This document describes how you can boot your Linux system into the Text-mode

During the boot process

While you get the “Booting CentOS in X seconds”), press ESC
You should see a screen like this:

Select the line that begins with kernel and then press ‘e’ to edit the boot sequence.
Now add 3 to the end of edited line. This means booting in runlevel 3, which is text-mode.

To boot always in text-mode

Edit /etc/inittab and look for a line that begins with id:5.
Replace the 5 in that line by 3.

You can find a short description of runlevels below:
• Runlevel 0 and 6: halt and reboot the machine, respectively.
• Runlevel 1: No services running, only root can login.
• Runlevel 2: Users can login but no networking.
• Runlevel 3: Networking and text-mode.
• Runlevel 4: unused.
• Runlevel 5: GUI.