I recently had to remove the gnome GUI from a server running Scientific Linux (6.2) and had to go through a few steps to make it boot up properly.
- To remove Gnome from Scientific Linux, run the following command (while running outside of the GUI). This will remove all related applications related to the Gnome including Mozilla/etc.
yum groupremove "GNOME Desktop Environment" - Next, you will need to make sure your runlevel is set to 3. Otherwise, you won’t be able to boot up into text mode. The run level in RedHat/CentOS/Fedora/Scientific Linux is set to 5 for Gnome/KDE. You’ll need to change the 5 to a 3.
Edit /etc/inittab as root and change the runlevel from 5 to 3.
id:3:initdefault: - Restart the server. It should boot up in text mode.
