djliquidice - You're welcome
Nope, not -s (I haven't tried that, BTW, I dunno if that would boot in single user mode or not. I'd guess so...). I mean actually booting into the console, no extra commands needed.
It's actually pretty easy too. Edit /etc/ttys - that's it.
Uncomment the line that says
console "/usr/libexec/getty std.9600" vt100 on secure then comment the next line that says
console "/System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/loginwindow" vt100 on secure window=/System/Library/CoreServices/WindowServer onoption="/usr/libexec/getty std.9600". (For anyone not familiar with what that means, it means to delete the
# sign from in front of the first line, then to add it at the beginning of the other line.)
That's it - next time you boot, it'll be in the console.
Interestingly, it seems that if you remove the word secure, from whichever line is the active one, you'll have to put in the root password when you boot into single user mode. I would guess this wouldn't be a good idea if you didn't enable the root account, though.
Now, to start up Aqua, you'll have to make a little shell script -
____________________
#!/bin/sh
/System/Library/CoreServices/WindowServer &
/System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/loginwindow &
____________________
I saved that as startAqua. Big note: you need to be root the first time you run it, otherwise you're just stuck at a blue screen. I don't know if sudo works, as I didn't try it.
Once you do it, you'll be presented with the normal login screen (no way past that one), where you can log in as whatever user you want (not stuck as whatever user you logged into the console as).