Fedora 9 Post Install Problems
May 16th, 2008Well I have to say the my Fedora 9 install didn’t go as smoothly as I hoped. It seems that Fedora 9 is a bit rough around the edges so here’s a run down of my issues so far:
- While installing I managed to crash the Anaconda installer, this happened while I was trying to set up custom partitioning. After I let Anaconda decide the default partitions and then edit the results all worked as normal.
I was also unable to save the crash report so no chance of logging a bug report. I have to say that this is the first time that I’ve ever manged to crash Anaconda and I’ve been using it since Fedora Core 4. - Anaconda is now able to resize partitions during install but it seems to be only able to do this with NTFS and ext2/3 partitions. I have a FAT32 partition that was not recognized at all, seems strange it supports NTFS but not FAT32.
- gdmsetup is not available at all since the new login manager was introduced, this seems like a backwards step since now I have to learn how to use GDM configuration.
- The new Add/Remove software application called PackageKit looks nice but is very slow and basic. There no way to queue installs so you have to install them one by one while waiting for the display to refresh the package list after each install.
It also seems to take a long time to update the package list plus the search function only works within a package group, not globally, so if you don’t know where your package belongs it’s very hard to find. - I tried to set up Nautilus to use single clicks but after clicking a directory in the left pane it would not refresh the directory contents in the right pane. Setting it back to double click fixed the problem.
- My synaptics touchpad stopped responding to taps, it seems this is a known issue with a possible fix here. I’ll try this later but still pretty bad it doesn’t work ‘out of the box’.
- I sometimes get SELinux denial messages generated by NetworkManager. I’ve used SELinux for at least 3 releases without problems so this was a surprise. I also got more denials actually caused by running the SElinux Administration (semodule) itself, something about accessing /home/username/.xsession_error!
Hopefully these issues get ironed out soon and I’m aware that it’s a very new release but I’ve actually never had so many problems with other Fedora releases and I’ve installed every once since Fedora Core 4 within a day or two of the initial release date.
Update - the SELinux problem is a real nightmare, I run Apache and MySQL which initially worked fine but without changing anything it has suddenly stopped working due to SELinux. I’m getting a bunch of errors like this:
SELinux is preventing httpd (httpd_t) "connectto" to /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock (unconfined_t).
Until I work this out I’ll have to set SELinux to premissive mode by running /usr/sbin/setenforce 0.
May 16th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
I upgraded to Fedora 9 from Fedora 8 and am having a problem, also, with Selinux. I had to go permissive to even get onto the Internet. I am still having problems with getting to the Internet.
The one thing that is most important to new users is an easy upgrade and immediate access to the Internet. Until this is smoother I feel that Fedora has lost an edge.
May 17th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
[...] -> blog Better late than never Fedora 9 Post Install Problems [...]
May 18th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
I upgraded to Fedora 9 from Cent OS 5.1, as I like tinkering around with my laptop and Linux.
However, I encountered the same Anaconda crash as you, which has been a problem for me in Anaconda since Fedora 6 and RHEL 4. It’s a bug I don’t ever see getting fixed and it occurs for whatever random reasons no matter how many times they’ve said they’ve fixed it.
I tried KDE 4, but it doesn’t recognize any of my laptops keyboard features, no matter what keyboard it is set to in options. Plus, it just does not visually appeal to me. GNOME, as always, worked perfectly out of the box.
Then I came to the realization that with the new Xorg in use, nVidia’s drivers do not work. I do not feel like wasting time downgrading Xorg to get a simple kernel module to work. I would love to hoot and holler at nVidia, but I can’t. The guys behind Fedora should not be going into release with an alpha, at best, version of a key system component. This is half the reason hardware vendors refuse to support Linux, too many distros push beta/alpha updates when it is not needed.
However, the last straw with Fedora 9 was Firefox starting in offline mode no matter what I attempted. I like to mess around with new installs, and accept the problems that come with it, but I am sick of none of the newer distros working without horrible errors.
Whats sad; is now Fedora 8, which has run well for me for a long time, just hosed my laptop where not even a rescue is working. Damn Anaconda crashes….
BTW, I still love Linux… just a bit dismayed with the current state of pushing too many releases too fast and letting the general Linux audience suffer.
May 19th, 2008 at 7:31 am
I couldn’t get the xorg additions to work. The RPM just works:
rpm -Uvh http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~bobk/packages/synaptics-0.14.6-8.1.fc9.i386.rpm
Many thanks!
May 19th, 2008 at 10:20 am
I’ve also had horrible problems with anaconda and installing Fedora 9 - fallen foul of the inability to read/write to Samsung hard drives.
Really, really, not good enough. I’ve been using Fedora on and off since version 2, and whilst I am no guru, I’m not a newbie. Hate to say it F9 was the final nail - my next Linux will be different…
May 19th, 2008 at 10:47 am
To add to my own list of problems I also discovered that I have no sound. Actually if I use the menus to go to the sound settings under the personal hardware settings and use the sound there then they DO work, however I get no sound from Firefox at all.
So system sounds are OK but anything else is not, it seems like I’m not the only one with sound problems.
I haven’t checked a media player yet but will do soon and report back.
Overall I’m pretty disappointed at this release, I know cutting edge is good (at least for me) but this seems a bit too bleeding edge for my liking.
May 22nd, 2008 at 9:53 pm
I tried Fedora 9 on my notebook and on a desktop. Both had Fedora 8 running smoothly and just after the upgrade, both could not boot. I used the network installation disk on both and somehow a FEDORA 7 kernel was installed on both machines just after the installation ended. I was able to recover the notebook by using rescue mode, downloading a fc9 kernel manually and installing it, but with the desktop this procedure did not work. I ended the problem by installing FC8 on another HD and recovering my data from the original disk. Sad. Really sad.