Re: x

[Kent West <westk@acu.edu>]

> davidturetsky wrote:
> 
> I used xf86config to try to create an x platform, and with
> the failure of earlier attempts, reduced the screen
> choices. Lo and behold, when I just boot up, I came up to
> a screen (somewhat inelegant) with a big fat x toward the
> middle, but with the mouse and keyboard otherwise
> apparently frozen
> 
> Earlier today on reading a related post, I downloaded
> XFree86 3.3.6 which seems to provide new support for my
> NVIDIA GeForce graphics card
> 
> I'd now like to install it
> 
> How to I get in and delete enough of the earlier install
> to get back a command line. I assume the way to start is
> by booting via a floppy
> 
> Then what?
> 
> David

No need to boot from floppy; at the somewhat inelegant
screen, simply press Ctrl-Alft-F1 which should take you to
the first virtual terminal. From there, you can log in as
root, do a "ps ax" to find the PID of xdm/wdm/gdm/whatever,
and then do a "kill -9 <thePIDnumber>". Now you should be
able to do whatever you need to upgrade, and you can start X
manually with "startx", or reboot to re-enable
xdm/wdm/gdm/whatever, or restart xdm/whatever by running the
appropriate script in /etc/rc2.d (e.g. "./S99xdm start").