[Solved] Help me understand updating Nvidia drivers

[Kevin108]

kevin@Serenity ~ $ inxi -Gx
Graphics: Card nVidia NV40 [GeForce 6800] X.Org 1.10.1 Res: 1680x1050@50.0hz
GLX Renderer GeForce 6800/AGP/SSE2 GLX Version 2.1.2 NVIDIA 270.41.06 Direct Rendering Yes


Thanks guys!

[viking777]

Kevin108. Early on in this thread I expressed surprise that you have no access to virtual terminals (or at least no login) and I said I would have a look at that for you. This is about the only thing I have come up with so far.

The ability to create virtual terminals (sometimes called virtual consoles btw) is controlled by the file /etc/inittab. If you open that file -

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sudo gedit /etc/inittab

- and read it you should see lines pretty well identical to this:

# Note that on most Debian systems tty7 is used by the X Window System,
# so if you want to add more getty's go ahead but skip tty7 if you run X.
#
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty1
2:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty2
3:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty3
4:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty4
5:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty5
6:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty6

If these aren't there then you should put them there (but make a backup copy of the file before editing it).

That might help but I can't be sure.
An alternative way to get a virtual terminal is to open an ordinary terminal and type

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sudo chvt 1

But there is no real difference between that and the Ctl/Alt/F1 method so I will be surprised if that makes any difference to you.

[AlbertP]

Kevin, please add [solved] to the title by editing the first post when you don't need any more help.

[Kevin108]

That file was empty, so I added the lines above. No change. Ctrl Alt F1 through F6 still just open a black screen. I was still curious if it was just a video issue of if something truly wasn't loading. After bringing up the all-black screen, I carefully entered my login and password, just in case it was needed, then

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echo working > test123

just to see if the file was created. No luck.

[viking777]

That file was empty,

That surprised me at first sight but googling around I see it is due to the difference between SystemV and Upstart startup mechanisms. Upstart is used by Ubuntu (hence Mint Main) and Debian (hence LMDE) uses systemv still (unless it has changed recently). Anyway Upstart does not read /etc/inittab at startup only /etc/init so my information was not relevant to your distribution - sorry. I don't use Main edition any more, only LMDE so I couldn't compare the two.

[Kevin108]

Doing some searching, some Ubuntu users were having the same problem. The fix was suggested to edit /etc/default/grub and change GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="nomodeset", followed by running update-grub as root and rebooting. Didn't make a difference for me. For them, it either fixed it, did nothing or borked Compiz.

I tried my redirection trick again though and had success. Logging in blind and running ls > test123.txt did what you would expect it to.

[Kevin108]

I just made the n00b mistake of using Ctrl Alt F2 instead of Alt F2 and my virtual console is somehow working now.