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Cross post from Serverfault

I have a laptop I'm running as a file server, which is running Ubuntu 10.04 Desktop. Now that summer heat is here, and because I love the environment, I'm look for all sorts of ways to reduce the laptop's power/memory/heat footprint.

One part I never touch any more is the GUI as the lids always closed.

I thought perhaps simply removing GDM from all run-levels my achieve this, so I did so using sysv-rc-conf. However this didn't make any difference and upon reboot the lovely Ubuntu boot screen and graphical login prompt appeared.

Please help!

Additionally, perhaps this is a silly question, I want to make sure that the monitor is off at all times the lid is closed, which it is already set to do when the GUI is running, can/do I need to configure this separately for non-GUI environments? (Seems to be doing this fine)

Thanks :D

EDIT: Ok maybe I'm using sysv-rc-conf wrong and it needed 2 reboots to apply the settings or something? As rebooting it a second time since removing GDM from all run levels I got a command prompt.

However I didn't watch it reboot and was a little confused by this, so I rebooted what I believe to be a 3rd time, and now it's booted to a black screen with a solitary white underline in the top-left, no other text. No amount of keyboard mashing in order to change run levels is having any effect, however I am able to access it via SSH and the SMB shares, so I suppose it's doing almost what I want. The lack of a CLI on the screen itself is still concerning however.

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2 Answers 2

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Re-purpose using tasksel

Install sudo apt-get install tasksel

run sudo tasksel

Uncheck ubuntu-desktop

Check basic server

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  • Just went through this, seems to have worked, but now networking seems to have been deactivated among god knows what else. You made it look too easy!
    – DanH
    Jun 8, 2011 at 15:40
  • OK, seems all I needed to do was configure interfaces, pretty much all my other services survived.
    – DanH
    Jun 8, 2011 at 16:17
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Be careful, currently, the documentation says you should only use tasksel to install tasks, never to remove any (see bug details)

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