I am trying to enable my nVidia card on Fedora core 5, as described
in the unofficial fedora faq... by installing kmod-nvidia, and then
running 'nvidia-config-display enable'. I turned off SELinux so that
it would not interfere. I logged into the X server as root.

I used Ctrl-Alt-F1 to access a non-graphics terminal and enter
the nvidia-config-display command, and then used Ctrl-Alt-F7 to
go back to the X display. I logged out, thinking this would
restart the X server. (I used this Ctrl-Alt mechanism after
first trying a simple 'init 3', which left me in a window that
I had no access to.)

The X server failed to restart, giving a message like this:
"NVIDIA(0): Failed to load the NVIDIA kernel module. "
Now I can manually reconfigure the vanilla X11 server to get
back on the system, but I don't know where to go from here.

I'd really appreciate some help. Thanks in advance.
...Rob

Did you reboot?

When I did this, installing kmod-nvidia installed a new kernel. Make sure that you select this kernel when you reboot.

I hope this helps
--Ian

You still had an X terminal running, and if I'm not mistaken there should be no X terminal running at all at that thime, even on other instances.

If the reboot fails, just try next time without any X server...

Thanks for your help. I did verify that I was using the newer kernel,
and it seems that rebooting directly into run level 3 is the thing to
do, so as to ensure that the Xserver is completely shutdown. While looking at how boot options work, I came upon a great Fedora 5
installation guide at: http://www.stanton-finley.net/fedora...ion_notes.html

This guide is more forthcoming about how to configure yum and
pick particular yum repositories for updates than was the unofficial
fedora FAQ. It also has great instructions for installing all of the
software that doesn't come standard with Fedora, so I think I'll reinstall following its approach. Thanks again. You guys are great!

Have you got SELinux enabled?? If you have not then disable it.
It can be found in /etc/sysconfig/selinux

Reboot into runlevel 3, or log in as root and type init 3 at command prompt
then follow instructions.

are you using nvidiafb? you can't mix nvidia's driver with nvidiafb.