Fedora Core 6 and the Horde of Bugs [Part 2]
Published by Mircea Ungureanu [rastilin] on 2006/11/14 (5593 reads)
So, in the last issue I emigrated from Opensuse 10.1 to the community friendly Fedora Core 6. Unfortunately I had too many problems with FC6 to stay with it for long. Eventually, after a few days, I decided that much like my experiences with gentoo, I was spending too much time dealing with issues and configuration.
Installation
Firstly, the graphical installer didn't run. This is pretty much standard for everything except Suse (doesn't run but can be switched to vesa) , Ubuntu (vesa mode) and Gentoo (no graphical installer on the minimum cds) . The problem was that the text based installer doesn't set everything up properly so I would up with only a console, default init of 3 and no user account pre-configured. It didn't configure networking properly either.
Firstly some background, I use a Geforce 6800GS card. Theoretically this means that the nv drivers would give maximum performance, practically the nv drivers don't work, they garble the screen but they do load and linux will run with them. So Fedora executes the graphical installer, loads the nv drivers and promptly becomes unusable.
The Bugs
X
Firstly X had to be fixed. Every time X started, the console would have the cursor dissapear. It would also stop scrolling downward properly, which is to say that if the command prompt went past the bottom of the screen, it was gone. Changing the drivers to "vesa" allowed me to execute X and log in as a user after creating an account.
Networking
Apparently my two network inputs confused it. What with the cable only being plugged into one and a DHCP server running on the network. A little fiddling with the network configuration later, and a "deactivate - activate" of the interface finally got networking running.
Repositories
It was missing all the good software like vba and kmplayer. A few searches on the internet later, I managed to get a few repositories that, when strung together, allowed for a basic level of functionality.
Then, horror of horrors. No source code to compile a kernel module with. I checked on a repository, manually because the package managers couldn't find any package matching my keywords of "kernel source". Downloaded and installed it, not in /usr/src/. Or at least partly, there's one new folder but it was filled with compressed patch files....
Ok, download the nvidia drivers off a repository, download the kernel interface files. Four packages with the same name... do I have a i586 or a i686 kernel... apparently I had a combination of i386, i586 and i686 installed with Fedora Core 6. In either case, nvidia was up. Eventually. The download from the repository was successful.
FTP
Installing pure-ftpd went fairly well. It successfully started up, in the background, without me doing anything, every boot. Ok.... can't complain, it's just like ubuntu. Easier to set up this way.
By default pure-ftpd allows logins with user accounts but, can't log in. Okkk... might be a account issue. Create new account, can't log in. Ok, check the configuration files. Apparently THIS pure-ftpd uses a file or such to login by default, a few changes later and ftp worked. Sure it can be argued it's not actually a bug, anyone remember the old saying "It's not a bug, it's a feature.". They might be right too, but it's a pain in any case.
Init
Sudo init 5 fixed this one. No problem.
Bash dead
Ok, bash died. Same problem as the original, no cursor, no scrolling. Eventually I traced this to a driver issue, as long as I run X, Bash ceases functioning until the next reboot. Linux without command line, unendurable. I could spend ages fixing this or I could use something else....
Using FC6
Otherwise, the distribution was good. Responsiveness was fast and yum worked very much like apt get, no package resolution problems, no dependency issues and installing extra repositories was very easy. Additionally, no applications crashed at any point, always nice. So, when it worked, it was good.
Thoughts
Really having it work is about standard. We expect our distributions to be fast, not crash and so on. The main difference between one distribution and another is the default configuration and the methods used to ease the often complicated routine of getting linux running. We're far from the old methods of downloading the source and compiling it by hand, but not so far that problems don't still happen.
Next Issue, Debian.
Installation
Firstly, the graphical installer didn't run. This is pretty much standard for everything except Suse (doesn't run but can be switched to vesa) , Ubuntu (vesa mode) and Gentoo (no graphical installer on the minimum cds) . The problem was that the text based installer doesn't set everything up properly so I would up with only a console, default init of 3 and no user account pre-configured. It didn't configure networking properly either.
Firstly some background, I use a Geforce 6800GS card. Theoretically this means that the nv drivers would give maximum performance, practically the nv drivers don't work, they garble the screen but they do load and linux will run with them. So Fedora executes the graphical installer, loads the nv drivers and promptly becomes unusable.
The Bugs
X
Firstly X had to be fixed. Every time X started, the console would have the cursor dissapear. It would also stop scrolling downward properly, which is to say that if the command prompt went past the bottom of the screen, it was gone. Changing the drivers to "vesa" allowed me to execute X and log in as a user after creating an account.
Networking
Apparently my two network inputs confused it. What with the cable only being plugged into one and a DHCP server running on the network. A little fiddling with the network configuration later, and a "deactivate - activate" of the interface finally got networking running.
Repositories
It was missing all the good software like vba and kmplayer. A few searches on the internet later, I managed to get a few repositories that, when strung together, allowed for a basic level of functionality.
Then, horror of horrors. No source code to compile a kernel module with. I checked on a repository, manually because the package managers couldn't find any package matching my keywords of "kernel source". Downloaded and installed it, not in /usr/src/. Or at least partly, there's one new folder but it was filled with compressed patch files....
Ok, download the nvidia drivers off a repository, download the kernel interface files. Four packages with the same name... do I have a i586 or a i686 kernel... apparently I had a combination of i386, i586 and i686 installed with Fedora Core 6. In either case, nvidia was up. Eventually. The download from the repository was successful.
FTP
Installing pure-ftpd went fairly well. It successfully started up, in the background, without me doing anything, every boot. Ok.... can't complain, it's just like ubuntu. Easier to set up this way.
By default pure-ftpd allows logins with user accounts but, can't log in. Okkk... might be a account issue. Create new account, can't log in. Ok, check the configuration files. Apparently THIS pure-ftpd uses a file or such to login by default, a few changes later and ftp worked. Sure it can be argued it's not actually a bug, anyone remember the old saying "It's not a bug, it's a feature.". They might be right too, but it's a pain in any case.
Init
Sudo init 5 fixed this one. No problem.
Bash dead
Ok, bash died. Same problem as the original, no cursor, no scrolling. Eventually I traced this to a driver issue, as long as I run X, Bash ceases functioning until the next reboot. Linux without command line, unendurable. I could spend ages fixing this or I could use something else....
Using FC6
Otherwise, the distribution was good. Responsiveness was fast and yum worked very much like apt get, no package resolution problems, no dependency issues and installing extra repositories was very easy. Additionally, no applications crashed at any point, always nice. So, when it worked, it was good.
Thoughts
Really having it work is about standard. We expect our distributions to be fast, not crash and so on. The main difference between one distribution and another is the default configuration and the methods used to ease the often complicated routine of getting linux running. We're far from the old methods of downloading the source and compiling it by hand, but not so far that problems don't still happen.
Next Issue, Debian.
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