I'd suggest you read the documentation on "init". If you edit the /etc/inittab file and edit this block to read: 1:235:respawn:/sbin/mingetty --noclear tty1 2:235:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty2 3:235:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty3 4:235:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty4 5:235:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty5 6:235:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty6 Then, runlevel 4 will not present you with a login prompt(only 2, 3 and 5, and level S, single user mode, of course). You may still get a remote prompt via telnet or ssh, but you have to investigate it. Remember that you need a number of daemons in your machine in order to have some services like: inet, network, NFS, printer, system logging, etc. If you use one of the runlevels for just one program, you should investigate whether you need some other services or not. Rafael