux from USB, mount the the Linpus partition and comment out the 'Option "DontZap" "yes"' line in /etc/X11/xorg.conf, so you can kill X with the Ctrl-Alt-Backspace key sequence and then it will dump you at a console.

 

You can press tab during boot to get GRUB menu. You'll just have to try until you hit the right time (it's open for about 2 seconds or so)

 

thanks you both for your replies.
i didn't get a chance to try your solutions as i despaired and installed pendrivelinux to the ssd.
i'm still fiddling with the settings (wireless and screen resolution are a pain!) but i'm glad to report an improvement in speed - linpus slowed down (to a break) too often...
thanks again,
PMR