I just installed Sabayon, its the Gentoo 2.0.1 version...

I've installed the nVidia driver from the website a thousand times, my problem is that I can't kill the X server on Gentoo/Sabayon. Trying /etc/init.d/xdm stop just kills X and leaves me with a blinking cursor.

I just need to get down to CLI so I can run the binary installer. Suggestions?

?? how is gdm,xdm,or kdm started in the first place?
as a service or a boot up daemon ?
do you use inittab ( service) or rc.conf ( daemon ) ?

try

telinit 3 dose not always work
it dose not on my arch install

sometimes one needs to put a " ! " in-front of gdm, or kdm

Init 3, or 5 change nothing. Some of the guys, although rude, are helpful. My system is a little behind the times but I've got it updating and apparently the drivers you can get via equo for nvidia are the same as the nvidia site. I'll post what the outcome is once done.

Unless I am deeply mistaken, since you can do "/etc/init.d/xdm stop" you are at CLI, so what's the problem? You can install new driver from within old X session, then restart X. Just be sure to backup your current settings.

Doesn't Sabayon have more virtual terminals than the one with X running? Can't you just switch to them with Ctrl-Alt-F1, -F2,etc.?

The Nvidia driver downloaded from the site cannot install with any version of X running. Hence, X itself must be stopped and you need to do it at the command line interface only.

However, Sabayon/Gentoo fixed that issue with the following:
Shows you what software they have, then,
Installs the drivers and their dependencies. Which for me, since I accidentally installed the older version of Sabayon took a while. I had to update my whole system.

Little key on that, if you do follow this and it installs around 270 new packages, thats just to be able to use the new drivers, not a full system update. The guys at the Sabayon site were able to get me up and running with:
It would appear I've got the latest driver installed now via their packages.

This may work if you need to stop X. I tried it on my gentoo install and it worked. and then reboot. To restart gdm and reboot.

To kill X, try using ps aux and use kill on the process number

$ ps aux | grep -i /usr/bin/X

Which will return a process number, for example 4340

Then:

$ kill 4340

Since killing X windows is the problem, in the GUI just type
CTRL>ALT>Backspace

Often this can terminate a balky X session. Good luck -

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I do not know if you are still looking for a solution and hope this will help. Edit your /etc/inittab file and set the boot level to 3 save it then reboot and you would boot to CLI. When you are done just change back the boot level to 5 and reboot.
Hope this sheds some light on your problem.

so you can't Ctrl-Alt-F1 and kill X from there to install from tty1?

Sure you can, axoveauvi - if you'd rather do it in bash, just use copperhead's solution above.