I have found out how to stop the graphical login manager and get to a plain text console in Ubuntu, you type this command as root and it will shutdown the Lightdm login manager. Press Ctrl-Alt-F2 and login at the text console then type the command to get rid of the login manager.
sudo stop lightdm
This command will shut down the login manager and allow you to use the framebuffer console to perform tasks such as installing Nvidia drivers that require Xorg to be shut down. The grub.cfg entry should look like this, just make a copy of the existing entry for your distribution and give it a new name. Then for the linux line, remove the quiet splash commands and change it to text. And change vt.handoff from 7 to 1, this will dump you at the 1st virtual console and then you may login to your text console. If you wish to start the login manager then type sudo start gdm or sudo start lightdm depending on whichever graphical login manager you have installed.
menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 3.2.0-8-generic console login' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
recordfail
set gfxpayload=$linux_gfx_mode
insmod gzio
insmod part_msdos
insmod ext2
set root='(hd0,msdos1)'
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 7962f1b3-1c9c-4966-825e-f0b964a3dfdc
linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-8-generic root=UUID=7962f1b3-1c9c-4966-825e-f0b964a3dfdc ro text vt.handoff=1
initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-8-generic
}
This is a nice alternative to the old /etc/inittab system that Red Hat distributions used.
I am a computer enthusiast that has always been interested in maintaining and upgrading computer hardware. I was born on a farm and lived there for 13 years before moving into town. I was always interested in technology and my father always gave me good encouragement for developing my knowledge and interest in tinkering with computers. He was using a computer on the farm but that was in the very late 80`s and late 90`s. Seeing what a computer could do always fascinated me and then I knew that is what I wanted to do. The first time I used Linux was Red Hat 6.2 installed off a single CDROM and I was amazed that you did not need to install any more drivers on my old Intel Celeron machine to be able to enjoy a nice 24BPP desktop and use the GIMP to edit photos and enjoy playing the old Linux games like Xbill. Then a while later I tried Mandrake Linux 9.2 and I was hooked. It came with so much software and was very easy to use as well. Then Mandrake Linux 10 and on through FreeBSD, Debian 3.0, Debian 3.1 Suse Linux 9.2, Suse 10 and onto the Ubuntu distributions although I am using Fedora Core 15 and the Gnome 3 desktop at the moment.