Slashdot Mirror

FC2 does not boot on some late-revision Asus P4P800SE boards (a very common board). Things just reboot after the grub screen.

There are patched CD images out there (since the install CD boots using said problematic kernel), and you can work around the problem on already-installed systems (if you upgraded by just using apt/yum) by using the SMP kernel instead of the uniprocessor one.

Having read every comment on bugzilla about Bug 115980 it sounds to me like the bug most likely is in Windows. On some machines Windows will create an incorrect partition table. FC2 will correct the partition table, and Windows stops booting. But a few of the latest comments suggests that it might be a bit more complicated than that. Because the problem doesn't happen immediately at install, but first at the first boot of either Windows or Fedora. It is unclear which of the two trigger the problem at the first boot. It seems very few people are able to reproduce the problem, which means it is not easy to track down. Instead of whining anybody who has this problem should help finding the cause. And finally another article on lwn mentions that no data loss happens unless you start doing something stupid.

search google for sfdisk site:redhat.com fedora takes you to the 1st result:

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2 004-May/msg00908.html

maybe the topic poster should learn to read a little before going "fedora sucks, i can't dual boot"

And frankly, can't we just call it something new and start from 1 again?

Sure! (bad link in previous post, spolied the fun)

Red Hat puts up a good set of manuals on their site.

This is a subset of what you will need to know, but it's very useful to know how to do things "The Red Hat Way". I would *discourage* trying to immediately do everything manually (like, say, modifying your initscripts to directly start up dhcpcd or something similar). You'll get a bunch of configuration that doesn't play nicely or auto-upgrade cleanly to new versions. It's much easier to have things set up properly, and be able to examine a working system when learning how things work (and I *do* recommend digging around on the system, through the initscripts and the config files, but it should come second). Occasionally you'll want to do something for which there is no easy, automated configuration setup available, and it's good to know what to do then and when it's necessary.

I'd set up a test box pronto to play with and to test out configuration changes.

Debian and Xandros are the distributions. In fact, if you want a really usable and poweful distribution, you should try Fedora Core 2, a recently released distribution. It is simply amazing. GNOME 2.6 literally wipes the floor with OSX and Windows in terms of usabillity (New file dialog and spatial nautilus, as well as the HIG), Looks (Bluecurve and Nuvola are really slick looking) and Speed. I run it on a 1.2Ghz processor and it is comparable to my brother's 3.0Ghz machine running Windows XP!

Visit Fedorafaqs and get all the cool stuff such as Java, Flash, MP3 support and you will be really pleased indeed. It has replaced Mandrake 10 as my primary distribution. Its not just a leap, its a whole mile ahead of other distros. So try it today and see why not all distros are created equal. You can even get Debian's apt-get for Fedora!

The fix is here.

There ARE 100's of good looks for GNOME, you just haven't looked (and thats why you made that ignorant comment!
Go here and get the best themes for GNOME!
You can also visit this website!

You should try Fedora though since bluecurve looks really slick!

No. While you (and some others) may have been ok, the problem has been mainfesting itself even after an install which doesn't "mess with the partitions".

Please, if you're thinking of installing/upgrading FC2, track the bug before you make any decision. It's looking like it might not be a show-stopper, just as long as you know what to do. I won't post the fix here, as i do not yet know for certain that it is bullet-proof. Check the bugzilla link - this is ongoing and people are trying to resolve it.

In any case, not "mess[ing] with the partitions" will not guarantee your system will be ok.

Copy and paste from here


It turns out that the bug (#115980) is a result of a few subtle but key changes within the 2.6 kernel. A certain functionality with regards to hard disk geometry has been pulled out, as the kernel developers thought it would be better if userspace utilities took care of this instead. The Bugzilla bug is related to CHS geometry problems, which most likely stems from an error within the parted utility, addressing the BIOS incorrectly. It turns out that BIOS updates tend to fix problems for many users that have been bitten by this "bug". On newer machines, this is basically non-reproducible.

"Subject line" is pushing it -- I don't believe that this is a major problem.

Buffer overflows based on parsing mail is not an uncommon problem, though.

Let's take a look (I'm not going to bother with more than one per client).

Here are bugs for mutt, pine, evolution, kmail, elm (elm is apparently vulnerable to an overflow in the Subject line :-) ).

I assume that the last is what the grandparent was referring to.

"Subject line" is pushing it -- I don't believe that this is a major problem.

Buffer overflows based on parsing mail is not an uncommon problem, though.

Let's take a look (I'm not going to bother with more than one per client).

Here are bugs for mutt, pine, evolution, kmail, elm (elm is apparently vulnerable to an overflow in the Subject line :-) ).

I assume that the last is what the grandparent was referring to.

"Subject line" is pushing it -- I don't believe that this is a major problem.

Buffer overflows based on parsing mail is not an uncommon problem, though.

Let's take a look (I'm not going to bother with more than one per client).

Here are bugs for mutt, pine, evolution, kmail, elm (elm is apparently vulnerable to an overflow in the Subject line :-) ).

I assume that the last is what the grandparent was referring to.

"Subject line" is pushing it -- I don't believe that this is a major problem.

Buffer overflows based on parsing mail is not an uncommon problem, though.

Let's take a look (I'm not going to bother with more than one per client).

Here are bugs for mutt, pine, evolution, kmail, elm (elm is apparently vulnerable to an overflow in the Subject line :-) ).

I assume that the last is what the grandparent was referring to.

Go ahead and try to use the FTP installer when you have a NIC that is technically supported but requires a 1-line hack to the Tulip driver to make it work.

The Microsoft MN-130 adapter came out a year ago, and the fix was discovered on November 6, 2003. Why is it that six months and a major kernel release later, this fix still isn't included in a stock kernel?

Nathan

See Redhat!

Care to tell me which ones of these features are also in the SuSE kernel?

5 bytes? Do a search on Google. The average x86 instruction is about 3.2 to 3.8 bytes in length (in practical usage).

Most RISC have fixed length instructions - 4 bytes is common.

In my experience most x86 programs have a smaller footprint on disk and more importantly in memory compared to SPARC versions of the same program.

Probably SPARC sucks, but ok pick the RISC of your choice and get back to me with the associated binary executable sizes (e.g apache executable, gzip executable) compared to equiv x86 binaries.

Think of x86 CISC in modern CPUs as compressed RISC instructions, decompressed on the fly at the CPU core after being squished through narrow bandwidth channels ( memory/cache ).

Nowadays given the huge difference between CPU core speeds and memory speeds, "compression" is actually useful. A more compressed CISC could be even better (but I doubt there's a market for one).

"I'm sure Intel knows very well that they could perform better if they broke x86 compatibility. They just cannot afford to do that."

BTW Intel has this processor called the Itanium. And in _practice_ it's not really x86 compatible[1] (nor is it RISC). It performs quite well, FP is much better than Opteron (and other RISC processors). But actually FP is easy to improve - just add more FP units.

So they've already tried to drop x86. Been trying that for the past 10 years.

[1] Itanium Windows compatibility
Itanium RHL compatibility

I have to agree with n1ywb. Try Knoppix. It's a wonderful live distro and it's great for beginners. It'll help you learn the basics and then when your comfortable with it, you can install it to disk or move on to a more powerful distro. Fedora would be a good second step.

• Knoppix
• Fedora

Redhat is doing a good job of making all standard applications have a consistent look and feel (BlueCurve).

They even followed Ximian's lead and made custom Open Office icons.

You can read my post about my first impressions (and problems found!).

Here is the top of a thread on the fedora-test-list mailing list, showing some of the reactions to the review. I've been watching the list for a while now, and I've gotta say that this is pretty typical of the childishness that goes on there. Which really worries me, since I'm getting ready to upgrade a whole department to Fedora soon.

If you read the relevant Bugzilla thread, you'd be aware that running fixmbr does not solve the problem.

I really can't understand how they released it with such bug.

It is not a bug, it is a feature. Seriously, I don't have Windows on any of my computers. I don't care if I can boot Windows or not. There is a simple solution for the data loss you are talking about, it is called a backup. How could you even be sure the data loss was not just caused by user errors? So should it be released? Windows 95 AFAIK had some similar problems, that didn't stop Microsoft from releasing it. Right now there are a lot of bug reports, but no indication whatsoever, there really is a bug in Fedora Core 2. The specifically ask for somebody to try to reproduce the problem with Fedora Core 2, seems like it might happen only if there is already a problem with the partition table. There are a lot of worse issues. For example if you don't have at least a 686 machine, you shouldn't even try to install Fedora Core 1. There are bugs in glibc causing random crashes, and no attempt is done to fix them.

You might get a better/quicker response posting your question to the fedora-list rather than /.

I've always had good experiences getting my issues resolved via the list...

This bug got a lot of coverage on the fc-test mailinglist: archives here. Look for the thread "Serious reservations about FC2 release on 5/18". It makes very interesting reading. The inital post seems sensible enough, I think this is a serious issue, and the responses are really varied. Some people tried to suggest fixes, others pointed out it was too late as the ISOs had gone to mirrors... but there were also a suprising number of 'who cares' and all out flames.

Humm. Fedora have a lot to learn, and the standard 'Fedora is for hobbiests and Redhat is for people that don't want to get dirty' does really cut it. All distros should make an effort not to break things outside of their footprint. Pointing out how bad microsoft are at co-existing is no defense, the idea is to rise above not sink to their level.

Anyway. read the thread and see what you think. It may remind you that Fedora isn't for everyone. I think its an excellent distro.. but they're not the best at releases and pr.

This bug got a lot of coverage on the fc-test mailinglist: archives here. Look for the thread "Serious reservations about FC2 release on 5/18". It makes very interesting reading. The inital post seems sensible enough, I think this is a serious issue, and the responses are really varied. Some people tried to suggest fixes, others pointed out it was too late as the ISOs had gone to mirrors... but there were also a suprising number of 'who cares' and all out flames.

Humm. Fedora have a lot to learn, and the standard 'Fedora is for hobbiests and Redhat is for people that don't want to get dirty' does really cut it. All distros should make an effort not to break things outside of their footprint. Pointing out how bad microsoft are at co-existing is no defense, the idea is to rise above not sink to their level.

Anyway. read the thread and see what you think. It may remind you that Fedora isn't for everyone. I think its an excellent distro.. but they're not the best at releases and pr.

Seems like there is still no safe solution for this bug.

Some people report that they lost all their data by installing it.

I really can't understand how they released it with such bug.

According to this: Dual-head AGP video cards "just work"

on my g450 I'm using mgapdesk on RH9 with varying degree of success. In another words, it's piece of crap. I'm due for an upgrade

Is there a package list for FC 2? I found one on the fedora site for FC 1, but not FC 2 yet.

You can joke all you want about not caring about windows booting, but the bug is potentially more serious than just not booting windows. It is very likely that bug is the same as this one:
Bug 113201

Basically, you can get a screwed up partition table. It appears this is due to changes in the way that the 2.4 and 2.6 kernel reported hard disk geometry. These changes were not account for yet (to my knowledge) in parted, which is used in the FC2 install. This results in inconsistent (between FC2 and other OS'es, perhaps more than just windows) entries in your partition table.

I don't know how likely it is that this will cause a problem on any given machine. Perhaps for smaller disks the way the 2.4 vs 2.6 kernels report geometry will be the same, and there will be no problem. You might want to try to boot into a 2.6 kernel based live CD and compare values to what you see in a 2.4 kernel before installing FC2. For more information on this, see this thread:

This is a very serious problem, which sadly appears to have been known about for some time, and no warnings have appeared in any release notes (much less delaying releases to fix it). You can note the distress of some reporters in the bugzilla comments. I am distressed that the problem has gone unfixed this far, and more distressed about the very little attention it has gotten. I am not going to install FC2 until this is dealt with.

All you have to do is look at the download page or the torrents to see what you need...

...can be read here.

Here is the bug number for the dual booting problem: 115980

Here is the bug number for this: 119262 There is a posted workaround there, and mention on the fedora-test-list that a fix was submitted to CVS but too late for the final release. It may show up in a future kernel update.

See this link for details.

Be sure to watch out for this one. It has already caught some folks here unaware. http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?i d=115980

It has something to do with beer:

Fedora devel mailinglist

Additionally, you need a CAL (client access license) for, at a minumum, each machine that is concurrently connected to the Windows server. I think those run around $50 each.

On the flip side, you need to compare apples to apples. Here's Red Hat Enterprise costs. A one year subscription to RHE AS Standard on the X86 is $1499.

No it's free

but most of the embedded systems I have work on require hard-realtime and I tend to choose very conservatively on embedded projects.

To mention another, RTEMS is a open-source real-time OS with a decent pedigree and commercial support available. (The page is a shameless rip-off of GCC's.)

There's also Red Hat's eCos but I don't think they support it anymore.

It's been over a year since the last offical release.

But you probably haven't heard the news ? There will be no more official glibc release. Ulrich Drepper has decided, that it is just a waste of time because "nobody tests it anyway" and because he does not see any big changes ahead. That's why distributions like Linux From Scratch and Rock Linux (and just about every big distribution) doesn't include 2.3.2 but some CVS snapshot deemed stable enough.

Well the directory is already there. It's not accessible yet though.

http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux /core/

The release schedule says FC2 should've been on its way to the mirrors two days ago. It's reasonable to assume this is an early leak prior to the official announcement two days from now. But one should always verify the GPG key and MD5SUMs just in case prior to any installation - even after the official announcement.

Has anyone actually verified that these ISOs are legit by using the Fedora GPG key?

For FC1 -> FC2 upgrading is NOT recommended using apt, yum or any other depsolver. Anaconda has a fair bit of magic to fix things for you. Most things are manually solvable but if you're using LVM "it has a high chance of blowing up spectacularly" according to the anaconda developers - don't bother unless you like blowing up systems :)

In any case upgrading with anaconda is the recommended way.

So it looks like they recommend getting the install disks and upgrading through the installer.

http://fedora.redhat.com/about/security/4F2A6FD2.t xt

When I goto Fedora I see not a single link to download Fedora Core 2. On the mirrors I get 550 permission denied or could change directory?? Is this story genuine? Regards

The Fedora Core 2 schedule release schedule indicates that this the final Core 2 release.

The core was supposed to be released for mirrors on the morning of May 14th, then the open release will be announced on May 18th. Presumably there should be sufficient mirrors to manage to the load by then.

That's the wrong key.. Here's the right one: http://fedora.redhat.com/about/security/4F2A6FD2.t xt

oh yeh just as a P.S., the official schedule is here