Insane Problems With Commands for Installing nVidia Drivers

[Eroberer]

This is ridiculus. The directions say:

mv ./NVIDIA_GLX-1.0-1541.tar.gz /root
mv ./NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-1541.tar.gz /root

I do this, moving the files from /mnt/windows/linux/mdk81

There are then files in /root

I untar them, and there are directories named after the two files

Then directions say:
Download:
00-slab-1541.gz
10-devfs-1541.gz

mv 00-slab-1541.gz /root/NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-1541/00-slab-1541.gz
mv 10-devfs-1541.gz /root/NVIDIA_kernel-1.0/10-devfs-1541.gz

I get what seemed completely obvious to me that was going to happen, an error message saying that the location does not exist! So I've tried creating them, and it didn't work the way I did it. I kinda just got frustrated at this point and wound up deleting the /root folder, which I hope like hell didn't contain any important files (anyone know if it does by default?), and suddenly I can't create another /root directory. When I do try to, starting back from the begginning (with the strange mv ./ command), root acts like a file, and I can't open it like directory, and I even delete it like a file.

So what's going on?

[Jomboni]

Wow. Don't ever, ever, delete your root folder!

[Eroberer]

well I did it under RH7.2 alright. I guess it's back to the beginning...

:cool: DrakX :cool:

[bdl]

As a rule, you'll want to use either one of the following locations to untar and use source code on your system:

/tmp
/usr/src
/usr/local/src


I prefer the latter and create the folder so any local user can write to it, that way I can fiddle around in the source directory, compile code and I don't have to have any special perms to do so. Also, if you specifically place source code for 'locally installed' (rather than distro installed) apps and libs, you will always remember which ones you installed on your own because the source code will still be sitting in /usr/local/src. Barring taking up large amounts of space, this is a very handy way to do things, especially if you need to go back at a later date and re-compile the app for some reason or other. I don't know who steered you towards moving the tarballs into /root but it's a bad idea, if only for the fact that you have to be root to do it, and as you evidently did, it's easy to screw up the system as root. IMHO, though, you should be able to just 'mkdir /root' and stick some generic rc files in there, for the shell and so on, I don't think deleting the /root directory is that big of a deal.

[kormoc]

for the patches, you should of used this command:
mv 00-slab-1541.gz /root/NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-1541/
mv 10-devfs-1541.gz /root/NVIDIA_kernel-1.0/

mv is used like this:
mv /path/to/file.tar.gz /path/to/mv/to/

[bdl]

Actually, there's no need to move the tarballs anywhere. Just head to the directory you want them untarred in and issue the command:

prompt:/usr/local/src# tar xzf /path/to/tarball-v1.0.tar.gz

and then

prompt:/usr/local/src/tarball-v1.0# tar xzf /path/to/another-tarball.tar.gz

[ 23 October 2001: Message edited by: bdl ]

[Eroberer]

All good advice. =)

Now I've had problems with every step of this how-to so far, so here's one I'm predicting. What text editors can I use? I tried pico earlier, and it said it wasn't a command, so if that's not there, what else might be? I just did a reinstall and I may have gotten it in MDK, like it was in RH.

[kormoc]

vi or emacs
I did try emacs, but then I saw a friend use vi, and I like it better.