On Fri, Jun 08, 2007 at 08:36:34AM +0200, ashmiel wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am brand new to linux and had a few questions.
Welcome aboard and all that good stuff.
> I recently installed FC7 and was wondering if there was any sort of
> command line/gui based way of disabling my video card. My reason
> for doing so is that the video card fan is very old and makes alot
> of noise and I generally just plan on booting the machine on and
> logging in remotely.
>
> I would just take the card out itself however I was hoping there was
> a way I could do it just every time I log on that way if something
> happens i can just reconnect the monitor without worries.
If the video "card" is built into the motherboard, there may be a
mechanism in the BIOS to disable it. I've never seen a video card with
its own disabling mechanism, but I suppose they could exist. Replacing
it with a newer fan-less video card is also possible. I keep a few such
around for the purpose.
Given that, you can save a lot of memory by not loading X (the
GUI). From the command line, as root, run "init 3".
Or reboot. When you get the grub prompt (the first blue screen after
the BIOS), edit the command line to add " 3" at the end. E.g:
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.20-1.2952.fc6 ro root=LABEL=/
becomes:
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.20-1.2952.fc6 ro root=LABEL=/ 3
^^
That will boot to a command line only environment. Having done that,
you can ssh in with the -Y option to allow you to run GUI applications
on one computer (the remote computer) and display them on another (the
local one, the one from which you logged in). See
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/5405 for more information.
To make the change permanent, then, as root, edit /etc/inittab to
change this line:
id:5:initdefault:
to this:
id:3:initdefault:
^
See the notes in inittab on what the different run levels do. 3 and 5
are the most commonly used. Also "man inittab" for more information.
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