Summary: How to change your runlevel on Red Hat from 3 to 5.
Date: Around 2014
Refactor: 29 March 2025: Checked links and formatting.

Using the /etc/inittab file you can modify the default runlevel for your Red Hat box. I usually keep “3” as default. This is an overview of the runlevels in Red Hat:

# Default runlevel. The runlevels used are:
#   0 - halt (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
#   1 - Single user mode
#   2 - Multiuser, without NFS (The same as 3, if you do not have networking)
#   3 - Full multiuser mode
#   4 - unused
#   5 - X11
#   6 - reboot (Do NOT set initdefault to this)

The default is set in the only used line in the file:

id:3:initdefault:

Note that “3” and “5” are the most used runlevels, three being used for console based servers/administrators and five for X11 (graphical) based servers/administrators.

As said, 3 is my default but sometimes I need to so something in the graphical enviroment. Using the command startx will start the graphical environment.

Unfortunetely there is no stopx command in Red Hat. If you have full control of the console you can stop the graphical environment using the key combination: CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE. This will immediately shut down the graphical environment.

Another option is to simply logout. This will not log the user off, but will stop the graphical environment.