The output of the runlevel command will indicate your previous and current runlevel separated by a single space. If there was no previous runlevel ‘N‘ will be used as a placeholder.
For example:
# runlevel N 5
The output above indicates that the current runlevel is 5 and there was no previous runlevel.
Changing current runlevel
To change the runlevel for a system without rebooting or changing the /etc/inittab file, execute the following command as the root user:
# telinit [runlevel_value]
With [runlevel_value] having the following values:
0 — Halt 1 — Single-user mode 2 — Not used (user-definable) 3 — Full multi-user mode 4 — Not used (user-definable) 5 — Full multi-user mode (with an X-based login screen) 6 — Reboot