[inbox] Re: [Herefordshire] mandrake 10 power pack

[Julian Robbins]

On Monday 23 Aug 2004 22:22, David Shorthouse wrote:
> Noel glad its not just me.. I have now got mandrake 10 community up &
> running its doing the security update as we speak. I am after the powerpack
> for the openGL drivers as I intend using the nvidia card.
>

If you want you can just download the NVIDIA 3D /Open GL driver from their 
site. Its NOT an RPM these days, but quite straightforward if you follow the 
instructions. Worth doing this way, as, if you upgrade to say version 10.1 
Community (due quite soon), without the powerpack you wont have the NVIDIA 
driver and X won't boot. 

Goto nvidia.com, and 'drivers', download the Linux one. You have to get out of 
X before you can compile the driver. You can do this by changing your runtime 
level (ie this is what boots to X when you're starting up) by 
changing /etc/inittab file . Change the 5 near the beginning to a three. Thsi 
will mean that when you reboot, you start up in run level 3 without X.

Then you run the installer that you earlier downloaded. by

sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-6106-pkg1.run

This will run a little installer that will guide you through. I find with MDK 
that you always have to compile a driver. Simply ensure that you have the 
kernel-source installed beforehand,

 ie urpmi kernel-source on command line

Hopefully it will provide a proper driver now. You just need to change the 
runtime level again back to 5 then. This is a bit tricky as you have to do it 
on the cmd line, as X is nt booted at this time. I would suggest to ANYONE to 
learn the very basics of 'vi' or some such thing. 'vi' is a text editor on 
the command line but with literally does everything if you know all the cntrl 
chars. It does everything but all you need is to know to use 'i' for insert 
mode, and ':wq' to write and quit the file.

Then reboot and voila ! Should be ok. 

Just get the coffee on first. If these instructions are a bit garbled, there 
is bound to be some better ones, on the web or at mandrakeclub (well worth it 
- you can download an NVIDIA rpm from them too).


Good luck

Julian