A simpler method of direct-to-console booting

Jul 21, '03 09:23:00AM

Contributed by: Darkshadow

After reading this hint, I was going to post a comment on a better way to boot to the console, but thought it would make a better new hint rather than a comment.

By far the easiest way to have OS X boot straight to the console rather than to Aqua is to edit /etc/ttys. Near the beginning, you'll see these two lines (the second line has been split into three for easier reading here):


#console     "/usr/libexec/getty std.9600"     vt100     on secure
console "/System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/loginwindow"
  vt100 on secure window=/System/Library/CoreServices/
  WindowServer inoption="/usr/libexec/getty std.9600"
To boot into the console, you just need to uncomment (take the # sign) out from in front of the first line and then comment (put the # sign) in front of the second one. Save that file, and you'll boot into the console without editing any other files (you'll need to be root to edit and save the changes).

To have it look more like a tradition *nix login, do the command sudo nvram boot-args="-v"; that will get you the text while the system is loading rather than having the white screen up. Also, I wrote a little shell script to start Aqua up when you boot this way:

#!/bin/sh

/System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/loginwindow console &
/System/Library/CoreServices/WindowServer console &
I saved that as startAqua in /usr/local/bin. One needs to remember to chmod +x startAqua to be able to execute the shell script.

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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20030716220410216