Fedora and long threads - positive rather than negative!
by mike cloaked
Occasionally there are long threads in the Fedora forums which start
with flame baiting by one or other poster and quite often run for ages
without reaching a sensible conclusion but generate bad feeling and
not much else.
As a long standing fedora user and tester (since FC1) I have to say
that I have had the pleasure of being able to run an operating system
at no cost on not only my own machines, but also those of relatives,
and at work, which in general run both more securely as well as more
efficiently than the alternative (at cost) operating systems.
Sure there have been occasions when one or other package has failed to
work as expected, and on occasion one or other machine has had some
serious problems with graphics, but overall machines have run without
issue over generations of Fedora releases, and other colleagues and
friends who are hooked on proprietary OSes have expressed their
admiration for how much more efficient workflow seems possible on my
machines than their own.
What kind of response do you get when running XP if you come across a
problem - where do you go to get a bug fixed within a matter of days
or perhaps even a few weeks when running XP or Vista? Is it even
possible to get fast turn around and a response direct from a
developer or packager (if the latter exists for those OSes)?
Here we have forums where problems can be openly discussed and more
often than not are fixed within a reasonable time frame (and with the
vast army of people using Fedora in many and novel ways there will
certainly be bugs found!). We have Bugzilla where responses are
(mostly) open and interactive - sure some bugs are harder to fix than
others - but in general the system does work - and we have many
hundreds of excellent packages available to install almost
instantaneously - no need to go and get a CD every time a new printer
is added to the system (mostly!) - no need to run CD when you buy a
new camera to install specialist picture processing software - no need
to run a CD to install graphics drivers - they are all just part of
the system. Yes we do need to spend a little time looking up what to
do with a new package, or to work around some problem or other - and
occasionally quite a bit of time - but the hints and tips are public
and shared around everyone.
I recently installed F13 on an old laptop - and updated it this
afternoon - in general it works very well indeed and we are still only
just at the freeze stage with some bugs to be worked through before
release -but hey, it works, and I could probably almost use it for
production already even though it is in a pre-release phase. Could
this be said of proprietary OSes at a similar stage of development?
I think all of us who use Fedora need to be aware of the fantastic
service that so many people provide, often voluntarily, to package
code, and develop code, and then fix code that we all download at no
cost but our time. I for one am extremely grateful for the existence
of Fedora and despite past issues with KDE major changes, Intel and
Nvidia and ATI graphics support, major upgrades to Gnome and
Openoffice, as well as to other packages, I am very pleased to have
the privilege of running Fedora on all of my machines. Yes I still
have a need for a few of them to dual boot XP - For example I can only
update my satnav/GPS unit via proprietary packages in Windows, and
often syncing/backup of mobile phone data (cellphones) can only be
done in Windows - but progress is being made. I recently received a
.docx encrypted file that could not be opened under Fedora - but even
that problem will be resolved with F13 as Openoffice 3.2 supports
encrypted .docx files.
I hope that the long whingeing threads do not make those who
contribute so positively to the Fedora project feel negative - but
remember the silent majority who are very happy with its progress.
So all in all I am happy to thank all the fine people who make Fedora
what it is - and hopefully it will continue to be both cutting edge
and highly usable through F14 and beyond.
Happy Easter
--
mike c
14 years, 1 month
Re: Firefox not running : unable to load XPCOM > (was Re:)
by Don Vogt
> >>> Hopefully this will solve your problems. :)
> >> ----
> >> probably but to be honest, I haven't been tracking
> this problem but
> >> generally, you can just nuke the file,
> >>
> ~/.mozilla/firefox/YOUR_SALTED_PROFILE/pluginreg.dat and it
> will be
> >> rebuilt on the next Firefox startup.
> >>
> >> and more to the point, you can temporarily move
> your whole ~/.mozilla
> >> folder to another name and it will be created
> again which is a very
> >> quick way to test if something in your
> .mozilla/firefox directory is
> >> causing a problem. Don't nuke this folder unless
> you are prepared to
> >> lose your bookmarks, passwords, etc.
> >>
> >
> > Both of these were among the first things suggested to
> the OP. :) But
> > they didn't make any difference. I think this is one
> of the problems
> > with nspluginwrapper, since its installation is
> system-wide it is very
> > difficult to isolate when it malfunctions. All the
> usual troubleshooting
> > methodology starts failing.
>
> Actually everything looked fine on Don's system.
>
> > Thankfully Don was very observant and picked up on the
> error message in
> > the terminal. Otherwise even knowing that its
> installed would have been
> > difficult to guess over emails. Lets hope the problem
> is isolated now,
> > and can be resolved.
>
> I agree the best option is to get rid of nspluginwrapper:
> Don is not
> using it at all and it triggers an error (perfect match!).
> If it
> doesn't work, then I would focus in outputs from
> package-cleanup to
> inspect suspicious packages installed (there is some livna
> related
> packages and others (fc10/11) that can lead to confusion
> or
> misconfiguration)
>
> Regards,
>
> David
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> --
I tried renaming ~/.mozilla and starting firefox, with no success.
I believe that, since firefox never starts, it will not rewrite the ~/.mozilla directory.
When I enter firefox in a terminal, it comes back with "couldn't load XPCOM" in about a second, so it isn't getting very far.
I tried to clean things up a bit using package-cleanup but didn't do much. I did clean out old kernels and kernel-devel files. That didn't solve the problem.
I am not sure I mentioned it before, but I installed another, newer, version of firefox. It is a different version , from mozilla.org, that installs in my home directory instead of on the system. So far that works fine in parallel with the yum installed version (which still doesn't work).
I have attached new versions of the output of package-cleanup --orphans and --leaves, just in case I changed anything.
I believe I have tried everything that has been suggested, with no success. I intend to putter with the package-cleanup files next.
I am putting this on the back burner now because:
1. I have a working firefox.
2 fc13 is coming soon and I need to do a complete re-install anyhow. I have been using preupgrade with great success since fc9 but things are getting messy. My system is a mess with 3 hard drives, grub boot record installed on /dev/sda and the grub files on sda8, but I run fc12 from /dev/sdc7. I have two versions of ubuntu, puppy, and another fc12 installed and keeping up to date is just too complicated.
I will post if I find the answer and I would still appreciate any help. Otherwise I consider this thread closed.
Thanks for the help. You guys are great.
Don
14 years, 1 month
No sound
by Oliver Ruebenacker
Hello,
I don't have sound on my F12. There seems to be no way to test the
sound, either. What can I do? Thanks!
(I started using Fedora with version 6, which was running fairly
smoothly. Over time, I feel, quality has degraded, and now, with F12,
nothing runs smoothly any more. Every day, something does not work).
Take care
Oliver
--
Oliver Ruebenacker, Computational Cell Biologist
Systems Biology Linker at Virtual Cell (http://vcell.org/sybil)
Turning Knowledge Data into Models
Center for Cell Analysis and Modeling
http://www.oliver.curiousworld.org
14 years, 1 month
Fedora 12 install trashed boot sector of hard rive
by Jeff Kittle
Hi
Trying to install Fedora 12 x86_64 and the disk partition tool hung. Had to
power down machine. Now when I try to install, it always goes
To the basic text type of install and tells me I have no hard drive defined.
I need some answers please
14 years, 1 month
F11 -> F12 woes
by Kevin Cummings
What started as a hard drive replacement (I filled up my 100GB laptop
drive) and bought a new 320GB replacement, ended up as an (unwanted, but
purely my fault) F11->F12 upgrade and I'm still having problems with
some of the previously working functionality of F11 not working on F12.
(Make me wonder what's going to happen when I get around to upgrading my
F10 home server to: F11? F12?? F13???)
Long story short:
I tarred up 3 partitions and saved them to a USB external hard drive.
I replaced the internal hard drive with the new one.
I spend much time determining that my DVD-RW drive was really broken
and had to figure out how to put a liveCD on a 16GB USBkey.
I used the liveCD to partition the new hard drive and and copy the data
back to it.
When I finished, I made sure the new root partition was bootable, and
had grub properly installed to it. Upon rebooting, it hung after
booting to the initrd image. My problem was that I forgot to LABEL the
root partition when I formatted it, so grub was unable to "find" my root
partition. Before I figured this out, I put the new Fedora Unity F12
DVD (20100303) on the USBkey and did the F11->F12 upgrade. There was
one small problem *after* installing all of the F12 packages from the
DVD. It occurred during the "cleanup" phase, and I ended up with a
number of fc11 and fc12 versions of some RPMs installed. I've cleaned
most of them up (see below). [Note, there is nothing in the update.log
nor the update.log.syslog files about this error though. I told
anaconda to "save" the error info, but I can't find it. grumble!]
When F12 didn't boot either is when I realized that the root partition
was missing its label. After I labeled it properly, F12 booted.
OK, so I could have saved myself a lot of grief had I realized this
while I was still at F11.... B^)
It was when I started my "yum update" once F12 had booted that I noticed
all the duplicate package problems. I was able to fix a number of them
by hand. I had over 500 packages to update anyways.... B^{
A number of smaller yum updates, some yum removes, and some "rpm -e
--justdb" of some of the extra fc11 RPMs got me to where I am now.
My current F12 problems:
1) suspend no longer works. I had this same problem initially on F11,
but was able to work around it by adding "nomodeset" to my kernel grub
lines. I have a 3yo Radeon graphics card that does not yet work
properly (at least on F11) with the new kernel mode setting stuff.
Unfortunately, now, even *with* the nomodeset, suspend never finishes on
F12.
Here is the tail of /var/log/pm-suspend.log:
> Sun Apr 4 13:30:44 EDT 2010: performing suspend
> /usr/lib64/pm-utils/pm-functions: line 259: echo: write error: Device or resource busy
> Sun Apr 4 13:30:47 EDT 2010: Awake.
> Sun Apr 4 13:30:47 EDT 2010: Running hooks for resume
I wish I could tell *what* device or resource is busy....
2) From time to time, my wireless (all networking?) comes up disabled
in NM. This may be related to a failed suspend or shutdown. I haven't
tracked it down yet. I've been doing a lot of shutdown/reboot instead
of suspending. B^)
3) Chromium repo is not working for F12?
I get the following message when I use yum:
> chromium | 1.3 kB 00:00
> http://spot.fedorapeople.org/chromium/F12/repodata/repomd.xml: [Errno -1] repo not up-to-date
> Trying other mirror.
What's amusing is that my last chromium install was from 3/30/10 on F11.
Why is the F11 repo working and the F12 not? (This is not a biggie for me)
4) I have 10 packages that I am having problems bringing up to date
properly:
> PIL.x86_64 1.1.6-10.fc12 atrpms
> libvcdinfo0.x86_64 0.7.23-9.fc12 atrpms
> python.x86_64 2.6.2-4.fc12 updates
> python-devel.x86_64 2.6.2-4.fc12 updates
> python-imaging-tk.x86_64 1.1.6-17.fc12 fedora
> python-libs.x86_64 2.6.2-4.fc12 updates
> redhat-lsb.x86_64 3.2-7.fc12 fedora
> tkinter.x86_64 2.6.2-4.fc12 updates
> vcdimager.x86_64 0.7.23-11.fc12 rpmfusion-free-updates
> vcdimager-libs.x86_64 0.7.23-11.fc12 rpmfusion-free-updates
OK, yes, part of this is the dreaded ATRPMs/RPMFusion conflict. I have
gotten around this in the past by playing games with the RPM database.
But, in the end, it comes back to bite me every upgrade. Yes, this is
not a Fedora problem, but a 3rd party repo problem. But this time it is
keeping python\*, redhat-lsb, and tkinter from updating properly
(possibly with the cleanup error from the upgrade).
5) I have been using the "Earth from Space" desktop background. On
FC6, F9, and F11, it filled the entire 1200x800 desktop space. On F12,
it is "SCALED" instead of "FILL SCREEN", and has white side bars. I can
change it to "FILL SCREEN", or I can change to another background, but
if I then change to another virtual desktop, the "Earth from Space"
desktop returns (scaled instead of fill screen) after about 5 seconds.
I cannot keep any changes I make. This is frustrating. Is there a
"hidden" gnome setting I am missing? At this point, I don't care if I
can "stretch" the Earth background, or choose another, so long as it stays.
6) VMware-server 2.0.2 doesn't compile. I have found some "patches"
that are supposed to work here:
>
http://radu.cotescu.com/2010/01/19/how-to-install-vmware-server-ubuntu-fe...
I'm tracking this down. I had it working on F11 (with a number of
compiler warnings) with a different set of patches. From what I can
tell, this is VMWare's fault, not Fedora's as VMWare workstation and
VMWare Player do not seem to have this problem on F12.... I have this
problem every time I upgrade to a new kernel series. I am running the
2.6.32.10 kernel right now, but I also have the previous 2.6.31.12
kernel installed.
--
Kevin J. Cummings
kjchome(a)rcn.com
cummings(a)kjchome.homeip.net
cummings(a)kjc386.framingham.ma.us
Registered Linux User #1232 (http://counter.li.org)
14 years, 1 month
Stable Fedora Releases
by Leslie S Satenstein
First and foremost, ever since version 8, I have personally had no problems with Fedora releases and the usual daily set of updates. For my testing and use, Fedora is stable. In fact, for my use, Fedora 13 as delivered is stable. We are more then one month away from the official release of Fedora 13.
What I would like to see perhaps, is a change in the frequency for updates, where a kind of rolling version is created within each one of the 6 monthly releases. This can be achieved by not sending out daily updates but instead, collecting them and sending out weekly ones.
Currently I do a yum update check every other day, and find large numbers of updates. Is there a reason why these cannot be collected and set into weekly updates? I suppose I could just look for updates on a weekly basis, and that would answer my own question.
But if the policy was made that daily updates are reserved for emergency crash fixing, severe bug fixing, or due to malware or virus attack protection, these updates would be recognized as being priority. On the weekly schedule, we could download a single compressed package.
While the weekly updates might be larger in size, but as they occur weekly, it might help out for producing a weekly unity (re)spin. For example, with my idea or weekly updates and weekly (re)spins, if I stay with F12 for a month after F13 is officially released, I could then download the latest unity (re)spin, and be up to date with most updates integrated. It is conceivable that the (re)spin is more bug-free then the actual QA'd production release.
So, give me weekly updates and weekly re(spins).
------------------
Regards
Leslie
Mr. Leslie Satenstein
14 years, 1 month
bcmsdb player on linux??
by Adel ESSAFI
bcmsdb://root:dreambox@192.168.1.2 <root%3Adreambox(a)192.168.1.2>
HI list
I have a dreambox (sattelite receiver) and for windows, i have just to
enter the URL above in windows media player. the procol is bcmsdb!!
This is the first time i see this protocol.
Do you know if there are linux player for this?
Regards
--
PhD candidate in Computer Science
Address
3 avenue lamine, cité ezzahra, Sousse 4000
Tunisia
tel: +216 97 246 706
fax: +216 71 391 166
14 years, 1 month
Mounting a qemu created image
by Paul F. Johnson
Hi,
I've finally managed (via the command line) to create a virtual disk and
install Win2K on it - lots of fuss, just because I need a winform
designer!
Outside of qemu, is there a way to mount the image? When I created it,
the image was not a qcow one (I've read you can't mount them from Linux
directly). I need to transfer to and from the virtual drive and can't
seem to get it to understand my USB pens.
TIA
TTFN
Paul
--
Biggles was quietly reading his favourite book when Algy burst through
the door. Distracted for a moment, Biggles surveyed what had happened
and turned a page. "Algy old man" he said, clearing his throat, "use the
handle next time..." - Taken from "Biggles combs his Hair"
14 years, 1 month
