5 Run level 2 core services

While run level 1 is useful for diagnostics, debugging and repair, it is not useful in general. To get the basic services from an application program’s perspective, run level 2 is a minimum.

Some distributions, such as Debian, use run level 2 as a multiple-user text-only run level. This means that every daemon is started except for the ones required by a GUI (graphical user interface). This is a good time to run the command again.

ps -Af --forest | less  
  

You should see a number of services that were absent from run level 1. These are the additional services started by run level 2.