I've downloaded the Nvidia card drivers for my FX5500, but when I try to install it in Mandriva I get an error message saying that I appear to be running an x server and to close it. That's when I get stuck. Can anyone help me please?

Paul

This board has an excellent "Search" facility, please try using it.
Meanwhile, you need to get out of your nice Xwindow session, and close down X:
<CTRL><ALT><F1> will give you a terminal login.
Login as root, and give root's password. You will find yourself in root's home directory (/root). You may need to cd back to your home directory if that is where the NVIDIA installation file(s) are.
init 3 will shut down the X server.
Do what you need to do to install the NVIDIA driver. I hope you know how to use vi or another terminal-mode editor - you will need one to edit your X config file, and of course, with X shut down, you cannot use Kwrite or whatever.
init 5 will restart the X server.
<CTRL><ALT><F7> will take you back to your Xsession screen where you can login as yourself (so long as you installed the drivers correctly), if the drivers did not install correctly, you need to go back to a test login, and fix thing up.

follow the manual instructions from here
http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/...aphics_drivers

The X server is the window management system used by your GUI. Since nVidia changes the X server (to properly use your hardware), you can't install the nVidia drives when the X server is running.

Try the command (as root) "init 3" to turn off your windowing system, or start your system in "command line" mode (not sure how that's done in Mandriva).

Before you do all that, check the Mandriva repositories for a nVidia package you could install. The package management system can usually install the drivers without needing to shut down the X server. (Try Google to look for packages, or search the Mandriva forum here [in LinuxQuestions] for suggestions.)

You can change the config file before killing X, open it in kwrite or whatever (as root) do the edit then install the drivers. Trust me, it works. And X can't start till the drivers are installed so your guaranteed to get a non-gui environment to install them!

@ jollyjoice: that info is about a hundred miles above my head!!!

Well, I've managed to get into runlevel 3 but when I input ' sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8178-pkg1.run' I get a message that no such directory exists. The driver file is on my desktop - should it be somewhere specific? If I put it where it needs to be, how do I navigate to it, or tell the computer where it is when I'm in runlevel 3?

I really feel that I'm close to working this out, I just need a gentle nudge in the right direction, please?

Thanks

Paul

Use sh /home/<your name>/Desktop/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8178-pkg1.run

Note that the <TAB> key usually triggers completion when using the command line. (And, if it doesn't, a second <TAB> will usually display the possible completions.) So you could probably type sh /h<TAB><first letter in your name><TAB>De<TAB>NV<TAB> to run the script.

Oh, if you were (contrary to proper practice) running as "root" when you downloaded the script, it would probably be in /root/Desktop/.

You are definitely close to a solution, you just need to run the "sh NVIDIA...." command in the same directory where that file lives. In other words, you're just running the command from the wrong directory. Move to the directory containing the file, rerun the command (you'll need to be root) and you should be good to go

You can actually cheat a bit and install the nvidia driver while the X window system is up ie. stay in runlevel 5. I do this all the time so I don't have to interrupt my current X session. Plus I hate using the non-graphical text console - I need my cut and paste.

To install the nvidia driver without shutting down X:

1) cd /tmp
2) mkdir temp
3) mv .X0-lock temp (assuming you're on display :0)
4) sh <path>/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-1.0-7676-pkg2.run
5) mv temp/.X0-lock /tmp
6) Thats it!! Run sax2 or edit your xorg.conf file if necessary as usual and the new nvidia driver will be loaded the next time you restart X.

I don't know if there are any adverse side effects but I've never run into any trouble doing this.

Everybody skip 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 step from brianbdl post because the utility sax2 utility is only for SUSE. There are options that can be pass to the nVidia's installer to ignore the test of detecting if X Window System is running.

If the nVidia installer displays an error about rivafb or nvidiafb, ignore it. Just make sure you add those to /etc/hotplug/blacklist, so the nvidia module can load up with out any problems during boot up.

Thanks VERY much for your replies, guys. I did it. I don't know exactly how, but it's done. I had to go back to my installation dvd and install the kernel sources and gcc stuff, then let Mandriva compile its own thing - then we were away.
Thanks again

Paul

Thanks VERY much for your replies, guys. I did it. I don't know exactly how, but it's done. I had to go back to my installation dvd and install the kernel sources and gcc stuff, then let Mandriva compile its own thing - then we were away.
Thanks again

Paul