Heya guys, Ive been wondering the correct way to change the run level in debian (using lenny) to let me reboot into a command prompt (for Nvidia driver installs for example)

I found 1 way which was to move out a specific file from one of the /etc/rc# .d directories (i think it was S99gdm), and then use that runlevel. cause for some reason, every run level aside from the one that causes a restart loop booted to GDM by default.

Is that how people normally do it?



Also only sometimes when I go to shutdown (but I dont remember it ever happening when I restart) it just takes me to a command prompt login screen instead of the text based shutdown screen showing all the applications stopping. And if I try to login from that and just do a "shutdown now" command, it will say going into maintenance mode or something and show most the applications halting, but then goes back to a text based login prompt.

Anyone know whats causing that?


Thankyou guys

I don't bother with run levels for that sort of thing, it's easy enough to do.

CTRL+ALT+F2
Log in as root
/etc/init.d/gdm stop - this will shut down the graphical environment
install your video drivers

aptitude update
aptitude install build-essential module-assistant
m-a update
m-a prepare
m-a a-i nvidia
aptitude install nvidia-glx
edit your xorg config to specify the nvidia driver etc, per the nvidia readme file
/etc/init.d/gdm start - restart the graphical environment and test your drivers.



as for issue number 2 shutdown should be runlevel 0 did you alter anything in that runlevel ?

Thanks for the first part,

As for the second, nope. Whats weird, is it only happens like 40% of the time.


Now outta curiosity, you find its better to install the Nvidia drivers through apt, as apposed to the official nvidia ones? and if so, is that all from the standard main contrib non-free repositories, or some custom ones? (at work still)

The Debian way of installing the nVidia drivers is quick and simple (when it works, which it sometimes doesn't) and everything comes from the Debian repositories (yes non-free is required for the nVidia driver)

if I do an update and get a new kernel I can reboot my system to the new kernel and be back up and running with the nvidia driver in seconds

m-a prepare
m-a update
m-a a-i nvidia
aptitude install nvidia-glx
startx - I've disabled gdm in runlevel2, so I boot to a console and startx manually... personal preference

That entire process and set of commands takes under a minute. it automatically grabs the appropriate kernel headers and installs them, compiles the module for my running kernel. I've heard you can have the nvidia driver installed for multiple kernels at the same time with this method, but I've not had the opportunity to test and verify that.. if he new kernel works I rarely ever have a reason to boot into the older kernel.

The down side of course is that you do not get the latest nVidia driver with the "Debian way" so if you want the latest and greatest, you will need to install using the drivers from nvidia site. you can still cheat and use module assistant to grab your kernel headers and put them in place for you by running the update and prepare steps before you run the nvidia installer..