Tag: Fedora Linux

Fedora 11

Fedora 11 Launch
Fedora 11 Launch

Fedora 11 – code named Leonidas – was released just a few days ago.  Having access to an excellent Internet connection in the office, I immediately downloaded it and upgraded.  It didn’t go as smooth as I wish it did, and I still don’t have everything working properly, but I’m glad that I did upgrade.

Here are the issues that I came across:

  • I was upgrading using the preupgrade utility.  It downloaded the packages nicely and created a “Upgrade …” option in the grub boot loader.  Once I rebooted, the upgraded process started and everything was looking good.  However, when the last package was installed, and a popup came up saying “Finalizing install process.  Please wait, it can take a while”, the upgrade actually hang.  The progressbar was going back and forward, but nothing was happening.  I waited for about 40 minutes or so and decided to reboot the machine.  Upon the reboot, it seemed like the upgrade process actually did everything it had to do.  So that was a minor issue.
  • My dual monitor setup broke.  I am using a Lenovo T61 laptop with an external Samsung SyncMaster 2053bw monitor.  Laptop’s resolution remained at 1280×1024, but Samsung monitor went down to 1024×768 and it seems there is no way to push it up.  This is probably due to new kernel and xorg, and I guess has something to do with kernel mode setting.  I tried those few tips that  I could find, but nothing worked.  I still have the problem, so if you by any chance can suggest anything – I am all ears.
  • Once I got to my desktop after the upgrade, Firefox refused to start.  It was crashing with a whole bunch of debug output, but nothing that made any sense.  I had to spend a day in Opera, which turned out to be a nice browser for as long as you don’t need your extensions.  Gladly, the Firefox problem as resolved the next day with the help of some folks in #fedora IRC channel. The issue was a plugin conflict (not addon, but plugin).  Once I removed conflicting plugins and restarted Firefox – it worked automagically.
  • Flash was broken in the browser, but once I removed all plugins and re-installed the ones that I needed, the problem was solved.

That was pretty much all in the troubles department.  Now for the good stuff.

  • My filesystem wasn’t upgraded to ext4.  This is probably a bug or something, but I’m glad it wasn’t.  I have a single / partition with /boot, /home, /var, and everything else on this same partition.  Probably Fedora decided that it’s too precious for the upgrade.
  • Booting is faster now.  I can feel it.  And being on the laptop, I do lots of booting (between home and office, due to very different setups).
  • KDE 4 is a pleasantly usable stage.  After using Gnome for the last year, I decided to give KDE 4 another chance, and it happily took it.  It’s a fast, slick, efficient desktop.  And I enjoy using it.
  • Firefox 3.5 beta 4 is way faster than whatever I had before.  Some addons are still not supporting this version, but the speed with which it starts up and renders pages provides for some balance.

So, apart from having just one screen now, I am enjoying the ride.  It was worth waiting for, downloading, and  upgrading.  And the screen … the screen will come.

Fedora 10 booting issues

If it so happens that your Fedora install suddenly fails to boot, giving some error messages or a simple “GRUB ” string, then I advise you to boot into rescue mode, install all updates, regenerate initrd image and reboot.  All should be nice and sweet now.

Those of you who need more info, scroll through Common Fedora 10 Bugs wiki page.

Fixing RT3 on Fedora 10

We upgraded our development server to Fedora 10 over the weekend.  Among other things, it runs RT3 – excellent support, issue management, and bug tracking tool.  Once the upgrade was over, we ended up with a semi-working setup of RT3.  The emails were going through just fine, but the web interface was giving out a blank screen with no content or errors or warnings.

Googled a bit, but that didn’t help a lot.   Went through server logs and found an out of memory shout from Storable.pm:

2325:Callback called exit at 
../../lib/Storable.pm (autosplit into ../../lib/auto/Storable/thaw.al) 
line 415.

Googled for that, but it turned out that quite a few people have the problem with this module running out of memory.  And not only in RT3.

So I left it where it was and had some good night sleep.  And it helped.  In the morning, englightment came in, and I tried reloading the page with cookies and cache cleaned.  It worked.  And then it didn’t work again.  Cleaning cookies was helping for a couple of page views.  So I dived back into the RT_Config.pm file to see my options.  There it was.

=item C<$WebSessionClass>
C<$WebSessionClass> is the class you wish to use for managing Sessions.
It defaults to use your SQL database, but if you are using MySQL 3.x and
plans to use non-ascii Queue names, uncomment and add this line to
F<RT_SiteConfig.pm> will prevent session corruption.
=cut
# Set($WebSessionClass , 'Apache::Session::File');

Once I enabled Apache::Session::File, the problem went away.  We are now back to work, enjoying the new web 2.0 round corners interface, pastel colors, and more.

Awaiting….

Open source software activity usually bumps up quite a lot before and during Christmas.  This time around I am waiting for:

What are your waiting for this year?

Fedora 9 : before and after

I have recently upgraded my laptop to Fedora 9.  Those of you who come often to this blog or follow me on Twitter, know that I’ve been waiting for this release like for nothing else.  Two technologies in particular – KDE 4 and Firefox 3 – were the center of my focus.  Of course, I could updated them separately and tried them earlier, but I wanted to follow the path of the distribution.

The upgrade itself went fast and easy.  But starting with the first reboot, I was getting more and more negative towards the new release.  While booting for the first time, I got two messages, notifying me that wpa_suppclient service and CUPS daemon failed to start.  While I don’t care much about printers, wireless connectivity is vital for me, so that was a bit discouraging.

The login screen.  It was changed quite a bit, and I didn’t like it much.  Logging in.  Somehow I ended up in Gnome, even though my desktop environment was KDE for the last 7 years or so.  Logout.  Switch into long awaited KDE 4.  From the first look it was beautiful, even though not quite for my tastes.  Surely, I’d need to reconfigure and change a few things. Not a problem for me at all – even more fun so.

Continue reading Fedora 9 : before and after