can't end X session for nvidia driver

[blight]

Greetings JL community,

I'm having trouble installing a nvidia driver.
when I run the installer it says I have an X session still running and, it needs to be closed before I can continue.

my friends told me to do the folowing:

pidof 'X'
(it gives me a number)
kill (the number it gave me)

And that seems to shut it down, but it keeps starting it self back up every time.

Any ideas on how to temperarily shut it down?
Please keep in mind im a total newbie (ive only had linux installed for 3 days).

Your help is much apprecieated.

I'm runing "fedora core 1"
kernel 2.4.22-1

[happybunny]

go to a terminal window and type INIT 3


OR


edit the /etc/inittab file

somewhere in there is:

# Default run level
id:5:blahblah


make that say 3 instead of 5 and reboot...this will bring you to runlevel 3 at startup(no X).

[Icarus]

We delete, not lock dupes :D

Please please please! Do not double post, we can see them just fine with one post.

Please read the Community Posting Guidelines (http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=91076)

[knute]

hehehe... Ok, 3 days, and it's time to introduce you to the command line interface (CLI for short).

It's kinda like a dos screen, but it's way more powerful! :)
Ok, now alot of newbies when they get into the cli, have a tendancy to panic, because it's just black and white (well that's cause you haven't set up your prompt to show you everything with pretty colors! ;) )

Alright, now down to business.

First thing you will need to do is to hit <Ctrl><Alt><F1> to get to the command prompt.
You may need to login, so go ahead and do that if you have a login prompt. (I would log into my normal user simply because it's a good practice to not log directly into root.)

Then you will need to su to root, so that we can do the rest of what we need to do.
Alright. in order to kill the X session and everything associeated with it, we will simply change the run level with the command telinit 3

What this did was to change the environement that you are working in from one that has X and everything, to one that uses the command line primarily.

Next thing we need to do is run the installer.
There are two ways to do this, so I'll present both of them to you.
The first way is to use the entire path to where the installer resides and it will run.
The second is to use the command cd to change directory to where the file is located.

To see whats in the current directory use the ls command.

If you can't remember where you put it when you downloaded it, you can use the command where <filename>.

Ok. I think that I've given you the basics on what you need to set this up.

Oh yeah, one other thing that I've found with the Nvidia drivers, is that you need to have the kernel development packages and headers installed as well, or else it won't build. If the build errors out, that's the problem.

The last thing that you will need to do as root, is to issue the command telinit 5 to get back into the X environment. When G/K/XDM starts it may show a login screen and take you out of CLI, but you are still logged in so <Ctrl><Alt><F1> will take you back there so you can logout. :)

HTH

Knute

[blight]

Sorry,

I first posted it in the software thread and then realized that there was a hardware thread (wich better mached the problem)

I'm terrably sorry I wont do it agin I promise

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by blight

I first posted it in the software thread and then realized that there was a hardware thread (wich better mached the problem)


You could have deleted the thread you did not want to keep. As owner of the thread, you do have the ability and authority to delete your own threads.

Click the edit button (bottom right of your first posting), click the Delete ? box and then click on the 'Delete Now' button. Poof gone. :)

And as Icarus suggested, you should read the JL Community Help Posting Guideline sticky thread that you will find at the top of each of our forums.

[happybunny]

once you get the nvidia driver loaded, read the instructions for editing your /etc/X11/XF86Config file

If i remember right, you have to comment out a thing or two and change the drive to nv or something like that.

The doc's on nvidia are pretty good for 'xplaining that.

[blight]

Yes it is now happly installed (now for configuring).

thank you all so very much
:D how can I thank you all enough.

[happybunny]

by posting your results and findings for all to learn from

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by blight
how can I thank you all enough.

Send $$$

;)