Booting into the Default Runlevel

Ubuntu boots into runlevel 2 by default, which means it starts the system as normal and leaves you inside the X Window System looking at the graphical login prompt. It knows what runlevel 2 needs to load by looking in the rc*.d directories in /etc. Ubuntu contains directories for rc0.d through to rc5.d and rcS.d.

Assuming that the value is 1, the rc script executes all the scripts under the /etc/rc.1 directory and then launches the graphical login.

If Ubuntu is booted to runlevel 1, for example, scripts beginning with the letter K followed by scripts beginning with the letter S under the /etc/rc1.d directory are then executed:

matthew@seymour:~$ ls /etc/rc1.d/K10jackd        K20rsync             K20vboxdrv   K80cups      S70pppd-dns ...

Get Ubuntu Unleashed 2014 Edition: Covering 13.10 and 14.04,Ninth Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.