Common F21 bugs

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This page documents common bugs in Fedora 21 and, if available, fixes or workarounds for these problems. If you find your problem in this page, please do not file a bug for it, unless otherwise instructed. Where appropriate, a reference to the current bug(s) in Bugzilla is included.

Release Notes

Read the Fedora 21 release announcement and the Fedora 21 release notes for specific information about changes in Fedora 21 and other general information.

My bug is not listed

Not every bug is listed in this page, but Bugzilla should be a comprehensive database of known bugs. This page is a sampling of the bugs most commonly discussed on our mailing lists and forums.

To see if your bug has already been reported, you can search Bugzilla. If it has not yet been reported, we encourage you to do so to help improve Fedora for yourself and others. A guide to Bugs and feature requests has been prepared to assist you.

If you believe an already-reported bug report should be added to this page because it is commonly encountered, you can:

• Add it yourself, if you have wiki access. Common bugs instructions provides guidance on how to add an entry to the page correctly, but the most important thing is to make sure that the bug is listed - don't worry if you don't get the format quite right, we can clean it up later.
• Or, add the CommonBugs keyword to the bug report. Someone from the QA team will then inspect the issue to determine whether the bug should be listed as a common bug. To expedite your request, please add a comment to the bug that includes
  1. a summary of the problem
  2. any known workarounds
  3. an assessment on the impact to Fedora users

For reference, you can query Bugzilla for bugs tagged CommonBugs:

• CommonBugs? (bugs with CommonBugs keyword, but do not yet have a link to this page)
• CommonBugs+(bugs with CommonBugs keyword and contain a link to this page)

Installation issues

Cannot place bootloader target partition (e.g. /boot/efi) on a disk other than the first in custom partitioning

link to this item - Bugzilla: #1168118

You may encounter this bug when doing custom partitioning with more than one disk, and installing on a system whose firmware requires a partition as the location for the bootloader stage1 - e.g. /boot/efi for UEFI systems, /boot/uboot for some ARM systems, or a PReP boot partition for PowerPC systems.

If you attempt to create the partition on a disk other than the first (which will be the disk shown furthest to the left on the disk selection screen), the installer may complain that a valid bootloader partition has not been created.

A simple way to work around this is to place the boot partition on the first disk, if this is not inconvenient or impossible for your desired layout.

If you do want or need the boot partition to be on a later disk, you can work around the error. To do this, configure the desired layout, and complete custom partitioning despite the error message (by clicking Done twice). Go back into the Installation Destination screen, and click Full disk summary and bootloader.... Select the disk on which you placed the boot partition, and click Set as Boot Device. Click Close, then click Done, and click Done again on the custom partitioning screen without changing anything. This should clear the error condition and cause the installer to be happy with the boot partition being on the chosen disk.

Note that selecting the desired 'boot disk' before entering custom partitioning and creating your layout will not work (though it ought to - the fact that it does not is a related bug). You must use this slightly more unusual workaround instead. We do apologize for the inconvenience.

An installer updates image which fixes this bug is also available at https://adamwill.fedorapeople.org/updates/updates-1168118.img .

Network install image offers all package groups

link to this item - Bugzilla: #1134524

This is no longer considered a bug, exactly, but remains documented here for clarity. Initial Fedora 21 plans envisaged Server and Workstation releases each having their own network install images which, by default, would offer only the package groups relevant to that Product. However, it became clear that this design was difficult to implement and not really particularly desired by anyone.

For Fedora 21 Final, there will be a single designated network install image, built from the Server tree, which defaults to the Fedora Server package set but allows installation of all package groups. In practical terms it is little different from the network install image shipped with Fedora 20 and earlier except that it defaults to the Server package group rather than the GNOME desktop, and has Server visual branding. Despite this branding, in practice it is a universal network install image allowing deployment of all Fedora package sets. It can be used for doing network installs of the Workstation product in cases where this is preferable to installing from the live image (e.g. mass deployments).

32-bit Server DVD and network install images use generic installer artwork

link to this item - Bugzilla: #1170582

The 32-bit Server DVD and network install images use the generic installer artwork (down the side or across the top of the various screens) which simply uses the Fedora logo, rather than the Server product logo seen on the 64-bit versions of the same media. This is an entirely cosmetic issue, and the images are clearly identified as Server in various text labels.

GNOME issues

GNOME Initial Setup crashes if no keyboard is selected

link to this item - Bugzilla: #1154171

On first use of a Fedora 21 Workstation system (or other Fedora 21 installation with the GNOME desktop), an 'initial setup' process is run (the same as described in the previous issue). One of the early stages asks you to pick a keyboard layout. Depending on your earlier choice of language and location, it is possible that no layout will be pre-selected on the initial list of layout choices. If no layout is selected, and you do not select one but simply click Next, the initial setup tool will crash.

The workaround for this issue is to make sure you select a keyboard layout. If none of the layouts is the one you want, clicking the '...' choice at the bottom of the list will cause the full list of layouts to be provided.

KDE issues

Crash when adding new widget to panel via drag-and-drop

link to this item - Bugzilla: #1170535

You may encounter a crash in the Plasma Desktop Shell while adding a widget to the panel. If you open the 'Add widgets...' panel pop-up and try to drag a new widget from it to the panel, if you cross the button for a running application in the task manager widget while dragging, the crash will be triggered. The shell will respawn automatically and the session will continue to work correctly.

To work around this issue simply be careful not to cross the task manager area of the panel when dragging. The Fedora KDE team will work to come up with a fix for this issue as soon as possible.

Graphical package manager missing some PackageKit features

link to this item - Bugzilla: #1098735

In Fedora 21 Beta, apper (KDE's default graphical package manager and update tool) is missing some features, due to the replacement of the backend it previously used. Notably the ability to search within package groups is missing.

Hardware issues

Boot hangs when using NVIDIA discrete graphics on some Thinkpad models (W530)

link to this item - Bugzilla: #752613 Kernel bugzilla: #43054

This issue has been present since at least Fedora 19.

Multiple testers have reported that various Thinkpad models - including at least the W530, and likely the W520 and T420 - that have hybrid Intel/NVIDIA graphics will fail to boot Fedora 19, 20, or 21 when using the discrete NVIDIA graphics adapter. Using the onboard Intel adapter, Fedora will boot successfully.

Further testing indicates that this bug is an interaction between several features of these systems and of Fedora: the VT-d advanced virtualization feature, the X2APIC level APIC, and the NVIDIA adapter. If all three of these things are used together, boot fails. If any one is removed from the equation, boot succeeds.

So, if you are affected by this bug, you can choose to boot with any two of those things, but not all three together. You can disable the VT-d feature and select which graphics adapter to use through the system firmware. You can disable X2APIC functionality by passing the kernel parameter nox2apic. In this way, you should be able to determine which of the features you want to use.

The kernel developers plan to address this issue in a future kernel update by blacklisting X2APIC functionality on affected systems, when the NVIDIA adapter is in use.

Fedora Server issues

Rolekit fails to deploy a Domain Controller on a VM, returning error 256

link to this item Creation of a Domain Controller role requires the system to have a sufficient amount of entropy available to securely create the keys for the included certificate authority and Kerberos key distribution center. It is very common when deploying on a virtual machine that has just been created that there will not be sufficient entropy available, which will result in the Domain Controller deployment timing out waiting on /dev/random and then failing with error code 256.

On VM hosts that support it (such as KVM on Fedora 20 and 21), it is recommended to create the VM using the virt-RNG device (which the Fedora Server 21 guest will automatically detect). This will allow it to collect entropy from the host machine and should reduce the likelihood of encountering this issue. As a workaround (if you do not have a host capable of providing entropy), you can also run the following command to make the system use the less-secure /dev/urandom entropy device:

# /usr/sbin/rngd -r /dev/urandom

FreeIPA startup fails due to timing issues

link to this item - Bugzilla: #1071356

This bug appears to occur only occasionally. Sometimes, startup of a FreeIPA server - ipa.service - may fail, apparently due to some kind of race / timing issue between it, named.service and dirsrv.target. It does appear to happen only rarely, and when it happens, just starting ipa.service again should succeed.

Other issues

Installation of 'environment groups' fails due to conflicts between fedora-release packages

link to this item - Bugzilla: #1160917

Due to some limitations in how Fedora's package group mechanism works and some changes made to support the introduction of "Products" in Fedora 21, you may often encounter conflicts when trying to install the 'environment groups' seen in yum grouplist after installing Fedora 21. If you install a Fedora Product - Workstation, Cloud, or Server - it is likely that attempting to install any other 'environment group' will fail. If you use a non-Product install - for instance, install from a desktop live image - it is likely that you will be able to successfully install other non-Product environment groups, but not the environment groups associated with each Product.

The most common case in which you're likely to encounter this is trying to add extra desktops to a Workstation or other desktop installation. If you install Workstation and then want to add any other desktop, or install another desktop and then want to add GNOME and decide to try and use the 'Workstation' group, you will likely run into this problem.

Fortunately there is a fairly simple workaround for this problem: just add --exclude fedora-release\* to your command, e.g. yum groupinstall kde-desktop-environment --exclude fedora-release\*.

It may not be possible to resolve this fully for Fedora 21. The bug report contains the detailed explanation of the problem, and solutions for it will likely be discussed there, if you wish to keep up to date.

Rendering problems of Assamese and Bengali language content

link to this item - Bugzilla: #1170135

Rendering issue detected in Lohit Assamese and Bengali last upstream release 2.91.0. Due to this issue conjucts break if it follows by any bengali matra. Unfortunately this got detected during the final phase of Fedora 21 release.

If anyone creating or viewing Assamese or Bengali language content in Fedora they will encounter this issue.

This bug has been fixed in Lohit upstream and available with 2.91.1 release of Assamese and Bengali. One can simple get rid of it by doing $dnf update lohit-bengali-fonts lohit-assamese-fonts -y. This will be available with Zero day update for Fedora 21.