No just build a new kernel, when you reboot your machine XDM and X will not work, just grab the NVIDIA drivers from http://www.nvidia.com and make sure you have them in /usr/src before you do all this.
OK. So I decided to test this.... I used the 'which package to use' program from Nvidia. Backed up XF86Config and XF86Config-4. I downloaded the .rpms, and installed them as root in runlevel 4 (5 starts up X). I got an error with the kernel rpm: modprobe can't find NVdriver.
find / | grep NVdriver can't find it either. Where did it go? :'(
I rebooted to runlevel 4 again just incase. (5 starts x it's a RH7.2 machine). I run startx . Well, all I can say is... thank fsck for ext3! I fiddled with my XF86Config-4 file and managed to get it so it doesn't lock up, but it exits saying it can't find the NVdriver module still.
So I downloaded the source tars. I run a make on the kernel modules. It can't find the headers! I boot into my trusty MDK8.0 system, get online, look up every FAQ I can find and some NVIDIA walkthroughs on linuxnewbie.I need to add (apparently)
SYSINCLUDE=/lib/modules/2.4.9-21/build/include
Only.... there's no such path. It stops at /lib/modules/2.4.9-21/ and the contents DOES have something called BUILD in it, that is flashing for some reason. I *did* recently update the kernel due to the myriad of security errata, but I made sure I downloaded the kernel-headers package too.
erm.... *eep*!
all you have to do when you rebuild the machine is make sure your new user account has the same UID no. or you can use the chown command as root to get access back to the files when you have rebuilt the machine.
Of course! root always has a UID of 0! I can CHOWN the files to the new user acct. groovy.
REMINDER TO SELF= Put a sticker on my monitor saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"