Installing nVidia drivers in LXDE Debian

[The Chubu]

Sup? Well, im trying to install nVidia drivers in this netbook (N450 and ION 2).

First tried the xorg-nvidia package, it didnt worked (nVidia driver didnt installed properly and blacklisted nouveau, so no x server at all).

Now im trying it by hand but im stuck in the first step, disabling LXDE. I found this "/etc/init.d/lxdm stop" but there is no lxdm at all nor any other process that resembles it.

Does anybody knows how to stop LXDE display manager? I assure you that i spend considerable time in google trying to find out but the only leads are those "lxdm stop" that don't work out for me (or people saying "tried the package manager and worked perfectly!" which is not what i want to do )

Though probably im going to get stuck anyway after that so i'll need more help along the way. I guess that once LXDE is disabled, modprobe -r nouveau should do the trick but nVidia's installer isnt prepared for LXDE desktop so something could go wrong after...

[deltatux]

Download the drivers directly from NVIDIA, run the installer and it'll compile a driver specifically for your system. Ensure that you have compiler tools installed on your system.

This is a sure fire way to have the drivers installed.

http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/44868

deltatux

[The Chubu]

Originally Posted by deltatux

Download the drivers directly from NVIDIA, run the installer and it'll compile a driver specifically for your system. Ensure that you have compiler tools installed on your system.

This is a sure fire way to have the drivers installed.

http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/44868

deltatux

I thank you for your answer but i already know that. As i said, i need the window manager down before i can even begin to install nVidia drivers, otherwise the nVidia drivers complain that the display manager is running and wont install. Please read what i wrote in my original post.

It says so in the nVidia's readme:

Before you begin the installation, exit the X server and terminate all OpenGL applications (note that it is possible that some OpenGL applications persist even after the X server has stopped). You should also set the default run level on your system such that it will boot to a VGA console, and not directly to X.

I dont know how to do that in LXDE. With Gnome for example, a "stop gdm" in init.d would suffice, but in LXDE i dont know how to stop the X server.

[deltatux]

sudo init 3

That will run Linux into INIT level 3 which is "multiuser, no X server"

Just type sudo init 5 or reboot your system after driver installation to get your X server session back.

deltatux

[The Chubu]

Originally Posted by deltatux

sudo init 3

That will run Linux into INIT level 3 which is "multiuser, no X server"

Just type sudo init 5 or reboot your system after driver installation to get your X server session back.

deltatux

Thanks. I'll try that when i get back home. Though in Debian it didnt worked last time i tried when i had Gnome 2, it complained that the installer needs to be run from the default runlevel (2 i think) to work. I hear it works on other distros exept in Debian and derivates.

Huh, i was looking at an old forum post (2005) and it says that you can issue the stop command to xdm directly whereas in my netbook it didnt worked before (i tried to "stop" the thing that most resembled an x server thing in init.d lol ). I'll try to switch to other terminal and see if "xdm stop" works from there.

btw, i dont have sudo I just su into root and do all from there, its bad practice i know but by default 90% of the things (even LibreOffice) in Debian cant be opened from a normal user.

[deltatux]

Originally Posted by The Chubu

Thanks. I'll try that when i get back home. Though in Debian it didnt worked last time i tried when i had Gnome 2, it complained that the installer needs to be run from the default runlevel (2 i think) to work. I hear it works on other distros exept in Debian and derivates.

Huh, i was looking at an old forum post (2005) and it says that you can issue the stop command to xdm directly whereas in my netbook it didnt worked before (i tried to "stop" the thing that most resembled an x server thing in init.d lol ). I'll try to switch to other terminal and see if "xdm stop" works from there.

btw, i dont have sudo I just su into root and do all from there, its bad practice i know but by default 90% of the things (even LibreOffice) in Debian cant be opened from a normal user.

Stop using an ancient distro

Almost all modern distros have sudo installed. Heck, Linux Mint Debian Edition has sudo included by default, so maybe it's best to migrate there?

deltatux

[The Chubu]

Originally Posted by deltatux

Stop using an ancient distro

Almost all modern distros have sudo installed. Heck, Linux Mint Debian Edition has sudo included by default, so maybe it's best to migrate there?
i
deltatux

Its nothing i cant fix with Aptitude, besides there are a lot of official Debian ISOs, i just downloaded the first one that had LXDE. There is even some DVD sized ISOs that who knows what ammount of packages they have inside, probably lots of them have sudo. Anyway, i prefer to get the distro to do what i want instead of search for a distro that does what i want out of the box. That way i learn much more about Linux.

To the point. I found out that for some reason, "xdm stop" works now (after googling around what kind of commands could i pass to xdm and how) So a single stop command and X server is out, "xdm start" for getting it back again.

Now, after that i tried to sh the nvidia installer but it failed after accepting the eula with a "Recieved signal SIGTERM: aborting" message. Though i knew what it meant since while i was looking for ways to exit X server, the man page said that if some error appeared or if X Server should be closed, a "SIGTERM" signal was sent to xdm to finish it right away.

I googled "nvidia SIGTERM" and one forum suggested that maybe there was nvidia stuff installed and it was conflicting with the installer. Sure enough, when i looked for nvidia packages in Aptitude, there were like 5 packages that werent removed when i uninstalled the failed xserver-xorg-video-nvidia package (via apt since the GUI was borked by then).

Now with the nVidia leftovers removed and a way to stop X server, i finally could sh the nvidia installer! So its all fine now. I hope i get more battery life out of this eee after this since nouveau doesnt supports GPU downclocking as far as i know whereas nVidia's drivers have 3 power levels for this card (ION 2).

Thanks delta for your answers!

[deltatux]

Ya, the open source drivers are still relatively garbage right now. It's best to stick with the proprietary drivers.

deltatux