hey there

im trying to install the nvidia geforce 4 drivers for mandrake and i cant seem to get it working.

when i go into the terminal and type the command in, it tells me i must run the program in root.

how do i get to root?

i know im a total newb, but please bear with me!

Type in terminal:
su -

okay i did that and typed in the right commands, and it does this thing where it says "checking file integrity" a bunch of periods are after that, then a red box within the teriminal says, Nvidia should be run as root, what should i do?

you have to type
su -
then it asks for the password
then you type the roots password
and then you go to where the installer is located
and then you type sh NVIDIA-x.x.x.xx. fill in the x's with the rest of the filename....
also make sure you read the readme from nvidias site...cause you have to exit the X server before doing all this...
actually now that i think of it....
go here

okay so i installed the drivers

i went into root and there was a red box, i clicked ok blah blah blah it seemed to installed correctly it went to 100% and everything

now my new problem is editing the XF86 config file. i try and find the /dri and /glcore strings but i dont have them

im running mandy 9.1 so that would mean i would edit xf86config-4 right? did i do something wrong here?

yes thats the correct file to edit and just because you don't have them entries doesn't mean your doing something wrong, it means they are all the less that you have to comment out
if they are not there then don't sweat it cause your were just going to put a "#" in front of it to not use it anyways...

i changed the driver "nv" part to driver "nvidia" and when i rebooted, the computer was just a black screen, any advice?

thanks!

first of all i think that you must exit x server

tipe in console "su " the your password

then tipe init 3 to xit x - mode

then you sholud login like root

when yuo will be loged in root everithng will go normal like readme instruction say

ok

first try typing "modprobe nvidia" before type startx
second make sure there is IRQ assigned to VGA set to enabled in the bios, make sure also that PnP OS aware is disabled (this term may vary within BIOS's)
check the /etc/modules.conf file and check to see if this exists:
alias char-major-195 nvidia
if so leave, it and exit the file.
check the file /var/log/xfree86.0.log file and post any errors that occured ...
p.s. error lines have (EE) written in front of them
theres a couple of things to try for now...get back with how you made out.