Introduction
In addition to multiple desktops within the grahical environment, Linux provides 'virtual terminals' (VT) from which you may maintain multiple access points to the same system. With each virtual terminal, you may login repeatedly as the same user or as a unique user each time, depending upon your needs.
By default, virtual terminal numbers 1 through 6 are set for command line logins while 7, 8, 9 and 10 are set for graphical displays. The first graphical environment to launch will automatically take VT7, and the second VT8, and so on.
So, if your YDL installation defaults to a graphical login automatically, it will launch on VT7. If you then switch to VT1 and subsequently launch MOL (Mac-on-Linux) from the commandline in order that it will run full-screen, that will occur on the next available virtual terminal which is 8.
How to switch from one to the other
Independent of whether your are in a graphical environment or already at a virtual terminal, do the following:
[CTRL-OPTION-F1]Press the ENTER key a few times ... if the screen jumps but you are not given a 'login:' prompt, then this virtual terminal is already in use, most likely because you launched X or MOL from it already.
So, let's switch to VT2:
[CTRL-OPTION-F2]
You should be given a 'login:' prompt --so login as root. You can then:
top [ENTER]
- or -
free [ENTER]
- or -
uptime [ENTER]
- or -
df -h [ENTER]
- or -
cat /proc/cpuinfo [ENTER]
... and learn more about your system.
And you can modify your system to boot into a command line or graphical environment by following the instructions found at the Configuration section of the YDL support pages. Select dexter.py.
To restart from the command line:
reboot [ENTER]
To shutdown from the command line:
halt [ENTER]
This HOWTO was written by Kai Staats, Terra Soft
