FC1 va nVidia Latest Driver

[Nifty Hat Mitch]

On Wed, Jun 30, 2004 at 08:33:01AM -0500, akonstam at trinity.edu wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 29, 2004 at 10:17:42PM -0400, Greg Swallow wrote:
> > Just want to be sure. The instructions from nVidia are not real precise
> > on the point of exiting X and/or booting to something other than
> > runlevel 5.
> > 
> > Is the a key stroke/combination to exit X in FC2? And, to set my default
> > runlevel do I only need to edit my /etc/inittab lines:
> > 
> >      id:5:initdefault: (changing 5 to 3)
> >      x:5:respawn:/etc/X11/prefdm -nodaemon (changing 5 to 3)

After changing 
      id:5:initdefault: 
 to
      id:3:initdefault: 

some people do a reboot.

> > As I recall I can leave the runlevel at 3 and use 'startx' to Start X
> > until which time I am satisfied with the driver installation?

Yes
Some folks just use 'startx' all the time BUT there will be
some small differences in the way X is setup.   Startx is good
for smallish boxes that are mostly a firewall.

> > If there is something I am missing I would like to get it before I start
> > on this installation. I remember when I used IBM OS/2 Warp and upgrading
> > to faster video driver incorrectly could really do a number on a system.
...
> It is really simple. If you are in X type ctl-alt-F1 and that will put
> you in a terminal. Login as root. Then use the command : init 3 

You can type init 3 in any terminal window.
init 3 in one of the terminal windows (ctl-alt-F1,2,3,4) might
be cleaner in the way it leaves the hardware. YMMV.

> to take you to init level 3. Then run the NVIDIA installer. Change the
> video driver line in /etc/X11/XF86Config from nv to nvidia. Comment
> out the LOAD dri line if it exists.
> And type: init 5
> Then X should come back up. After that remember to do ctl-alt-F1
> again to log off the terminal you were in, and then ctl-alt-F7 to
> return to X.

There are times when the nvidia driver does not unload because it is
still registered one way or another in the kernel.  If this is the
case the installer will complain that X is running.  The easy way to
recover is a reboot into init 3 and not start the x server.

If you forget to edit inittab remember that you can pass the run level
to the kernel from the grub shell.  Type "a" as in append when you see
the line for the kernel.  Then append a 3 to the end of the line.

Also with FC2 make sure you are booting the kernel you expect.  See
/boot/grub/grub.conf for the default=0 line.  Since kernels are
numbered beginning with zero 0 will get the first.


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