Oops messed up Xserver

[The PIT]

Oh dear installed the latest Radeon drivers and the system was reset to 800 x 600. So I went down the list of supported models and surprise surprise the 9800 pro still wasn't listed. Tried the general radeon driver and this worked, reset the monitor back too 1280 x 1240 so far so good decided to try hardware acc rebooted and the machine hangs striaght after logging in.
I haven't tried last good boot as yet and I can get into safe mode with a rather hard to read almost impossible command line.
According to ATI I'm supposed to run fglrxconfig to configure the drivers. Ten to one this won't work as the check.sh didn't work either before install. If last boot or the ATI command doesn't work, remember I'll be typing almost blind what's command I need to run to configure xserver.

[runderwo]

Are you able to boot into "single user mode"?

[The PIT]

Eh??? No such mode listed.

[runderwo]

What distribution are you using?

[The PIT]

Red Hat 9

[The PIT]

Ah well under safe mode and logged in as root the ATI command fglrxconfig doesn't work. Just hangs machine. Any ideas anyone.

[TransformX]

start the machine, in a new text screen (something with alt / ctrl and f1-f10 key), login and type: init 3

This will make the system start without X so you can try to fix stuff in command line.

When you want to return to normal boot, type: init 5

[The PIT]

I'm now typing this within Opera on Red Hat 9.
Thanks TransformX. Typing init 3 from within safe mode shut X down and left me in a command window where I fired up ATI's fglrxconfig. Didn't know half the answers to the questions bar the obivous ones like vsnc etc.
How the heck do I know what port the usb mouse is on. I guessed dev/mouse a load of wierd questions about the number of samples per pixel. Still don't know which driver linux is using but at the moment I don't care.

[TransformX]

Sorry, total and utter n00b here.
When I got into deep trouble, a friend gave me this tip (init 3 & init 5).

The other tips he gave me were to get Ximian desktop and a configuration/management tool called webmin.

Since I use nvidia, there isn't much I can do to help you with your ATI driver. Sorry mate.

[The PIT]

It's using the ATI driver although the control isn't located where ATI documentation say it's located. I've also found where to find what version Xfree I'm running. I only knew what version I was running since I updated it before I download the ATI drivers. Sadly ATI scripts to check what version you're running doesn't work which is normal I suppose for Linux.
Nice to see Linux follows Windoze in thinking in displaying a login prompt is a succesful boot.

[leech]

Should be real easy to find your XFree86 version. Run 'xdpyinfo' http://www.xfree86.org/current/xdpyinfo.1.html

Though I think you have to actually be running X for that to work....

Leech

[The PIT]

I can find it from within Red Hat easily enougth. I also knew which version I was using becuase I upgraded it. Problem is ATI provide a script that doesn't work.