How can I get a simple, straightforward, non-GUI login sequence with no waits?

[Ioannis Vranos]

On Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 4:02 PM, Chris Green <cl at isbd.net> wrote:
> Once upon a time when I booted my linux box I watched a load of text
> flow past, got a login, logged in, ran startx and it all worked,
> quickly!
>
> Now when I boot my linux box (well, any one of several actually) I see
> *nothing* between the BIOS screen and the pretty (?) lubuntu/xubuntu
> screen asking me to log in.  Increasingly I'm seeing *long* delays on
> the way as Network Manager and Plymouth between them waste my time
> waiting for networks to configure themselves (or not).  On my laptop in
> particular it's getting steadily worse as I alternate regularly between
> wired and WiFi network connections and the system really doesn't cope
> with this well.
>
> I have tried to tell grub to tell me what's happenning as it goes but it
> appears incapable of working on any of my systems, I just get a blank
> screen during boot whatever I do.
>
> Can I remove all of the plymouth junk and as a result get a text only
> login sequence or is there more to it than that?  I have already removed
> Network Manager and replaced it with wicd which has made some things
> work better.

You do not need to remove anything.

Just edit /etc/default/grub and replace:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

with: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""


Save the changes, and then run update-grub as root.

-- 
Ioannis Vranos

http://cppsoftware.binhoster.com