You
can boot directly into the console if you wish, but you're stuck with no (easy) way to start Aqua. So there's really not much point unless you like the console.
If you really want to, edit /etc/ttys
There's a line near the top that looks like this:
# console "/usr/libexec/getty std.9600" vt100 on secure
Delete the # character from in front of it.
Then the next line looks like this:
console "/System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/loginwindow" vt100 on secure window=/System/Library/CoreServices/WindowServer onoption="/usr/libexec/getty std.9600"
Place a # character in front of it. Then save the file.
The next time you boot, you will boot directly into the console.
Apple didn't really make provision to do this one, so the screen will stay that nice gray color. You'll get some text saying "Welcome to Darwin" and under it "login:" that will be white text on black, but the rest of the screen will be totally gray. Once you login, you can either type
reset or
clear and the whole screen will go black.
You could also hold down command-v to start in Verbose mode, then you don't have to worry about the gray screen.
But there's still no easy way of starting up Aqua. You can't just run the two apps from the line above; I tried that and almost hosed my login window! So I wouldn't suggest trying it.
It took me a couple of hours to get it back to working normal (though I must admit, I had done some other things at the same time, and it could have been one of the others that did this...but still, I thought I would warn you guys).