Getting rid of X

[perfectturmoil]

Hey. I'm in over my head.

I had gentoo installed. I then updated the video card from a crappy ATI (using the generic drivers) to a slightly less crappy NVidia. I tried to upgrade to the NVidia drivers, and messed things up - I also had a friend screw with something... Who knows what..

I've always had problems with X.Org configuring. The mouse is never in the right place, and I always seem to need to alter the way the monitor is detected / screen whatever.

I kind of want to back all the way out, and start from the beginning, but I don't want to reinstall EVERYTHING. Is there a way to like.. get rid of all of the extra programs, update the kernel (I did the install with 2005.1.. Is there a newer release I should use) and start over? I had a bunch of issues that I never got worked out (I was working as root.. I'd like to stop that.. and other stuff) because finals came and I needed to focus on other things.

So. How can I "start over" without just flat up reinstalling? Or might that be the best way?

 

[daywalker03]

Download the newest version of Gentoo, burn to cd, and then do an update from that disc. I know it can be done with other distros (I have Mandrake/Mandriva on one of my folding systems).

 

[Suicide Al]

a better way is to do emerge sync && emerge world -uDp to sync the portage tree with the lastest updates and pretend to emerge all the updates to check if there are any blocks or restrictions and if all is clear do emerge world -uD to actually do the updates.

 

[perfectturmoil]

a better way is to do emerge sync && emerge world -uDp to sync the portage tree with the lastest updates and pretend to emerge all the updates to check if there are any blocks or restrictions and if all is clear do emerge world -uD to actually do the updates.

But wont that just update all of the programs? I don't really want to do that.. Cause I definitely messed a bunch up..

One of my biggest problems was that I accidently started using the computer as root (left it over a long weekend emerging open office, flux, and a few other big ones) and never changed over to a non root user. So everything was configured as root. When I made an attempt to fix it, I mangled permissions and stuff. So some of my programs broke, and some couldn't be used properly.

And I had some other problems too.. Because I was just messing around.. You know.. I managed to get X to load from xorg.conf IN the root users directory.. not in /etc/X11.. oh well..

Maybe I'll just clean sweep it with the 2006.0 disk.. try out the graphical installer. How do you recompile the kernel? Its been a while.. I could save the config file for what I've done (which worked pretty well) and just recompile the kernel the way I want it after I do the graphical install (cause doesn't that use genkernel?)

 

[Gnufsh]

Download the newest version of Gentoo, burn to cd, and then do an update from that disc. I know it can be done with other distros (I have Mandrake/Mandriva on one of my folding systems).

Gentoo really doesn't work that way. To update it, there's no need to boot from a cd (in fact, that would make it more difficult). That won't solve the problem in question, though.

perfectturmoil: You should never log into a gui as root. Log in as a normal user and su from a terminal emulator (xterm, konsole, etc). If you are having permissions problems with the config files in your home dir (they ofetn are hidden and start with a '.'), try using chown and chmod, and if that won't work, just delete them and start over. To get rid of the X server, do an emerge -C xorg-x11 and then remove the /etc/X11 directory. Hopefully that will nuke most of the config, so that when you install it again, you're starting over fresh (don't forget to do an etc-update and replace any other files that need to be).

 

[daywalker03]

Gnufish, my mistake for assuming Gentoo worked like the others. I've read some on it and realize it does sound interesting to try.

 

[perfectturmoil]

...perfectturmoil: You should never log into a gui as root...

Yeah, I'm aware ;- ] What happened is this: I FINALLY OMG FINALLY got gentoo working (problem with my gateway's wierd components) a few hours before I was going home on thanksgiving break. I set it to emerge a few BIG things that would be real slow on my school internet, and a bunch of periferial programs. I just left it chugging, and headed home for turkey. I came back to school all excited that I could chat on aim and type word documents and what not, and totally forgot that it was logged as root. I started configuring, and didnt actually REALIZE that it was root until like 20 days later when I needed to restart.. oops.. Should have realized that it never said perfectturmoil or asked for root password.. oh well..

So thats why that happened that way ;- ]