Force SAM to run as text terminal

[Joe Profaizer]

Is there a way to force SAM to run as a text terminal session even though my terminal session is X display?

Thanks,

..Joe

[Pete Randall]

If you DISPLAY variable is not set, you'll get the text version.


Pete

[melvyn burnard]

unset the DISPLAY variable?

[John Poff · Accepted solution]

Hi Joe,

I tried it here, and I was able to trick sam into text mode like this:

sam -display ''


JP

[John Poff]

Hi again,

I had my DISPLAY variable set, so my method will work for people like me who are too lazy to unset DISPLAY. :)

JP

[Bill Hassell]

Very common question, especially for those sysadmins that are on the road (modems are intolerably slow for Xwindows). Since I occasionally need to use some Xwindow tool, I will leave DISPLAY set but have two aliases in .profile:

alias samc="(unset DISPLAY;sam)"
alias swinstallc="(unset DISPLAY;swinstall)"

Makes the startup quite fast into character mode but leaves DISPLAY intact.