Stupid Newbie Disaster

[John W Redelfs]

On 11/18/05, Thomas Kaiser (ubuntu) <ubuntu at kaiser-linux.li> wrote:
>
> Hello John
>
> John W Redelfs wrote:
> > I didn't realize that I must still be a newbie until last night when I
> > totally screwed up. I was trying to install nVidia drivers for my dual
> > boot system, when my machine seemed to hang during the shutdown of
> > X-windows. Instead of waiting a bit longer, like an idiot I did a
> > Clt-Alt-Delete, and that started a warm reboot. But now my X-windows
> > seems to be damaged, and I can't get back onto Breezy Badger's desktop.
> Some more info on this would be helpful. How did you try to install your
> nVidia driver. And is it the official nVidia driver from nVidia? I had
> never problems with it, I just have to reinstall it after a kernel
> update (or I tried my self compiled kernel :-) )
> > Working from the command line outside of X-windows, nothing works to get
> > X-windows running again. As a last resort, I tried using my new Breezy
> > Badger install disc made from the ISO I downloaded a few nights ago with
> > the intentions of doing a reinstall and starting all over again. But
> > the install won't boot from the CD anymore, and I keep getting grub back
> > in my face instead of the install program.
> This sounds like a bad cd. If your BIOS is setup to boot from CD at the
> first place, it will do it when it can read the media.
>
> > Now what in tarnation should
> > I do? I suppose I could apt-get a new X-windows if I wasn't so ignorant
> > about apt-get and the Debian stuff. But I don't even know how to do
> > that. What is wrong with my Breezy Badger install disk? I know my BIOS
> > is set up to boot first from the CD-ROM, secondly from my floppy drive,
> > and only last of all from the hard drive which is where my grub is set
> > up in the Master Boot Record.
> See my quote above.
>
> > I had an easier time installing my first
> > Red Hat installation back in 1995 when I had to set up my partitions
> > using fdisk without a partitioning program.
> So, you should be used to the command line :-)
>
> > Ubuntu is proving to be a
> > much bigger problem to set up than I imagined it would be.
> Is it Ubunutu or you ?
>
> > The Live CD
> > worked so nicely. It seems to me that there needs to be a lot of work
> > done on making video drivers install more easily with the initial
> > installation or at least afterwards. I never had any of these problems
> > setting up my new Windows XP with the appropriate nVidia drivers.
> >
> > Sorry for the blast. I'm just frustrated and feeling stupid. Back to
> > the newbie forum I guess.
> There is the big problem that most of the hardware manufacture don't
> support Linux and most of the good Linux driver are done with
> reengineering, which is a very hard job (thanks to all out there writing
> Linux drivers). BTW. I was working on a webcam these days, almost no
> information from the manufacturer (Pixart), but now we got it working ->
> reengineering the windows driver).
>
> So, now back to your problem. What happens if you start (boot) your PC.
> Does it try to start X and tell you after that it can't do it and your
> are back in the command line?


Yeah, that is what is happening.

If so, You just have the wrong nVidia driver for your kernel. I had this
> several times in the past, because I did some stupied things :-)


So if I rm the nVidia stuff, I'll be able to boot back into X-windows? Where
do I find the nVidia stuff to remove it? Maybe I can find it with grep or
find or something. Does the shell default with that stuff in the path? I'll
give it a try and see what happens. I hope I don't dig myself in deeper.
--JWR
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