Ok I know this is a topic I'm sure we have gone through this a ton of times, but I need to speak my piece on this subject and hopefully get some references to old threads that maybe I'm missing because I've done the searches, I've done the IRC help, and I'm running out of options so as much as I dont want to, because I hate looking the fool, I have to ask it here.

I'm running the following:

Windows XP Professional,
ASUS A7N8X NForce2 MB,
AMD Athlon 2500+,
1 gb of DDR PC2700, 333mhz RAM,
120 GB 7200 RPM HD
128 MB DDR G Force FX5200 video card


I installed Partition Magic, allocated 20 gb for RH9.
Installed RH9, installed Grub, np..so far so good.

I go to boot into RH 9 and the screen goes black after
the firstboot command. I try CTL - ALT - F1 and get kicked
back to the config screen , I try CTL - ALT - F2 and its a
black screen with a cursor blinking up at the top.

So all in all , I more or less know that Linux is playing nice
with my video card. It needs probably the Linux NVidia
driver thats on the website.

My problem lies in this.....I do not know the following and
up till now I still cant find the following info on line.

How do I get around the inital black screen from firstboot
to install the drivers

I'm very confused on the whole installation of the new drivers part of this, maybe its the windows in me taking over, but I'm
really lost on how I can avoid the first black screen of death, because I cant even get in to edit the correct file to make it
disable X.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide on this matter.

hmm - im not sure what exactly you did.

Please tell me - did you have a working X originally and are you installing another card???

or is this a fresh install first time configging X ??

Well, since I wrote all that down I did another search and I got some ground.

First off, Mossy..its a fresh install of RH9. So I never had X working to begin with. Black screen after firstboot.

But...I did some more searching , I found the CTL - ALT - BACK command did get me to a login prompt where I am able to login as root now. So I'm happy to get that far. The bad part is , I am unable to FTP out because my network card isnt configured yet.

My idea is to burn a copy of the drivers onto a CD, then mount the CD rom and install them into RH9 from there. This should be able to work right? Just copy the files from the CD onto the HD then execute the run file....

So if this idea is viable, then I'm bound by another issue. People are talking about having to recompile kernels, etc etc. I'm very lost at this point. FYI , I'm running 2.4 20-6 as my Kernel.

What I'm gonna go look for next is a step by step of what to do once I have the Nvidia files on my comptuer. If anyone can put me in the right direction or knows of something I'd be most appreciative.

Ah ok - yeah mounting the cd should work:

mount /mnt/cdrom
cd /mnt/cdrom
ls

It's alittle surprizing that RH9 did not get X working for you. Looks like you may have to get your nic drivers installed too - remember to:
ifdown eth0
ifup eth0
after getting the nic driver installed

mossy

I found the nVidia driver instructions to be pretty good - make sure you read it a few times so you get it right - also you can log into more than one init window - one to read from and the other to run commands.

I'm gonna take a peek at the directions tonight and see if it clears up some stuff....

Hopefully it will be easy to get this puppy connected to the net, but first things first.

Oh and I'm gonna change it to inetd 3 until i get X working . . so that way I go right into prompt mode.

I don't know if this will help you or not, but I ran into the same "the screen goes dark" kind of problem because my video settings were set too high. Perhaps if you bump down the default resolution and color depth, that might do it. In my case, as soon as I moved the default color depth down to 16 from 24 and set the default resolution to 1152x864, everything was cool. -- J.W.

I have my resolution at 1024 x 768 ... I'm pretty sure its a video driver problem. Went to the NVIdia site and foudn the driver for my card, gonna burn and try and follow the instructions.

Once I"m in X, I should be able to configure my internet then right? Because it didnt when I installed it also...hmmmmm

=)

to config the vid card you can try Kudzu on rh9

you can run these wizards:
XFree86
-configure - produces file called /root/XF86Config.new - it will be a starting point anyway
xf86config
Xconfigurator
XF86Setup - GUI only
xf86cfg - GUI only
or you can manually config the etc/X11/Xf86Config file - not recommended.

the point will be to get a working X no matter how shabby then use the other tools to tweak it.

check all you logs for errors and clues such as dmesg etc etc

====

it may be easier to install and config the nic in a terminal anyway

Status Report:

Well mossy, thanks for all your help =)
It worked!! I burned the cd , mounted it, copied, and ran the
installation package. Went in edited XF86Config and I was rolling in X. So Yay me heheh.

New problem now, configuring internet. I'm gonna play with it and if nothing comes of it, gonna do a google search and post probably. But I'm gonna relish in this moment first hehe.

Thanks agian

lol

Hah. I tried conifiguring the adapter, my adapter wasnt listed so I went and got the RPM for it. Ran it and voila - now I got net access....

So time to go find new problems =)

good stuff - I know the feeling.