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Ubuntu 14.04, 13.10: Boot into Text Mode / Console / Command Line

This simple tutorial will show you how to boot your Ubuntu system directly into command line (text mode or console). If you just want a console for temporary use, press Ctrl+Alt+F1 on keyboard will switch your desktop to tty1.

Update: Thanks to August Karlstrom, before getting started, make a backup by running the command below:

sudo cp -n /etc/default/grub /etc/default/grub.orig

If for some reason you want to revert to original settings, just run command below in terminal:

sudo mv /etc/default/grub.orig /etc/default/grub && sudo update-grub

To get started, press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal. When it opens, follow the below steps:

  1. Copy and paste below command into terminal and hit enter:

sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

This opens Grub boot loader config file with text editor.

  1. Do below changes:

    Comment the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash”, by adding # at the beginning, which will disable the Ubuntu purple screen. Change GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=”” to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=”text”, this makes Ubuntu boot directly into Text Mode. Uncomment this line #GRUB_TERMINAL=console, by removing the # at the beginning, this makes Grub Menu into real black & white Text Mode (without background image)

Ubuntu boot into text mode

  1. After saved the changes, update grub via command:

sudo update-grub

Restart your computer and see the result.

Worked great in Linux Mint 16. Thank you!!!
August Karlstrom April 29, 2014 at 9:46 am

I always make a backup of any system wide configuration file before editing it, in this case:

cp -n /etc/default/grub /etc/default/grub.orig.

It is very useful to be able to restore the original file in case something goes wrong. It is also nice to be able to get a list of all edited files with `locate *.orig`.
frank May 4, 2014 at 1:31 pm

sorry:
message: /usr/sbin/grub-probe: error failed to get canonical path of ‘/cow’.
cow is correct :-)
wonder May 27, 2014 at 8:11 am

HI

Wanted my Linux mint to boot in to text mode and it worked thank you very much.
Parménide June 27, 2014 at 8:02 am

Thanks it works (on lubuntu) ! ^^
But after when I want to launch the GUI doing startx, it doesn’t work…
Any Ideas ?
    Ji m June 27, 2014 at 8:06 am

    Try:

    service lightdm start

    and switch to gui by Ctrl+Alt+F7
        Parménide July 16, 2014 at 5:04 pm

        It works for me with just sudo service lightdm start (I’m not sure I’m good using sudo)
        akash January 22, 2015 at 4:14 pm

        thanks bro.
        Fabio August 6, 2015 at 1:57 pm

        Thanks, It works
Sholo July 4, 2014 at 5:56 am

I am installing Lubuntu 14.01. But I cant access the GUI.
    ianrussel July 28, 2014 at 2:20 pm

    try sudo chown -R yourusername:yourusername /path/to/yourusername
    sudo reboot
        max July 6, 2016 at 3:59 am

        HY, is path/to/youtusername in /etc/passwd/ or do you mean /home/user/ ?
John July 29, 2014 at 1:11 am

How the do I get back to being able to use the GUI??? all sorts of problems trying to get back to the way it was.
    adch99 November 15, 2014 at 12:30 pm

    i had the same problem in ubuntu 14.04. I tried all the ttys and finally reached the gui in tty7
    i did ctrl + alt + f7
    try the function (F) keys in succession
Bulkoboy January 26, 2015 at 9:39 pm

So how do you do it when your machine boots with uboot, not grub?
M.Eswar April 24, 2015 at 2:23 am

WIll this work for ubuntu 12.04
gongming June 2, 2015 at 3:54 am

Unfortunately, it didn’t work in my circumstance.

My operation system is Ubuntu 15.04 in Virtualbox.

Even though I have modified the grub file and update grub, it constantly boots into the desktop mode.

Anyone can help me on it?
    pragomer July 9, 2015 at 11:00 am

    this is correct.. its a known bug in 15.04.
        yury July 30, 2015 at 8:50 pm

        I found a solution booting up Ubuntu 15.04 into console mode.
        As suggested here:

        After you fixed the grub file and run update-grub execute:
        sudo systemctl set-default multi-user.target
            Eko Wibowo September 27, 2015 at 3:09 am

            this helped me in Ubuntu 14.04 :)
            Thanks Yuri
            Bernard August 21, 2016 at 1:57 pm

            Work Ok in 16.04.01, in other cases not work
Daz August 20, 2015 at 2:15 pm

Thanks for this.

I made some slight changes to my bashrc so I could easily toggle between command line interface and GUI, as service lightdm start didn’t work for me. This may help someone else.


alias console='sudo cp /etc/default/grub.console /etc/default/grub && sudo update-grub && sudo reboot'

alias gui='sudo cp /etc/default/grub.gui /etc/default/grub && sudo update-grub && sudo reboot'

This is dependent of course on having saved the modified grub file as grub.console and the original as grub.ui.

Now we can now toggle between console and ui mode simply by entering gui or console at a terminal!
    Nazim December 7, 2015 at 11:25 pm

    Nice inspiration. Thank you. I wrote a small tool for that which works fine with Lubuntu (Ubuntu 15.10). Feel free to use or modify it.

    https://github.com/NazimKenan/smallShelly/blob/master/qweConsole

    You can easily switch between boot either to console or to gui.
John Ruttenberg October 18, 2015 at 4:39 pm

THis only partly works. It doesn’t boot into the gui, but I don’t end up with an interactive shell in the console either. No response to newline, no prompt.
Khan March 17, 2016 at 3:50 pm

I have upgraded ubuntu 12.04 and now when i start ubuntu it only shows the command line screen. How cani will get to GUI.
sundari June 15, 2016 at 5:01 am

I am doing my research in big data analytics. After upgrade my ubuntu i got some errors like “hadoop is not in sudoers file”. Can anyone help me to solve this error.
    Devon July 25, 2016 at 6:04 pm

    This is probably what you are looking for
    here
Charles Peterson January 25, 2017 at 7:35 am

These instructions did not work for me in ubuntu 16. Instead, it was necessary to make these changes which I found on another website.

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet”

(instead of simply commenting out this line)

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=”3″

(“3” instead of “text” as advised here)

GRUB_TERMINAL=console

(line uncommented exactly as advised here)

The key thing is the “3” which causes it to stick with the terminal through phase 3 or something like that.

http://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2014/01/boot-into-text-console-ubuntu-linux-14-04/