Fedora 18 for Power Alpha Announcement

Tue Sep 25 14:27:06 UTC 2012

In quick succession to the Fedora 18 "Spherical Cow" Alpha release on
primary architectures the Fedora Secondary Arch team proudly presents
the Fedora 18 "Spherical Cow" PowerPC Alpha release!

Already mooo-tivated to give F18 Alpha a try? Great! We still hope that
you'll read onwards; there are fabulous features in this release you may
want to know about, as well as important information regarding specific,
common F18 Alpha installation issues and bugs, all of which are detailed
in this release announcement.

*** What is the Alpha Release? ***

Fedora 18 adds many new and improved features for a variety of
audiences. The release annoucement for the primary architecture
already listed all the cool new features and commone known issues
and bugs, so please refer to

http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test-announce/2012-September/000518.html

for the details.

The highlight on the feature side for the PowerPC side this time is
* Power7 optimized ppc64p7 is added as a supported platform for
   Fedora 18 packages.
* The installer uses tmux to switch between the installer window, a
   bash prompt, and other windows which capture log files. Read more
   about tmux here: http://tmux.sourceforge.net/
* The installer's command line parameters are changing. Read more about
   the change here: http://wwoods.fedorapeople.org/doc/boot-options.html
* The name of the package group has changed from @base to @standard.
   This will affect kickstart files as well.

*** Known Issues and Bugs for PowerPC ***

We know that many of you are moo-tivated to download and try the Alpha
release of "Spherical Cow"; to help you avoid stepping into any sticky
issues, we'd like to highlight a few specific issues, before you moooove
on to the downloads page. Information about these, and other common
bugs, including bug reports and workarounds for known issues where
available, are detailed on the Common F18 Bugs page, as well as in the
Alpha release notes; links to both pages are provided below.

**** Common issues ****

* Utilizing automatic partitioning during installation will reformat all
selected disks on which to install without any further warning; ALL
EXISTING DATA ON THE DISKS WILL BE LOST. At this time, there is no
option presented to use free space on the disks, or to resize existing
partitions. A workaround solution exists.

* This release features a new user interface for the anaconda installer,
which will significantly enhance the end-user installation experience.
Known issues relating to the new installer user interface include:
    ** For non-graphical installations, a root password must be set to be
able to login; for graphical installations, the first user should be set
as an adminstrative user. This is currently the default setup during
installation.
    ** There is no anaconda-based upgrade or preupgrade to F18 Alpha; if
you must upgrade an installed system, you should use yum.
    ** The new installer user interface is still undergoing work; the
Alpha release may not necessarily duplicate exactly the implementation
seen in the Final release of Fedora 18 in November.

**** PowerPC specific issues ****

* Due to a missing check in lorax the install images are currently being
   built with a ppc64p7 kernel, so booting the install images on anything
   smaller than Power7 will fail at the moment. This is something we're
   going to fix asap after Alpha, so for Beta and RC the install images
   will again contain the generic ppc64 kernel. A possible workaround for
   older systems is to skip the install via anaconda and update a Fedora 17
   to a Fedora 18 Alpha.
* Installation fails on multipath devices.
* If you want to install graphically using vnc, you must pass the
   'inst.vnc' parameter to anaconda at boot time. The screen to start vnc
    is no longer in anaconda
* It is not required to set the root password in the anaconda installer.
   However, there is a defect where the firstboot utility is not performed
   in text console boot after install. Therefore, you must set the root
   password during install

For more information, including information about other common and known
bugs, tips on how to report bugs, and the official release schedule,
please refer to the release notes:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_18_Alpha_release_notes

and for the PowerPC specific issues please check out

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_18_Alpha_PPC_release_notes

A shorter list of common bugs can be found here:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F18_bugs

*** Contributing ***

Great releases like Fedora 18 don't get made in a vacuum. We can't do it
without you! Bug reports are especially helpful as we move from the
theory to the applied physics. If you encounter any issues, please
report them!

Fedora is a fantastic, friendly community, and we have many ways in
which you can contribute, including Documentation, Marketing, Design,
QA, Development, and more.

To learn how to help us, visit: http://join.fedoraproject.org/

If you're specifically interested in contacting the Fedora Secondary 
Arch team for PowerPC feel free to pay us a visit on the #fedora-ppc IRC 
channel on FreeNode and via our email list:

https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/ppc

And we have our Secondary Arch wiki with (decently) updated information:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/PowerPC

And last but not least, a big thanks to the whole team and everyone else 
contributing to making this release happen.

Thanks & regards, Phil

-- 
Philipp Knirsch              | Tel.:  +49-711-96437-470
Manager Core Services        | Fax.:  +49-711-96437-111
Red Hat GmbH                 | Email: Phil Knirsch <pknirsch at redhat.com>
Hauptstaetterstr. 58         | Web:   http://www.redhat.com/
D-70178 Stuttgart, Germany