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GUI-less OS X

B

Biolizard

macrumors 6502
Original poster
I've had a look around and can't find much in the way of answers to this recently.

I've picked up a second hand Mac Mini G4 with Leopard on and want to use it as a headless file/web/whatever server, so I don't really need the GUI and with only 512MB RAM I need all the memory I can get.

Is there any way to stop Aqua from starting at boot while preserving functionality? I know of Single User Mode but it sounds like it runs in a very restrictive environment.


On the other hand, what're people's experiences with recent versions of PPC Linux distros?
 
edesignuk said:
Wouldn't it be easier and still cheap just to throw a little more RAM in it?
Click to expand...

Could do; I was hoping to eek out more performance without spending £25 on a Gig tbh (cheapskate 😛). Plus opening the Mini and keeping it intact sounds challenging, but if that's what it takes.
 
You could just crash the GUI by putting in a blank Extras.rsrc (with a backup, of course) That will boot you to the login: prompt 🙂
 
Unbuntu has a PPC version and that typically consumes less resources then OSX. You may want to look into that
 
Ubuntu is crap when compared to other linux distros. Debain PPC FTW. Or just run OSX (server) headless. Either way, they both rock.
 
The correct way to do this is quite simple. edit /etc/ttys and comment out this line
console "/System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/Contents/MacOS/loginwindow" vt100 on secure onoption="/usr/libexec/getty std.9600"
then uncomment this line
console "/usr/libexec/getty std.57600" vt100 on secure

That's it, now reboot. Make sure you boot in verbose mode or else you'll just get what looks like a blank screen. You can do that with

nvram boot-args="-v"

Odd, doesn't seem to work for me on snow leopard. they must have changed it. I'm pretty sure it works with 10.5 though, I can't quite remember the last time i did it..if it was 10.4 or 10.5. I guess you'll find out when you try!
 
SL has a lot of little changes but they matter, quite a bit. Try the method I linked to, that should help.
 
Thanks all 🙂

maflynn said:
Unbuntu has a PPC version and that typically consumes less resources then OSX. You may want to look into that
Click to expand...

Yes, but it's "community led", which doesn't fill me with confidence when stacked up against other distros.
 
I'm running ubuntu and I can vouch for its stability and performance. In fact they (ubuntu folks) have done a great job at banging out versions every 6 months.

Don't knock until you try it, ubuntu is quite the popular distro
 
maflynn said:
I'm running ubuntu and I can vouch for its stability and performance. In fact they (ubuntu folks) have done a great job at banging out versions every 6 months.

Don't knock until you try it, ubuntu is quite the popular distro
Click to expand...

I have Ubuntu from 7.10 to 9.04 and plan on getting a 9.10 dis sent, its just for a server, its crap compared to the other versions out there. You want a kick ass server? CentOS or Debian FTW. Ubuntu is a great distro for a) newbies to linux, and b) people who dont need much.
 
nullx86 said:
You want a kick ass server? CentOS or Debian FTW. Ubuntu is a great distro for a) newbies to linux, and b) people who dont need much.
Click to expand...

We use RHEL, and it works fine. Ubuntu is more than just newbies. It's a great laptop/desktop OS. I'm not sure what you mean by point B. There is a ton of software out there for Ubuntu and is available by the repos.
 
nullx86 said:
I have Ubuntu from 7.10 to 9.04 and plan on getting a 9.10 dis sent, its just for a server, its crap compared to the other versions out there. You want a kick ass server? CentOS or Debian FTW. Ubuntu is a great distro for a) newbies to linux, and b) people who dont need much.
Click to expand...

You have a right to your opinion, I'm very happy with ubuntu and given how active their discussion forums are, many people feel the same way. I'm not interested in getting into a linux pissing contest. You like centos or debian, that's great. I'm extremely happy with ubuntu.
 
Most Linux distros offer a PPC port in some way.

personally i would go with Debian or FreeBSD. Ubuntu is just too bloated and installs too much crap by default for my tastes.

or once OS X is booted up you can just enter

>console (be sure to include the '>')

for the username and the GUI will go away. Although i'm not sure if windowmanager stops running.
 
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