I had my Windows HDD crash and burn (hard) 2 days ago, and I grabbed my friend and forced him to burn me a copy of Ubuntu Studio. Installed it to a secondary storage HDD with nothing special on it.

It's not a permanent thing, though. I'm only keeping it around until I can fix my windows drive. (DVD burner, assload of DVD's, and several nights of switching DVDs, then a format/reinstall)

I'll expect some flames for my choice of Linux flavor, but it's the one I'm most familiar with. Sorry?

EDIT: Oh yeah! The NVIDIA driver for my GPU is a bit touchy with XServer running. I can't seem to get it to run, even in the recovery terminal. Anybody able to help me boot to a straight CLI?

Also: I can mount my NTFS drive, to get it to say it's changed to my ownership, but I still can't access the drive.

What kind of error are you getting with the x server? Are you using the open source nvidia driver or the binary driver?

To prevent gdm from coming up after you boot, remove it from your default runlevel.

Boot up as normal (not to single user mode), and switch to a virtual console (ctrl + alt + F(1 through 6)). Log in and use the "runlevel" command to figure out what the default runlevel is. Now head to the /etc directory. You'll see that you several directories named rc*.d from 0 to 6.

Go into the rc*.d directory corresponding to your default runlevel (if it's "5" go to "rc5.d"). You'll see a bunch of symbolic links with names like "S20makedev" or "K08vmware". Things that start with "S" are started upon entering that runlevel, while things that start with "K" are killed when entering that runlevel. You will find a sym link called S(x)gdm. Rename that symlink to K(100-x)gdm.

By the way, if you want to start up gdm from the command line, you can use the command:
As far as the hard drive goes, is it listed in /etc/fstab or are you mounting it manually?

Okay, I manually edited /etc/fstab to mount the windows HDD and it works now.

I think I downloaded the binary for the driver, though. It's called "NVIDIA-Linux-x86-100.14.09-pkg1.run"

and every time I try to run it normally or through sudo, it says that I either don't have the proper rights to install it (that's without sudo) or I have xserver running (with sudo)

it's kinda frustrating.

How am I supposed to boot 'normally'? GRUB comes up, I choose the "Linux 2.6.something generic" and it loads to the login screen.

also, I can't login through the virtual terminal. I've logged out and tried it, rebooted and tried it, and stayed logged in and tried it. My user/pass doesn't work in the virtual terminal for some reason.

Bleh. I've installed Beryl and updated the driver automatically (I think so, at least). No more problems that I can think of, so I'm doing well.

Does the file have the right permissions to be executed? Try:
chmod a+x filename.BIN

nm, read your last post.

__________________
[zok@zoklet ~]$ whereis Zok
Zok: /derzok/at/gmail/dot/com http://bbs.zoklet.net/

Kay... The driver isn't updated, because my second monitor isn't working with my linux install yet.

NEED Assistance with getting to a CLI for a while.

Did you try using the nvidia configurator tool? I don't remember if it comes with the driver or not, you may have to download it.

I can't imagine why you would be able to login using the graphical login screen but not using the virtual terminal. They do the same thing. Are you sure that you're typing the username and password correctly? Remember that it's case sensitive-- "Phayder" != "phayder"

If you do manage to get to a virtual terminal and log in, you can type:
To stop the X server.

If you absolutely cannot log in using one of the virtual terminals, you can choose "Single user mode" when grub comes up. This will boot you to a very minimal system that isn't running X.

Once you've got the X server stopped (whether you do it from a virtual terminal or in single user mode [better to do it from a virtual term]) the process for installing the nvidia binary drivers is as follows:

If you are not root (you logged in using a virtual terminal)
To become root in the default ubuntu install.

Navigate over to the directory where the nvidia installer is and type the following:
This marks the installer as executable so that you can actually run it.

Then:
That's it.

my username is "solidstate"

my password is the same one I've always used, and I haven't missed on it for a while, but it's possible.

It's marked as executable, but just to be safe, I'll do it again.

Allrighty. it fucks up when I go to a virtual terminal in Beryl, so I'll reboot and try from there.

See y'all later, I'll update when I can.

EDIT: Okay... Capslock doesn't work in the Vterm. I do counter-intuitive things to my passwords, so that's what fucked me.

Gyaah... Beryl isn't working now. FUCK...

it didn't stop the XServer, and beryl is now disabled. It bails each time I try to load it now.

WORSE THAN I STARTED, MY EYE-CANDY IS GONE!!!