Before you do any maintenance (and for it to succeed), you should put the system into a state conducive to maintenance (i.e. free up as much RAM as possible for the system to work with).
You do not *have* to switch to the text console in order to do maintenance, but failing to do so will undoubtedly run you into memory problems. Better safe than sorry.
First, log out from the desktop, this will ensure all your settings are saved.
Once you are back at the greeter page, hit <CTRL><ALT><FN><1>. This should switch to a text console. Log in as root and execute the following:
| Code Listing: Switching to text console |
| /etc/init.d/xdm stop |
This will stop X and free up lots of memory for your maintenance to succeed.
You may now perform such tasks as installing and updating software, rebuilding the kernel...
Once you have finished your maintenance, you can either reboot the system.
| Code Listing: Rebooting the system |
| shutdown -r now |
or simply restart the graphical environment.
| Code Listing: Restarting the graphical environment |
| /etc/init.d/xdm start |
You're now good to go.
To know more about this project, write to me at info@gentooxo.org.
