nVidia Drivers

[alan]

On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, Nifty Hat Mitch wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 27, 2004 at 10:08:04PM +0100, Adam Mercer wrote:
> > John Chapman wrote:
> > >I have an nVidia FX5200 video card and I have downloaded its drivers
> > >from nVidia.  When I try to run the installer it says I need to stop
> > >the X Server.  How do I stop the X Server?
> > 
> > while logged in as root on a virtual terminal, switch to run-level 3
> > 
> > > telinit 3
> > 
> > when you're done installing the drivers and modifying the X config 
> > return to run-level 5
> > 
> > > telinit 5
> 
> The above should work more often than not.

If you are on a Compaq or HP AMD64 laptop with an nVIDIA chipset, you will 
want to set the initdefault to 3 instead of switching in this manner.  The 
reason for this is that the chipset (440 go?) does not handle switching 
back from video correctly with the current X drivers.


> 
> Sometimes the transition from 5 to 3 will leave the 
> old driver loaded. this can cause problems....
> 
> If things act badly reboot to run level three.
> There are two common way:
> 
>  A)   Edit /etc/inittab 
>       look for the line
> 
> 	   id:5:initdefault:
> 
>       Change the 5 to a 3 and reboot.
>       Run the installer. Fix the config file.
>       Reverse the edit after the installer has run.
>       reboot
> 
> 
>  B)   When the system is starting up type A to append
>       to the grub boot line.  Scan the instructions...
> 
> 	 append a 3 to the boot line and continue.
> 
>       Run the installer.  Fix the config file.
>       reboot
> 
> I like B because it leaves no perminant change.
> It is also the easy path to initstate 1 (single user) 
> where some SELinux setup steps like "fixfiles relabel" are
> best done.
> 
> 
> 
> 
>