Linux Mint Forums

Posted: **Mon Aug 27, 2012 9:01 pm**

I'm trying to install the official NVIDIA drivers. I'm running Linux Mint 13 Xfce (am actually using awesome at the moment).

I'm unable to kill the xserver. Things I've tried:

1) ps aux | grep [insert 5000 combinations of x/xorg/xserver/x11 here]
2) no gdm, xdm, lightdm, etc. to restart/stop
3) init 3 just asks to be root if I'm not then does nothing. (literally nothing)
4) Tried forcing grub to boot level 3 and still no fun.
5) Tried recovery mode.
6) xfce4-* (including xfce4-session-*) also no go.

I've sought help from a buddy of mine who's much more knowledgeable in Linux than I and he can't figure it out. My 3 hours of googling have turned up nothing that I didn't mention above.

Any assistance?

Posted: **Tue Aug 28, 2012 8:38 am**

You can either

A) boot to runlevel 3
B) try mdm as the manager (most Mint versions use muffin now)
C) Boot into recovery mode, and change to runlevel 3

If you need specific help let me know.

When you say you tried forcing grub and recovery mode, what exactly did you try and how did it fail?

It used to be I had to jump through hoops to unseat the nouveau drivers, though I think that is less of a problem now

Posted: **Wed Aug 29, 2012 5:14 pm**

I tried booting in to recovery but was unable to run the nvidia installer, and gave up after some attempts. When I tried editing grub to boot to runlevel 3 it basically ignored it and booted into a gui environment as normal.

Your solution B worked like a charm, though. I wasn't aware of the change to mdm.

Was able to kill my xserver and install drivers. Thanks!

Posted: **Thu Aug 30, 2012 9:56 am**

glad you are sorted

Posted: **Thu Aug 30, 2012 2:35 pm**

I can respond to installing Nvidia driver via their source file
In a terminal

Code: Select all

sudo init 1
--goes into single user mode in a console
kill the window manager

                sudo service mdm stop

run the nvidia installer file sudo *.run
--it should compile ok and get you a running nvidia graphic driven system; you can then remove noveau via apt or synaptic or your package manager

If mdm stop doesn't give a prompt after you run the service mdm stop command, then ctrl+C to get a prompt and continue with the Nvidia install process..

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[SOLVED] Unable to kill xserver

[SOLVED] Unable to kill xserver

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