[Todd Madson]

There used to be a way you could boot into the shell alone on boot bypassing
the GUI and standard login.

I did this on my old G4 about the time of 10.28 and honestly can't remember
how to do it since it's been about a year and a half.

I did a brief google search but didn't come up with an answer, just a bunch of
x86 guys wanting to run it on their Dells.

I've got a project I want to run on the command line for a test application
and wish to bypass the gui.

It's a G5 DP 2.5 at 10.44.

Thanks.

[Chuckit]

If you have the login screen set to name and password instead of a list of names, you can enter the user name >console and it'll shut down the window server and take you to a command line login prompt.

[Maflynn]

I haven't been there for a while but did you try searching over at macosxhints I vaguely recall them having something on this

[Dr.Michael]

I guess it was command-s (single user mode). Hold it at startup.

[Chuckit]

Single-user mode runs as root. I don't recommend using that for normal operation unless you're well backed up.

[tooki]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

If you have the login screen set to name and password instead of a list of names, you can enter the user name >console and it'll shut down the window server and take you to a command line login prompt.

And if you are using the list-based login, you can temporarily summon the name/password fields by pressing option-return (10.3 and earlier) or option-shift-return (10.4).

tooki