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Fedora Release Notes Beats

The release notes are separated into beats.

These are the pages where the release notes beats are written. Content here may be derived from bugzilla reports and mailing list discussions.

Each beat has one or more beat writers, as assigned on the release notes beats page. The beat writer(s) are in charge of the beat pages. These pages are open for all to contribute. If you know something that should be in the release notes, this is the place to put it.

Read DocsProject/WritingUsingTheWiki before editing Release Notes pages. This ensures that you write content we can convert into DocBook for the published Release Notes.

Writers can learn about how this works on the Docs/Beats/HowTo page.

The page Docs/Beats uses a Wiki include that pulls in the content from the separate beat pages. The actual beat page is located at Docs/Beats/Beatname.

The current version we are writing for is Fedora Final.

Interested in contributing? Read DocsProject/Join.

Table of Contents

Links go directly to separate Wiki page.

If you feel a beat is missing, put it in where you think it fits best, and the editors will work with you from there.


Beat Aggregator

Below are all the beats on one page. Use the ToC above to go directly to beat pages.

Welcome to Fedora

Fedora :: Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software. Fedora is always free for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. It is built by people across the globe who work together as a community: the Fedora Project. The Fedora Project is open and anyone is welcome to join. The Fedora Project is out front for you, leading the advancement of free, open software and content.


Visit http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/ to view the latest release notes for Fedora. If you are migrating from a release of Fedora older than the immediately previous one, you should refer to older Release Notes for additional information. You can find older Release Notes at http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/.

You can help the Fedora Project community continue to improve Fedora if you file bug reports and enhancement requests. Refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugsAndFeatureRequests for more information about bugs. Thank you for your participation.

To find out more general information about Fedora, refer to the following Web pages:


Many links may not work properly from within the installation environment, this is due to resource constraints. The release notes are also available post-installation as part of the desktop Web browser's default home page. If you are connected to the internet, use these links to find other helpful information about Fedora and the community that creates and supports it.

Fedora Tour

You can find a tour filled with pictures and videos of this exciting new release at Tours/Fedora9.

Release Summary

For a less technical user friendly summary of the important changes in this release, refer to:

Releases/9/ReleaseSummary

New in Fedora

This release includes significant new versions of many key components and technologies. The following sections provide a brief overview of major changes from the last release of Fedora.

Spins

Fedora includes several different spins. Spins are variations of Fedora built from a specific set of software packages. Each spin has a combination of software to meet the requirements of a specific kind of end user. In addition to a boot.iso image for network installation, users have the following spin choices:

More custom spins are available at http://spins.fedoraproject.org. These Live images can be used on USB media via the livecd-iso-to-disk utility available in the livecd-tools package.

Jigdo

Fedora releases are also available via Jigdo. This distribution method can improve the speed of obtaining the installation ISO images. Instead of waiting for torrent downloads to complete, Jigdo seeks the fastest mirrors it can find via the Fedora Project Mirror Manager infrastructure, and downloads the bits it needs from these mirrors. To optimize seeking these bits, you can tell Jigdo to scan a DVD or CD you already have, and cut down on redundant downloads. This feature becomes particularly useful if you:

Upgrading using PreUpgrade

PreUpgrade is an application users run on an existing Fedora 7 or 8 installation, that resolves and downloads packages required to upgrade Fedora. While PreUpgrade downloads the necessary packages, users are free to continue using their systems.

To use PreUpgrade to upgrade Fedora 8 to Fedora 9:

For further information, refer to the PreUpgrade Wiki

Features 

 is available in the KDE Live image as well as the regular DVD.
 

 is available as part of this release.
 

.

Road Map

The proposed plans for the next release of Fedora are available at RoadMap.

Feedback

Thank you for taking the time to provide your comments, suggestions, and bug reports to the Fedora community; this helps improve the state of Fedora, Linux, and free software worldwide.

Providing Feedback on Fedora Software

To provide feedback on Fedora software or other system elements, please refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugsAndFeatureRequests. A list of commonly reported bugs and known issues for this release is available from http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Bugs/F9Common.

Providing Feedback on Release Notes

If you feel these release notes could be improved in any way, you can provide your feedback directly to the beat writers. There are several ways to provide feedback, in order of preference:

Installation Notes

To learn how to install Fedora, refer to http://docs.fedoraproject.org/install-guide/. If you encounter a problem or have a question during installation that is not covered in these release notes, refer to http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAQ and http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Bugs/Common.

Anaconda is the name of the Fedora installer. This section outlines issues related to Anaconda and installing Fedora 10.

If you intend to download the Fedora DVD ISO image, keep in mind that not all file downloading tools can accommodate files larger than 2 GiB in size. wget 1.9.1-16 and above, curl, and ncftpget do not have this limitation, and can successfully download files larger than 2 GiB. BitTorrent is another method for downloading large files. For information about obtaining and using the torrent file, refer to http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/.

Anaconda tests the integrity of installation media by default. This function works with the CD, DVD, hard drive ISO, and NFS ISO installation methods. The Fedora Project recommends that you test all installation media before starting the installation process and before reporting any installation-related bugs. Many of the bugs reported are actually due to improperly-burned CD or DVDs.

This mediacheck function is highly sensitive, and may report some usable discs as faulty. This result is often caused by disc writing software that does not include padding when creating discs from ISO files. To use this test, at boot time hit any key to enter the menu. Then press the [Tab] key, add the option mediacheck to the parameter list, and press [Enter] .

After you complete the mediacheck function successfully, reboot to return the system to its normal state. On many systems, this results in a faster installation process from the disc. You may skip the mediacheck option when rebooting.

BitTorrent Automatically Verifies File Integrity. If you use BitTorrent, any files you download are automatically validated. If your file completes downloading, you do not need to check it. Once you burn your CD or DVD, however, you should still use mediacheck to test the integrity of the media.

To perform memory testing before you install Fedora, press any key to enter the boot menu, then select Memory Test. This option runs the Memtest86 standalone memory testing software in place of Anaconda. Memtest86 memory testing continues until you press the Esc key.

Fedora 10 supports graphical FTP and HTTP installations. However, the installer image must either fit in RAM or appear on local storage, such as the installation DVD or Live Media. Therefore, only systems with more than 192MiB of RAM, or that boot from the installation DVD or Live Media can use the graphical installer. Systems with 192MiB RAM or less fall back to using the text-based installer automatically. If you prefer to use the text-based installer, type linux text at the boot: prompt.

Changes in Anaconda

Installation Related Issues

IDE Device Names

Use of /dev/hdX on i386 and x86_64 for IDE drives has changed to /dev/sdX. See notes about the importance of labeling devices for upgrades from releases before Fedora 7, and partition limitations.

IDE RAID

Not all IDE RAID controllers are supported. If your RAID controller is not yet supported by dmraid, you may combine drives into RAID arrays by configuring Linux software RAID. For supported controllers, configure the RAID functions in the computer BIOS.

Multiple NICs and PXE Installation

Some servers with multiple network interfaces may not assign eth0 to the first network interface as BIOS knows it, which can cause the installer to try using a different network interface than was used by PXE. To change this behavior, use the following in pxelinux.cfg/* config files: 

IPAPPEND 2
APPEND ksdevice=bootif

The configuration options above causes the installer to use the same network interface as BIOS and PXE use. You can also use the following option: 

ksdevice=link

This option causes the installer to use the first network device it finds that is linked to a network switch.

Upgrade Related Issues

Refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DistributionUpgrades for detailed recommended procedures for upgrading Fedora.

Emacs

If you are upgrading to Fedora 9 and use emacs, you must upgrade to the latest version of emacs for your prior release to ensure a clean upgrade. Fedora 8 users must have emacs-22.1-10.fc8 or later.

SCSI driver partition limits

Whereas older IDE drivers supported up to 63 partitions per device, SCSI devices are limited to 15 partitions per device. Anaconda uses the libata driver in the same fashion as the rest of Fedora, so it is unable to detect more than 15 partitions on an IDE disk during the installation or upgrade process.

If you are upgrading a system with more than 15 partitions, you may need to migrate the disk to Logical Volume Management (LVM). This restriction may cause conflicts with other installed systems if they do not support LVM. Most modern Linux distributions support LVM and drivers are available for other operating systems as well.

Disk partitions must be labelled

A change in the way that the linux kernel handles storage devices means that device names like /dev/hdX or /dev/sdX may differ from the values used in earlier releases. Anaconda solves this problem by relying on partition labels or UUIDs for finding devices. If these are not present, then Anaconda presents a warning indicating that partitions need to be labelled and that the upgrade can not proceed. Systems that use Logical Volume Management (LVM) and the device mapper usually do not require relabeling.

To check disk partition labels

To view partition labels, boot the existing Fedora installation, and enter the following at a terminal prompt: 

/sbin/blkid

Confirm that each volume line in the list has a LABEL= value, as shown below: 

/dev/hdd1: LABEL="/boot" UUID="ec6a9d6c-6f05-487e-a8bd-a2594b854406" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"
To set disk partition labels

For ext2 and ext3 partitions without a label, use the following command: 

 su -c 'e2label /dev/example f7-slash'

For a VFAT filesystem use dosfslabel from the dosfstools package, and for NTFS filesystem use ntfslabel from the ntfsprogs package. Before rebooting the machine, also update the file system mount entries, and the GRUB kernel root entry.

Update the file system mount entries

If any filesystem labels were added or modified, then the device entries in /etc/fstab must be adjusted to match: 

 su -c 'cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.orig'
su -c 'gedit /etc/fstab'

An example of a mount by label entry is: 

 LABEL=f7-slash  /  ext3  defaults  1 1
Update the grub.conf kernel root entry

If the label for the / (root) filesystem was modified, the kernel boot parameter in the grub configuration file must also be modified: 

 su -c 'gedit /boot/grub/grub.conf'

A matching example kernel grub line is: 

 kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.20-1.2948.fc6 ro root=LABEL=f7-slash rhgb quiet
Test changes made to labels

If partition labels were adjusted, or the /etc/fstab file modified, then boot the existing Fedora installation to confirm that all partitions still mount normally and login is successful. When complete, reboot with the installation media to start the installer and begin the upgrade.

Upgrades versus fresh installations

In general, fresh installations are recommended over upgrades, particularly for systems that include software from third-party repositories. Third-party packages remaining from a previous installation may not work as expected on an upgraded Fedora system. If you decide to perform an upgrade anyway, the following information may be helpful:

Before you upgrade, back up the system completely. In particular, preserve /etc, /home, and possibly /opt and /usr/local if customized packages are installed there. You may wish to use a multi-boot approach with a "clone" of the old installation on alternate partition(s) as a fallback. In that case, create alternate boot media, such as a GRUB boot floppy.

Backups of configurations in /etc are also useful in reconstructing system settings after a fresh installation.

After you complete the upgrade, run the following command: 

rpm -qa --last > RPMS_by_Install_Time.txt

Inspect the end of the output for packages that pre-date the upgrade. Remove or upgrade those packages from third-party repositories, or otherwise deal with them as necessary. Some previously installed packages may no longer be available in any configured repository. To list all these packages, use the following command: 

su -c 'yum list extras'

Kickstart HTTP Issue

When using a Kickstart configuration file via HTTP, kickstart file retrieval may fail with an error that indicates the file could not be retrieved. Click the OK button several times without making modifications to override this error successfully. As a workaround, use one of the other supported methods to retrieve Kickstart configurations.

Architecture Specific Notes

This section provides notes that are specific to the supported hardware architectures of Fedora.

RPM multiarch support on 64-bit platforms (x86_64, ppc64)

RPM supports parallel installation of multiple architectures of the same package. A default package listing such as rpm -qa might appear to include duplicate packages, since the architecture is not displayed. Instead, use the repoquery command, part of the yum-utils package, which displays architecture by default. To install yum-utils, run the following command: 

 su -c 'yum install yum-utils'

To list all packages with their architecture using rpm, run the following command: 

 rpm -qa --queryformat "%{name}-%{version}-%{release}.%{arch}\n"

You can add this to /etc/rpm/macros (for a system wide setting) or ~/.rpmmacros (for a per-user setting). It changes the default query to list the architecture: 

 %_query_all_fmt         %%{name}-%%{version}-%%{release}.%%{arch}

Docs/Beats/PPC Docs/Beats/x86 Docs/Beats/x86 64

Fedora Live Images

The Fedora 9 release includes several Live ISO images in addition to the traditional installation images. These ISO images are bootable, and you can burn them to media and use them to try out Fedora. They also include a feature that allows you to install the Live image content to your hard drive for persistence and higher performance.

Available Images

For a complete list of current spins available, and instructions for using them, refer to:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/CustomSpins

Usage Information

To boot from the Live image, insert it into your computer and restart. To log in and use the desktop environment, enter the username fedora. There is no password on this account. The GNOME-based Live images automatically login after one minute, so users have time to select a preferred language. After logging in, if you wish to install the contents of the live image to your hard drive, click on the Install to Hard Drive icon on the desktop.

Text Mode Installation

You can do a text mode installation of the Live images using the liveinst command in the console.

Direct Installation

You can add 'liveinst' or 'textinst' as a boot loader option to perform a direct installation without booting up the live CD/DVD.

USB Booting

Another way to use these Live images is to put them on a USB stick. To do this, install the livecd-tools package from the repository. Then, run the livecd-iso-to-disk script: 

/usr/bin/livecd-iso-to-disk /path/to/live.iso /dev/sdb1

Replace /dev/sdb1 with the partition where you want to put the image.

This is not a destructive process; any data you currently have on your USB stick is preserved.

Live USB Persistence

Support for persistent changes with a Live image exists for Fedora 9. The primary use case is booting from a Live image on a USB flash drive and storing changes to that same device. To do this, download the Live image and then run the following command: 

livecd-iso-to-disk --overlay-size-mb 512 /path/to/live.iso /dev/sdb1

Replace /dev/sdb1 with the partition where you want to put the image.

Replace 512 with the desired size in megabytes of the persistent data, or overlay. The livecd-iso-to-disk shell script is stored in the LiveOS directory at the top level of the CD image. The USB media must have sufficient free space for the Live image, plus the overlay, plus any other data to be stored on the media.

Tool Changes

Work has continued to better integrate the Live images with the rest of the system, and improve the tools used for building them. The livecd-creator utility now provides an API for building alternative front-ends, as well as tools for other types of images.

Differences From a Regular Fedora Install

The following items are different from a normal Fedora install with the Live images. 

#!html
==Package Notes==

The following sections contain information regarding software packages that have undergone significant changes for Fedora 9 

. For easier access, they are generally organized using the same groups that are shown in the installation system.

Sound Card Utility

The system-config-soundcard utility has been removed, due to numerous legacy design and implementation issues. Modern technologies, including udev and the HAL, have made most sound cards work out of the box. Any sound card not working out of the box should be reported as a bug . Preferences can still be fine-tuned within the desktop environment, using, among others, the PulseAudio tools.

Perl

Fedora 9 now includes Perl 5.10.0, the first "major" release update in perl5 in some time. The Perl interpreter itself is faster with a smaller memory footprint, and has several UTF-8 and threading improvements. The Perl installation is now relocatable, a blessing for systems administrators and operating system packagers. Perl 5.10.0 also adds a new smart match operator, a switch statement, named captures, state variables, and better error messages.

For more information, refer to:

http://perldoc.perl.org/perldelta.html

Yum Changes

The installonlyn plugin functionality has been folded into the core yum package. The installonlypkgs and installonly_limit options are used by default to limit the system to retain only two kernel packages. You can adjust the package set or the number of packages, or disable the option entirely to match your preferences. More details is available in the man page for yum.conf.

The yum command now retries when it detects a lock. This function is useful if a daemon is checking for updates, or if you are running yum and one of its graphical frontends simultaneously.

The yum command now understands a cost parameter in its configuration file, which is the relative cost of accessing a software repository. It is useful for weighing one software repository's packages as greater or less than any other. The cost parameter defaults to 1000, with lower costs given priority.

In Fedora 9 Rawhide, the /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-development.repo file has been changed to /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-rawhide.repo. References to development in fedora-rawhide.repo have been changed to rawhide. Due to the way that RPM deals with configuration files, the existing /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-development.repo file is saved as /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-development.repo.rpmsave if it was previously modified. Users of the development repository may need to update scripts and custom configuration files to use the new name.

pam_mount

The pam_mount facility now uses a configuration file written in XML. The /etc/security/pam_mount.conf file will be converted to /etc/security/pam_mount.conf.xml during update with /usr/bin/convert_pam_mount_conf.pl, which removes all comments. Any per-user configuration files must be converted manually, with the conversion script if desired. A sample pam_mount.conf.xml file with detailed comments about the available options appears at /usr/share/doc/pam_mount-*/pam_mount.conf.xml.

TeXLive

TeXLive is a replacement for the old, unmaintained TeX package. It offers new style packages and fixes many security problems with the old distribution.

LTSP

The Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) has been included directly into Fedora 9. Work is ongoing. For the latest news and documentation, refer to:

http://k12linux.fedorahosted.org/

Utility Packages

The nautilus-open-terminal package now uses a GConf key to control its behavior when launched by right-clicking the Desktop. To enable its previous behavior, which opens the resulting terminal in the user's home directory, use this command: 

gconftool-2 -s /apps/nautilus-open-terminal/desktop_opens_home_dir --type=bool true


The i810switch package has been removed. This functionality is now available through the xrandr command in the xorg-x11-server-utils package.

The evolution-exchange package replaces evolution-connector, and provides a capability under the old name.

The system-config-firewall and system-config-selinux packages replace system-config-security-level. The system-config-selinux package is part of the the policycoreutils-gui package.

pilot-link and HAL/PolicyKit Interaction

The pilot-link package now blacklists the visor module by default. Users are encouraged to try the direct USB access present in recent versions of pilot-link. This is enabled by passing the --port usb: option to the various pilot-link tools, instead of the serial devices used in the past (typically /dev/pilot or /dev/ttyUSB0, /dev/ttyUSB1, and so forth). For example: 

pilot-xfer --port usb: --list

The hal-info and hal packages have been updated to correctly set permissions for the necessary USB devices using PolicyKit. If you have any existing manual configurations, revert the changes to avoid possible conflicts.

For further information, refer to the README.fedora included in the pilot-link package.

Legal Information

The following legal information concerns some software in Fedora. 

Portions Copyright (c) 2002-2007 Charlie Poole or Copyright (c) 2002-2004 James W. Newkirk, Michael C. Two, Alexei A. Vorontsov or Copyright (c) 2000-2002 Philip A. Craig

Linux Kernel

This section covers changes and important information regarding the 2.6.25 based kernel in Fedora 9. The 2.6.25 kernel includes: 

install snd-sbawe

Version

Fedora may include additional patches to the kernel for improvements, bug fixes, or additional features. For this reason, the Fedora kernel may not be line-for-line equivalent to the so-called vanilla kernel from the kernel.org web site:

http://www.kernel.org/

To obtain a list of these patches, download the source RPM package and run the following command against it: 

rpm -qpl kernel-<version>.src.rpm

Changelog

To retrieve a log of changes to the package, run the following command: 

rpm -q --changelog kernel-<version>

If you need a user friendly version of the changelog, refer to http://wiki.kernelnewbies.org/LinuxChanges. A short and full diff of the kernel is available from http://kernel.org/git. The Fedora version kernel is based on the Linus tree.

Customizations made for the Fedora version are available from http://cvs.fedoraproject.org.

Kernel Flavors

Fedora 9 includes the following kernel builds:

You may install kernel headers for all four kernel flavors at the same time. The files are installed in the /usr/src/kernels/<version>[-PAE|-xen|-kdump] -<arch>/ tree. Use the following command: 

su -c 'yum install kernel{,-PAE,-xen,-kdump}-devel'

Select one or more of these flavors, separated by commas and no spaces, as appropriate. Enter the root password when prompted.

x86 Kernel Includes Kdump
Both the x86_64 and the i686 kernels are relocatable, so they no longer require a separate kernel for kdump capability. PPC64 still requires a separate kdump kernel.
Default Kernel Provides SMP
There is no separate SMP kernel available for Fedora on i386, x86_64, and ppc64. Multiprocessor support is provided by the native kernel.
PowerPC Kernel Support
There is no support for Xen or kdump for the PowerPC architecture in Fedora. 32-bit PowerPC does still have a separate SMP kernel.

Preparing for Kernel Development

Fedora 9 does not include the kernel-source package provided by older versions since only the kernel-devel package is required now to build external modules. Configured sources are available, as described [#Kernel_Flavors above].

Custom Kernel Building
For information on kernel development and working with custom kernels, refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/CustomKernel.

Reporting Bugs

Refer to http://kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/lkml/reporting-bugs.html for information on reporting bugs in the Linux kernel. You may also use http://bugzilla.redhat.com for reporting bugs that are specific to Fedora. 

#!html
==Fedora Desktop==

This section details changes that affect Fedora graphical desktop users.

GNOME

This release features GNOME 2.22 

.

The GNOME splash screen has been disabled upstream intentionally. To enable it, use gconf-editor or the following command: 

 gconftool-2 --set /apps/gnome-session/options/show_splash_screen --type bool true

The lock screen dialog theme is not connected to the selected screensaver in this release. To enable it, use gconf-editor or the following command: 

 gconftool-2 --set  --type string /apps/gnome-screensaver/lock_dialog_theme  "system"

Blinking cursors are enabled by default in this release, and are centrally managed via a gconf setting. To turn it off, run the following command: 

  gconftool-2 --type bool --set /desktop/gnome/interface/cursor_blink false

Gvfs

GNOME 2.22 features the new Gvfs, a userspace virtual filesystem with backends for sftp, ftp, dav, smb, obexftp, and others. The Gvfs system is the replacement/successor of gnome-vfs.

Gvfs consists of two parts:

The Gvfs system runs a single master daemon, gvfsd, that keeps track of the current gvfs mounts. Most mounts are run in a separate daemon process. Clients talk to the mounts with a combination of DBus calls (on the session bus and using peer-to-peer DBus) and a custom protocol for file contents.

A few filesystem types previously supported by gnome-vfs may not be yet supported by gvfs. Work continues to provide completed solutions for all these types.

Gvfs backends have been split to separate packages in Fedora 10. Although they're included in standard set of packages when doing clean Fedora installation, users upgrading from Fedora 9 will experience missing backends. We suggest to install these packages manually: 

su -c "yum install gvfs-archive gvfs-gphoto2 gvfs-obexftp gvfs-smb"

GNOME Display Manager

The GNOME Display Manager (gdm) has been updated to the latest upstream code, which is a complete rewrite driven by Fedora developers.  !PolicyKit can be used to control shutdown and reboot. The configuration tool gdmsetup is missing currently, and set to be replaced. For configuration changes, refer

http://live.gnome.org/GDM/2.22/Configuration

New features available on the login screen include:

For more information on this feature:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/NewGdm

Other notes:

KDE

This release features KDE 4.0.3 

. As the kdepim and kdevelop packages are not part of KDE 4.0 and kdewebdev is only partially available (no Quanta) in KDE 4.0, the KDE 3.5.9 versions of those packages are shipped.

KDE 4.0 features upgrades to core components such as the port to Qt 4. It also introduces a number of brand new frameworks such as the Phonon, a multimedia API; Solid, a hardware integration framework; Plasma, a re-written desktop and panel with many new concepts; integrated desktop search; compositing as a feature of KWin; and a brand new visual style called Oxygen. KDE 4.0.3 is a bugfix release from the KDE 4.0 release series.

Fedora 9 does not include the legacy KDE 3 Desktop. It does include a compatibility KDE 3 Development Platform, which can be used to build and run KDE 3 applications within KDE 4 or any other desktop environment. Refer to the Backwards Compatibility section for more details about what is included.

Since knetworkmanager does not work with the version of NetworkManager available in this release, the KDE Live images use nm-applet from NetworkManager-gnome as a replacement. The gnome-keyring-daemon facility saves passwords for these encryption technologies. (The dummy knetworkmanager package from Fedora 8 that only called nm-applet is no longer used.)

As the native KWin window manager now optionally supports compositing and desktop effects, the KDE Live images no longer include Compiz/Beryl. The KWin compositing/effects mode is disabled by default, but can be enabled in systemsettings. Compiz (with KDE 4 integration) is available from the repository by installing the compiz-kde package.

Workspace Changes

All the above applications can be found in the kdebase-workspace package.

Package and Application Changes


PackageKit

PackageKit is the new, default distribution-neutral package management framework and frontend. Refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageKit for further details.

Bluetooth

The Bluetooth feature in Fedora 9 (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/BluetoothFedora9) has several enhancements specific to this release. The future generations of this feature are covered with greater detail at:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/FeatureBluetooth

File sending to a Bluetooth device is now handled with the bluetooth-sendto program from the bluez-gnome package, which replaces gnome-obex-send. Send a file in Nautilus from the Send to... function in the right-click context menu.

Pulling files from a Bluetooth device is now included in gnome-user-share, which has ObexFTP and ObexPush support built-in. Share files via System > Preferences > Internet and Network > Personal File Sharing > Share Public files over Bluetooth (ObexFTP support), or pull files using ObexPush with Personal File Sharing > Receive files in Downloads folter over Bluetooth.

Files on the remote Bluetooth device can be viewed directly in Nautilus through GVFS, which supports Bluetooth devices. Synchronizing a Bluetooth device with a personal information manager (PIM) device is done using gnome-pilot

Browsing of Bluetooth devices is done via the right-click context menu from the Bluetooth icon on the desktop panel.

XULRunner

Applications that require the Gecko engine have had to depend on the entirety of Firefox. XULRunner is the Mozilla effort to split the browser engine for applications that require only that functionality, and no user interface parts. This split provides more API/ABI stability and a cleaner build environment for applications using Gecko. Many of the applications in Fedora that previously used Gecko now are built against XULRunner.

For a current status, visit [1] . To help with development, visit [2] .

For full upstream documentation, refer to [3] .

Web Browsers

This release of Fedora includes version 3.0 (beta 5) of the popular Firefox web browser. Refer to http://firefox.com/ for more information about Firefox. The nspluginwrapper package is included by default even on 32-bit systems since it separates the plug-ins to run in their own address space, which increases security and reliability of the browser.

For information about Firefox in Fedora, refer to this feature page:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Firefox3

NSpluginwrapper

nspluginwrapper is now installed by default, which makes web browser plug-ins run in a separate memory address. This increases browser stability, as plug-in crashes will not affect the web browser itself. As well, this increases security, as Fedora 9 has optional SELinux policies to sandbox plug-ins, to decrease the impact of security issues.

Enabling Flash Plugin

Fedora includes swfdec and gnash, which are free and open source implementations of Flash. We encourage you to try either of them before seeking out Adobe's proprietary Flash Player plug-in software. The Adobe Flash Player plug-in uses a legacy sound framework that does not work correctly without additional support. Run the following command to enable this support: 

su -c "yum install libflashsupport"

Users of Fedora x86_64 must install the nspluginwrapper.i386 package to enable the 32-bit Adobe Flash Player plug-in in Firefox, and the libflashsupport.i386 package to enable sound from the plug-in. 

su -c "yum install nspluginwrapper.{i386,x86_64} libflashsupport.i386"

su -c "mozilla-plugin-config -i -g -v"

Mail Clients

The mail-notification package has been split. The Evolution plug-in is now in a separate package, mail-notification-evolution-plugin. When the mail-notification package is updated, this plug-in is added automatically.

Fedora 9 includes Mozilla Thunderbird version 2.0, which has numerous performance improvements, folder viewing enhancements, and enhanced mail notification support. For further details, refer to the Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0 release notes:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/2.0.0.0/releasenotes/

Disabling PC Speaker

PC speaker is enabled by default in Fedora. If you do not prefer this, there are two ways to circumvent the sounds: 

su -
modprobe -r pcspkr
echo "install pcspkr :" >> /etc/modprobe.conf

International Clock Applet

The new clock applet in the GNOME panel has expanded to support additional international timezones in the display, as well as weather information for each configured timezone displayed. This work, which involved merging intlclock with the GNOME clock applet, provides all the functionality of system-config-date and the weather applet. Additional features include: users can choose arbtirary locations instead of principal timezones; UI enhancements for new and old functions; and full weather information shown in a tooltip.

Read more about this feature:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/FeatureClockApplet

Dictionaries Consolidated

There is a new default spell checking back-end, hunspell, for both the GNOME and KDE desktops, as well as applications such as OpenOffice.org, Firefox, and other XULRunner-based applications. This common back-end includes a set of shared, multi-lingual dictionaries for use with hunspell. This feature uses a single set of common dictionaries regardless of the application, which gives consistent suggestions for misspelled words and uses less diskspace by eliminating duplicate dictionaries.

Details on this effort are here:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/FeatureDictionary

Pilot Link

The pilot-link package has been updated to use PackageKit and HAL for setting sync file permissions. For more information, refer to the pilot-link note .

Compiz

Fedora 9 ships with Compiz 0.7.2, which improves multi-display support, adds KDE 4 support, adds a configurable middle and right-click button, and mouse wheel actions for GTK Window Decorator. Compiz 0.7.2 adds many improvements and bug fixes.

For further details, refer to the Compiz 0.7.2 release announcement:

[4]

vmmouse Driver

Due to a bug in the shipping xorg-x11-drv-vmmouse driver, the mouse position may not be correctly positioned on a virtual machine guest's display. As a workaround until an update, add Option NoAutoAddDevices to the ServerFlags section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf in the guest machine. Create the section if necessary: 

Section "ServerFlags"
Option      "NoAutoAddDevices"
EndSection

Printing

This section has not been updated for Fedora 9 

 by the beat writer .

This section highlights changes and additions to the various GUI server and system configuration tools in Fedora Core 9 

.

This section has not been updated for Fedora Core 9 

 by the beat writer .

File Systems

Fedora 9 provides basic support for encrypted swap partitions and non-root file systems. To use it, add entries to /etc/crypttab and reference the created devices in /etc/fstab.

New in Fedora 9, the installer Anaconda has support for creating encrypted file systems during installation. For more information on that, refer to the Fedora Installation Guide.

Installing to encrypted volumes, including the root file system, is now supported. There is no configuration tool for adding or removing keys from volumes at a later time, or otherwise doing modification of the encryption. Refer to this feature page for more information: Releases/FeatureEncryptedFilesystems

For full instructions on using encrypted file systems, refer to the Fedora Encryption and Privacy Guide.

Ext4 Preview

The new ext4 file system is available in Fedora 9 as a nearly feature complete preview. While an ext3 file system can be mounted as ext4, an ext3 to ext4 conversion tool is planned that converts existing ext3 on-disk format to ext4.

Fedora 9 may be installed onto an ext4 file system by adding the ext4 option to the installer boot parameters and selecting custom partitioning.

The e2fsprogs userspace tools shipping with Fedora 9 are not yet fully ext4-capable. In particular, fsck ability is limited.

For more information about this feature:

This section refers to file transfer and sharing servers. Refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Beats/WebServers and http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Beats/Samba for information on HTTP (Web) file transfer and Samba (Windows) file sharing services.

This section has not been updated for Fedora 9 

 by the beat writer .

#!html
==Web Servers==

PostgreSQL DBD Driver

Users of the mod_dbd module should note that the apr-util DBD driver for PostgreSQL is now distributed as a separate dynamically-loaded module. The driver module is now included in the apr-util-pgsql package. A MySQL driver is now also available, in the apr-util-mysql package.

TurboGears Applications

The main !CherryPy package has been updated to 3.x. A compatibility package for !TurboGears applications has been created: python-cherrypy2.  !TurboGears applications created before this change may need to update their startup scripts. Instead of: 

import pkg_resources
pkg_resources.require('TurboGears')

the start script needs to have: 

__requires__ = 'TurboGears'
import pkg_resources


Drupal

Drupal has been updated from the 5.x series to 6.2. For details, refer to:

http://drupal.org/drupal-6.2

Remember to log in to your site as the admin user, and disable any third-party modules before upgrading this package. After upgrading the package:

1. Copy /etc/drupal/default/settings.php.rpmsave to /etc/drupal/default/settings.php, and repeat for any additional sites' settings.php files. 1. Browse to http://host/drupal/update.php to run the upgrade script.

Squid

Squid has been updated from version 2.6 to 3.0.STABLE2. The configuration files are not entirely backwards compatible. For further details, refer to the Squid release notes:

http://www.squid-cache.org/Versions/v3/3.0/squid-3.0.STABLE2-RELEASENOTES.html

As well, due to a bug, the transparent proxy does not work. This should be resolved after the first update.

Mail Servers

This section concerns electronic mail servers or mail transfer agents (MTAs).

Sendmail

By default, the Sendmail mail transport agent (MTA) does not accept network connections from any host other than the local computer. To configure Sendmail as a server for other clients:

1. Edit /etc/mail/sendmail.mc and either change the DAEMON_OPTIONS line to also listen on network devices, or comment out this option entirely using the dnl comment delimiter. 1. Install the sendmail-cf package: 

yum install sendmail-cf

1. Regenerate /etc/mail/sendmail.cf: 

make -C /etc/mail

Development

This section covers various development tools and features.

Docs/Beats/Runtime Docs/Beats/Tools

Security

This section highlights various security items from Fedora.

Security Enhancements

Fedora continues to improve its many proactive security features .

Support for SHA-256 and SHA-512 passwords

The glibc package in Fedora 8 had support for passwords using SHA-256 and SHA-512 hashing. Previously, only DES and MD5 were available. These tools have been extended in Fedora 9. Password hashing using the SHA-256 and SHA-512 hash functions is now supported.

To switch to SHA-256 or SHA-512 on an installed system, use authconfig --passalgo=sha256 --update or authconfig --passalgo=sha512 --update. Alternatively, use the authconfig-gtk GUI tool to configure the hashing method. Existing user accounts will not be affected until their passwords are changed.

SHA-512 is used by default on newly installed systems. Other algorithms can be configured only for kickstart installations, by using the --passalgo or --enablemd5 options for the kickstart auth command. If your installation does not use kickstart, use authconfig as described above, and then change the root user password, and passwords for other users created after installation.

New options now appear in libuser, pam, and shadow-utils to support these password hashing algorithms. Running authconfig configures all these options automatically, so it is not necessary to modify them manually.

FORTIFY_SOURCE extended to cover more functions

FORTIFY_SOURCE protection now covers asprintf, dprintf, vasprintf, vdprintf, obstack_printf and obstack_vprintf. This improvement is particularly useful for applications that use the glib2 library, as several of its functions use vasprintf.

SELinux Enhancements

Different roles are now available, to allow finer-grained access control:

As well, browser plug-ins wrapped with nspluginwrapper, which is the default, now run confined.

Default Firewall Behavior

In Fedora 9, the default firewall behavior has changed. There are no default ports open, except for SSH (22), which is opened by Anaconda.

General Information

A general introduction to the many proactive security features in Fedora, current status, and policies is available at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Security.

Docs/Beats/SELinux Docs/Beats/FreeIPA 

#!html
==OpenJDK==

OpenJDK 6

Fedora 9 includes OpenJDK 6, a Free Software implementation of the Java Platform, Standard Edition. OpenJDK 6 is not yet Java compatible; work is underway to certify it.

Fedora will track Sun's stable OpenJDK 6 branch.

OpenJDK Replaces IcedTea

The OpenJDK 6 packages, java-1.6.0-openjdk*, replace their IcedTea counterparts, java-1.7.0-icedtea*. The Fedora 8 IcedTea packages track the unstable OpenJDK 7 branch, whereas the java-1.6.0-openjdk* packages track the stable OpenJDK 6 branch. The decision to have OpenJDK 6 replace IcedTea was made for several reasons:

IcedTea continues to provide autotools support (autoconf, automake, libtool, and so on), a portable interpreter for PowerPC and 64-bit PowerPC architectures, plugin support, Web Start support, and patches to integrate OpenJDK into Fedora. The IcedTea sources are included in the java-1.6.0-openjdk SRPM.

If IcedTea is already installed, the package changeover does not happen automatically. The packages related to IcedTea based on OpenJDK 7 must first be erased, then the new OpenJDK 6 packages installed. 

su -c "yum erase java-1.7.0-icedtea{,-plugin}"
su -c "yum install java-1.6.0-openjdk{,-plugin}"

Handling Java Applets

Upstream OpenJDK does not provide a plugin. The Fedora OpenJDK packages include an adaptation of gcjwebplugin, that runs untrusted applets safely in a Web browser. The plugin is packaged as java-1.6.0-openjdk-plugin.

Handling Web Start Applications

Upstream OpenJDK does not provide Web Start support. Experimental Web Start support via NetX is present in the IcedTea repository, but is not ready for deployment in Fedora.

Fedora and JPackage

Fedora includes many packages derived from the JPackage Project . Some of these packages are modified in Fedora to remove proprietary software dependencies, and to make use of GCJ's ahead-of-time compilation feature. Use the Fedora repositories to update these packages, or use the JPackage repository for packages not provided by Fedora. Refer to the JPackage website for more information about the project, and the software it provides.

Admonition("warning", "Mixing Packages from Fedora and JPackage", "Research package compatibility before you install software from both the Fedora and JPackage repositories on the same system. Incompatible packages may cause complex issues.")

An incompatibility between Fedora and the JPackage jpackage-utils, that prevented installing JPackage's jpackage-utils on Fedora, is resolved in this release.

Samba (Windows Compatibil