help

[Matthew Seaman]

aguridan razvan wrote:
> i'm switching to freeBSD from debian and i don't know how to switch
> the runlevel of the system. i want to start my system in a user
> graphical environment but i don't know how. can you please help me?
> thank you.

Run levels are a SysV concept, and FreeBSD is (unsurprisingly) BSDish in
behaviour.  ie.  There aren't any runlevels in FreeBSD.  You can boot the
system single user, or you can boot it all the way to full multiuser
status.  Nothing in between.

The deeper question you are asking is "how do I automatically start up
a graphical X environment at boot time?"  Simple.  First install X if it
isn't already there.  Configure X correctly for your graphics card and
monitor: there are several methods you can use, but on the whole, just
running:

    X -configure

will do the trick.  Copy the xorg.conf file it generates to the /etc/X11
directory.  Check that X will do a correct manual startup by running the
'startx' command.

Now, to make an X environment start whenever your machine boots up, edit
the /etc/ttys file, and change the line for ttyv8 to:

    ttyv8   "/usr/X11R6/bin/xdm -nodaemon"  xterm   on  secure

(ie. change 'off' to 'on').  Restart inetd by:

    kill -HUP 1

and you should see the xdm(1) login screen.  If you want something
with a little more eye-candy, there are alternative display managers
from either the KDE or the Gnome projects that you could substitute
for xdm(1).

In any case, all of this is discussed in much greater detail in chapter
5 of the Handbook:

    http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/x11.html

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       7 Priory Courtyard
                                                      Flat 3
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey         Ramsgate
                                                      Kent, CT11 9PW

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