shutting down X for nvidia install
 

in order to install the nvidia video drivers I want to restart X ... I normally do it in a twisted way by configuring that next time X doesn't start on reboot and then back ... but I assume there is a more straight forward way?

to restart X just do ctrl-alt-bksp

if you run in gui mode, that is you get a graphical login prompt it will just restart, otherwise do what you normally do `startx` to fire it up again

What distro are you using?

And if [ctrl-alt-bksp] doesn't work for some reason (e.g. DontZap option in xorg.conf), you can open /etc/inittab in a texteditor and the comments will probably indicate which runlevel to select for "multi-user mode" without X. To switch to this runlevel, execute "init <runlevelnumber>" as root in a terminal (you may need to use the full path: "/sbin/init").
Hope that helps.

yes, that was the problem: ctrl-alt-backspace got me back to graphical login .. /sbin/init 3 seems to have worked and with 5 back up. Thanks.