David, Thank you for you great response to my inquiry. Very much appreciated.
My comments in-line below: On Thu, 20 Apr 2017 14:14:40 -0500, David Wright <deb...@lionunicorn.co.uk> wrote: >On Thu 20 Apr 2017 at 07:11:53 (-0700), Larry Dighera wrote: > >> What I have discovered thus far, is that Debian wants to launch X11 by >> default, instead of the command line UI. That appears to result in a black >> screen with a frozen system. >> >> At this point, I have no idea of the correct way to boot to the command line >> interface, so I temporarily renamed lightdm, and now it boots to the command >> line interface apparently after X11 fails to launch. So, it appears that it >> is X11 that has possible issues with the hardware or is misconfigured. >> Perhaps there is something in X11's /var/log file that will provide a clue >> about why it was failing to successfully launch. >> >> So, it appears that grub is correctly configured after all. >> >> What is the correct way to configure the system to boot to the command line >> UI instead of X11? Do I need to edit things, or add files to, /etc/rc.d >> someplace? Or is there a higher-level way to tell systemd that I prefer to >> manually launch X11? > >For jessie/systemd, > ># systemctl set-default multi-user.target > >and, to revert, > ># systemctl set-default graphical.target > That worked perfectly. Thank you very much. > >Removing the display manager was, I think, the old way. >Not installing one, OTOH, is still the normal way if >you don't want a DE (like me). > >> I'm aware that running the startx script is a reasonable way to launch X11 >> when I want it, but I'll have to diagnose its issue(s) first. My past >> familiarity with AT&T Unix from the early '80s through the '90s was pre-X11, >> so I'm going to have to learn how to administrate X11 now I suppose. >> >> I sincerely appreciate your kind efforts in guiding me. I gives me the >> motivation to continue spending the time to get Jessie up on the new Udoo >> X86 platform. > >There are several recent threads in this list about getting the >right video drivers and X servers installed. Most of it goes >over my head because my hardware is so old. > >Cheers, >David. I'll have to search the list archives. Thank you for the pointer. I'd like to have more lines/rows and columns on the console tty. I've read that 'vidcontrol' may do what I want, unfortunately 'apt-cache show vidcontrol' reports that it is virtual (unavailable). I am grateful for any clues you may be able to provide. Best regards, Larry