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I was just taught here that systemctl isolate multi-user.target is the modern way to unload the graphic shell, which was done by init 3 previously.

I see that init 3 still works in my system but it succeeds only once, likewise systemctl. When you run them once, then, it is fine -- the Gnome/KDE is unloaded and you can startx again. But, once you did that, initializing to level 3 does not work anymore. I am left at level 5, in KDE, at least in my Fedora-24. systemctl just hangs until I kill it with Ctrl+C. Why is that? Do you notice the same behaviour?

Yes, I run the go to multi-user command from the GUI terminal.

Community
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Little Alien
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2 Answers2

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You are in runlevel 5 or to be precise in graphical.target. You do runlevel 3 or systemctl isolate multiuser.target.

If you type startx you are still in runlevel 3 or multiuser.target, even if X is running, so systemctl isolate or runlevel 3 will not work.

Uwe Burger
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  • According to http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/297835/9689 there is no `multi-user.target` , is it? Otherwise, could someone, please correct example with better target? – Grzegorz Wierzowiecki Jul 31 '16 at 15:46
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    @GrzegorzWierzowiecki check `systemctl list-units` and you will see if you have a multi-user target. – morxa Aug 06 '16 at 10:09
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From documentation, you can use set-default instead of isolate:

$ sudo systemctl set-default multi-user.target

Then reboot.

Sparhawk
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smd
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