FC5 -> FC6 my experience

[Andy Green]

Roo wrote:

> 1. Downloaded the DVD ISO, burnt it and began the installation

Sounds good.

> 2. Anaconda starts and BY DEFAULT, selects the option for a fresh install
> rather than upgrade... despite this machine very clearly being a fully
> functioning FC5 install. Nice... someone not paying attention would be in
> for a shock

Actually unless you select to format the partitions (let's face it, you 
have to not merely not be paying attention...), the last time I did this 
"install" it did not nuke the existing filesystem contents, except the 
stuff that it overwrote from the packages.  So I think this may be a 
non-problem.

> 3. Anaconda then says that it is analysing dependencies... for nearly 25
> minutes. I understand that the installer is now based on YUM... so this
> extreme slowness is only to be expected. I then get to watch it upgrading
> for another 2 hours... yep, that's a YUM install for you

Was your HDD on the go?  Ctrl-Alt-F2 in Anaconda gets you a shell 
prompt, I saw on a 384MB box that it had committed 100MB of swap during 
install, slowing it to a crawl.  Yes the global package update eats too 
much memory, whether that is rpm libs (I think it is) or yum I don't know.

> 4. I try to re-install my NVIDIA drivers... only to be told that it cannot
> find the kernel source. However, that appears to be installed. After 2
> more hours of fruitless messing around, I spot that fedora core 6 has, for
> whatever deranged reason, decided to install kernel-devel packages for
> i686, and the kernel itself is i586. rpm -ivh --force
> dvd/kernel-blah-blah-.i686.rpm fixes it... and it now works.

Yes it is broken to install i586 but mismatching the -devel.  Oh well. 
I was tracking FC6 yumming from the Development repo.  I don't feel I 
can complain since I didn't bang on anaconda.  If I had tested anaconda 
before release I might feel a little bit grumpier.  Stuff happens.

> 5. Run tremulous to find that for some unknown reason, the interface is
> now very very dark. No settings have changed between running it
> under FC5 last night and running it under FC6 today. Brightness slider is
> at max too. Oh well, just another in the usual huge list of breakages that
> go with running a Red Hat alpha test version of their forthcoming RHEL...
> eh. Oops... shouldn't say that, should I.

Ah steady on, you are running the nVidia binary, you have xorg 7.1 now, 
as you say it is for some "unknown reason".  You can't get to beating up 
RHAT from there.

> 6. XMMS doesn't work.

Well this isn't helpful whatever way you cut it.  segfaults? no MP3 
support?  can't open the audio device?  It's actually an ALSA problem? 
This is the kind of thing the mailing list can help with given something 
to get teeth into.

> 7. Decide to try out the supposedly spiffy new desktop effects. Selecting
> foot menu -> System -> Preferences -> desktop effects... and yes, all my
> window borders disappear, but don't come back, so I can't change Windows
> or do anything really. Strangely the bottom GNOME panel works, and I can
> switch desktops. My slide-out side panel selector doesn't work.

I don't know about Gnome, but it sounds your Window Manager crashed. 
What I would do is run desktop-effects from a root Konsole or whatever 
it is in Gnome and look for stdout, it is quite chatty.  The nVidia 
binary blob isn't supported or tested to work with it for reasons you 
probably know.  FWIW on this Intel chipset laptop, compiz is working great.

> Oh well... lucky for me that I got fed up with SELinux under FC5 and
> disabled it completely, or I'd no doubt have about 30 or 40 other nasty
> breakages and stuff that "JUST DOESN'T WORK" (tm). Still... GTK can't be
> any slower and memory hungry under FC6 than it was under FC5, can it? I
> suppose I'll find out. 

Hum well SELinux is a feature, not a bug.  Thing is you feel all the 
pain upfront, and you don't feel the lack of pain when you are not 
hacked by the next scripted attack that you are open to.  The policies 
have gotten a LOT better at avoiding trouble for all common usage 
scenarios that I found, and there is a new IDE for policies coming too. 
  First move for SELinux grief nowadays should be

touch /.autorelabel

and reboot.

-Andy