I'm trying to install the NVidia restricted driver package but no matter what I try the installation falls over with the error message that there is an X server running and it has to be stopped for the install to work.

I've tried using the boot options menu to get me to the command prompt but of course there are only a limited set of commands available and the installer wont run at that level. I've tried exiting to a terminal from the logon screen only to find (as I expected) that the X server is already running and if I shut down the X server processes in the system - processes menu I get bumped straight back to the logon screen with the X server still running. I've checked the Ubunto documentation and whilst there is information on starting, configuring and trouble shooting the X server there is nothing on how to stop it!

Thankyou in advance for your help and my apologies if I am just being a bit thick.

Don't worry, we all started with similar problems.

What you need to do is change over to a normal console, not one that is part of the X server. Press <ctrl>+<alt>+F1 and your screen will change to the first console. There are normally 6 consoles setup on the average system, F1 through to F6. If you wanted to go back to your X display (which you don't right now) you would normally use <ctrl>+<alt>+F7.

Now log in and stop the X server as you did before.

Hit ctrl alt f2 to get yourself on the console. Login. For Ubuntu type:

For Kubuntu:

Now X should be dead. You can check with ps -e | grep X

Thanks. I'll give it try.

Following your instructions I finally got the X server shut down but, naturally, the NVidia drivers still wouldn't install. Apparently I have the wrong kernel, and I need a libc development package.

After wasting time trying to get the find the libc and kernel headers on the installation disk I gave up on the job. I know the solution is to go through the various package repositories but I cannot get the machine connected to the 'net (see thread on trying to get the laptop modem to work) I have to do it by downloading packages at work and installing them from a flash drive. Obviously the only result of this is to condemn me dependency hell.

Anyway here is the install log. Any help (if only to tell me I'm wasting my time) would be appreciated.

Where can I find the "libc" development package? Going through the package manager (which shows that the likely suspects are already installed) and packages.ubuntu.com I find there is more than one package that have libc in their name but none that are just plain libc-devel.

nvidia-installer log file '/var/log/nvidia-installer.log'
creation time: Thu Mar 27 10:15:10 2008

option status:
license pre-accepted : false
update : false
force update : false
expert : false
uninstall : false
driver info : false
precompiled interfaces : true
no ncurses color : false
query latest version : false
OpenGL header files : true
no questions : false
silent : false
no recursion : false
no backup : false
kernel module only : false
sanity : false
add this kernel : false
no runlevel check : false
no network : false
no ABI note : false
no RPMs : false
no kernel module : false
force SELinux : default
no X server check : false
force tls : (not specified)
X install prefix : (not specified)
X library install path : (not specified)
X module install path : (not specified)
OpenGL install prefix : (not specified)
OpenGL install libdir : (not specified)
utility install prefix : (not specified)
utility install libdir : (not specified)
doc install prefix : (not specified)
kernel name : (not specified)
kernel include path : (not specified)
kernel source path : (not specified)
kernel output path : (not specified)
kernel install path : (not specified)
proc mount point : /proc
ui : (not specified)
tmpdir : /tmp
ftp mirror : ftp://download.nvidia.com
RPM file list : (not specified)

Using: nvidia-installer ncurses user interface
-> License accepted.
-> No precompiled kernel interface was found to match your kernel; would you like the installer to attempt to download a kernel interface for your kernel from the NVIDIA ftp site (ftp://download.nvidia.com)? (Answer: No)
-> No precompiled kernel interface was found to match your kernel; this means that the installer will need to compile a new kernel interface.
ERROR: You do not appear to have libc header files installed on your system. Please install your distribution's libc development package.
ERROR: Installation has failed. Please see the file '/var/log/nvidia-installer.log' for details. You may find suggestions
on fixing installation problems in the README available on the Linux
driver download page at www.nvidia.com.

Dependancy hell is right... any way you can get a high speed connection for a few minutes?

If not you can try downloading the packages you need.

Libc6-dev: http://packages.ubuntu.com/gutsy/libc6-dev

Kernel headers: http://packages.ubuntu.com/gutsy/linux-libc-dev

sudo dpkg -i linux-libc-dev_2.6.22-14.52_i386.deb libc6-dev_2.6.1-1ubuntu9_i386.deb

Try that and see if dpkg fails. Then try the Nvidia driver.

FWIW I'd probably do ctrl-alt-backspace, which restarts X and drops you to the KDM/GDM username prompt (depending on your settings, if you've set it to auto-login then don't bother trying this). Then you can click and choose a command line "session" and that will drop you out of X and on to a commandline.

Just a moderately different way of doing it. Or choose to boot to command line, I think that's a grub option.

The network here is pretty well screwed down, otherwise I'd just bring it in to work. If I can get the modem to work I'd be willing to for the time on line necessary.

Going through the libc6-dev package and dependencies I've given up at downloading 23 files and there are still dependencies listed! I'll give it a go but it looks like I'm doomed to fail. Most of the dependent packages are only a few K so why aren't they bundled into the main package?

Ok, tried all this plus tried loading all the dependencies. Naturally this was just another waste of time. In this instance because all the packages were reported as either already installed or that the version I was trying to install was older than the the one present!