Ioannis Vranos wrote:
> Axel Thimm wrote:
> 
>> But you still need to restart X to allow the installed nvidia driver
>> to take over. You would even need to rmmod nvidia and modprobe it
>> again otherwise you'd be running the old nvidia kernel module with the
>> new nvidia X11 driver.
> 
> 
> 
> I am relatively inexperienced in GNU/Linux (recent full adopter), the 
> upgrade/installation process I have been following is this:
> 
> 
> 1) Remove previous nvidia rpms if present.
> 2) Install the latest nvidia rpms
> 3) Reboot.
> 4) Run nvidia-settings-1.0-xxxx  (or just plain nvidia-settings).
> 5) Run nvidia-xconfig-1.0-xxxx
> 6) Reboot.
> 
> 
> xxxx= version number
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> So the full steps are:
>>
>> o install the driver (e.g. via ATrpms' rpms or manually via the
>>   installer, whatever suits you best)
>> o exit X (go runlevel 3)
>> o rmmod nvidia
>> o modprobe nvidia
>> o restart X (telinit 5)
>>
>> It's easier to ask for a reboot, though, and it is not guaranteed that
>> rmmod'ing an old nvidia kernel module will really restore the chip to
>> what the next modprobe expects. nvidia recommends to power-cycle your
>> system when upgrading the kernel module, but it usually works w/o.
> 
> 
> 
> I suppose this is the process to avoid reboots?
> 
 From my experience, what you can also do is simply install the nvidia 
module,
then make sure that the xorg.config (or xfree86.conf) file has "nvidia" set
to the device section instead of "nv" and then just restart X....the new 
module
should load and you are in business.....

of course, if you reboot, X will start with the module assigned by the X 
configuration
file...

Bob

-- 

Great minds run in great circles.