I've been looking through the threads and have determined that the answers I have seen regarding the proper installation of an Nvidia 5200 on RedHat 9 are making assumptions that the organic life from behind the keyboard has some knowledge of Linux and the particular distribution they have their paws on.

Truth is, if I (we) can not install Linux because a particular driver is needed and a particular process must be done, I (we) can not learn about Linux (RH9) if I (we) can not get it installed because of the process/procedure. This is a catch 22.

I can not install RH9. I can not become familiar with RH9/Linux if it can not be installed.

It looks as though many of us newbies need a very detailed, step by step process, that makes no assumptions what so ever that we have ever, in our little lives, seen any distribution of Linux. I, for one, have not.

Does such a thing exist? Nvidia does not provide one. RedHat does not provide one. Most of you may think that they do, that may be because you are familiar with it and understand enough to get through it. I've never seen it! I want to learn it and kick Gates to the curb (as much as possible) but if it won't run, I'm stuck with more windows and walls.

So, here is my list of goodies:

Gigabyte GA-7N400-Pro mobo
NVIDIA 5200 Light 128mg AGP
AMD 2800+ Barton
1G DDR
(2) WD 40G
cd/cdr, blah, blah, blah....

I have WinXP on half of the first WD 40G, I want RedHat 9 on the other. Then, I want to create RAID 0+1.

WinXP is running fine. RH will not finish the install because of the reasons you've read here before. The screen goes black when it trys to start the graphical mode. It stays that way.
I made a boot disk when it asked me to. If I type root at the prompt it tells me that the kernel is not found. Thus, I am not logging in as root any time soon, from my perspective. I've tried to reinstall, but the same 'ole same 'ole. I even have a command reference for RedHat. Means absolutely nothing to me unless I get it going.

So far, RedHat and Nvidia are no help. They are assuming I've done this before. I have not. Can anyone remember the day they first wanted to learn some form of Linux but didn't know how to spell it?

I am desperate, folks. I would even pay for a step by step that worked, and one that I can understand.

Please help. I know I am not the only one out there that feels this way, I've read the posts. I've been banging my head against the wall for weeks. I'm going to need stiches any day now......

there is one provided in the newbie fourm

ignorant, its really easy after you get the grip on reading README files and such things


first:

1) go to the Nvidia page a grab the correct driver for your card

2) now Nvidia ships linux drivers as .pgk2.run, only things you need to do is :

reboot without the X server

to do this login as root, and change the following line in /etc/inittab

id:5:initdefault;

to something like

id:3:initdefault;
(just above of that line is a brief explanation of these codenumbers)

After changing that, reboot the system; now you will reboot in only-terminal mode and will not have X server for now. Now go where you downloaded the driver, and READ the README. In this README you will find that for running the driver installer its enough to do as root, sh ./driver.pgk2.run (just like any prog or script), after that, the driver is installed, but not configured.

For configuring (look the details on the README) you need to do some modification of the /etc/X11..something/Xfree86config or something like that, these modifications are easy, they are about three, and they are all explained in the README

after changing that, put back id:5:initdefault on etc/inittab, reboot and your X server should reboot with the driver installed and configured

Thanks people. I appreciate the help. I will give this a spin and hopefully something good will come the other end.

Thanks much.