X without WM

[blue horse]

I was trying different WMs, out of curiosity, I decided to not load any WM onboot.
Now I have a X window without WM, and absolutely no place to start any application.
Given this situation, is there a way to get access to onboot.lst and edit it?
Thanks.

[Rich]

Hi blue horse
You could use  vi, or if you have mc installed, it will run without a WM.

[blue horse]

Rich, how can I go to text mode? it goes straight to X window, but without WM.

[blue horse]

I am hoping there are some special key to press during bootup and lead to text mode.

[gerald_clark]

Boot with the text option, and add a program to .xsession like aterm.  Then you can launch X programs from that.

[blue horse]

how to "boot with text option"?

[gerald_clark]

It depends on the boot loader.
Either enter 'E' or <TAB> at the boot prompt and add 'text' to the boot line.

[solorin]

ctrl-alt-backspace or ctrl-alt-delete kills the X-server and
drops me back into the console on my 'machine'.

It works for the X-server, Xfbdev,
does it not work across the board?

then to edit u can use 
busybox vi (will always be present on Core)
or select your editor of choice from ab
(the command-line appbrowser).

cheerio,
solorin

p.s. aw shucks. i thought this was going to be a post about   
       https://github.com/patrickhaller/no-wm

[coreplayer2]

I've been learning a lot of keyboard shortcuts lately,  like  Ctrl + Alt + Backspace  and  Ctrl + Alt + F1   both go to text mode  (maybe).   Additionally Ctrl + Alt + F1  was used to go back to text mode then Ctrl + Alt + F2  to return to X  immediately 

I haven't mastered vi  yet, not even by a long shot..  I tent to boot a live cd/usb and gain access to modify files that way,  or boot another VM but the principle is the same.

[solorin]

ctrl-alt-F1
oi. nice one. coreplayer
can't believe it took this long to discover that.
maybe i did try virtual consoles in console mode once,
but i think it's not implemented.
correct me if I'm wrong.

cheat.errtheblog.com/b
has a nice collection of concise reference sheets,
vi being one of them.

i use torsmo to keep the one i'm learning
in the rootwindow, above the wallpaper
and just switch workspaces when i need to refer.

okay, narry a word more from me here.
i gotta stop hijacking other people's threads.
sorry OP & mods.

[blue horse]

Thank you all, I finally got into text mode with ctrl+alt+backspace.
by the way, my TC is running on VMware hosted by Windows7.