Nvidia driver won't load
 

I have installed Sabayon 4.1 and upgraded to 4.2. Everything went fine until I rebooted and now X will not start. Apparently my Nvidia driver will no longer load. I can still log into a terminal. Is there anyway to reload the Nvidia driver from the command line? (The Gentoo equivalent of "apt-get install nvidia") I have tried editing the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. I changed the "nvidia" to "nv", hoping that I could get into X that way, but it didn't help. Please help.



GForce 7300 GS Video Card
Intel 915 motherboard
Pentium III 3.2 GHz Hyperthreaded CPU
2 GB RAM

The nvidia driver must have installed against the old kernel and while you upgraded to Sabayon 4.2, the kernel upgraded as well. Try to replace nvidia with 'vesa' it should restore your X system. If not, you could install 'links' (command line web browser) and download/install the nvidia driver again.

I'm at work now and my Sabayon box is at home. But I'll try the "vesa" entry when I get home. I'm assuming that this will get me into X and then I can use the Package Manager to install the Nvidia driver again?

I'd assume so. I don't know how you install nvidia in Sabayon - if you can't do it via the package manager. You can always visit the nvidia website, dowload the driver and install it manually.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html

The Sabayon package manager, however, would be a preferred option.

Good luck

Ok, I've edited my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and changed "nvidia" to "vesa" and after rebooting, X kind of loads, but all I get is a blank white screen with a black cursor. (The cursor is functional) So I'm not sure if this is progress or not. Any other suggestions?
Thanks,

One more thought, I had enabled the Compiz desktop (rotating cube) back when X was working. I think that I probably need to disable that and I'll have to do it from the command line. Does anyone know how that is done?
Thanks,

are you in kde or gnome?

the white screen means compiz loaded - never a good thing with vesa. However, you desktop is still usable even with the white screen!

press alt-f2, wait a couple seconds, then type

metacity --replace

and that should bring up metacity, which will let you use X.

The command line equivalent to apt-get in Sabayon is "equo install nvidia-drivers", as root of course.

~xlnagla