Common F9 bugs

This page documents common bugs in Fedora 9 and, if available, fixes or workarounds for these problems. If you find your problem in this page, do not file a bug for it. Where appropriate, a reference to the current bug(s) in Bugzilla is included.

With the beta release of Fedora 10 comes the Common F10 bugs page.

Release Summary, Announcement and Notes

 * Releases/9/ReleaseSummary - Make sure you read this page and related references in detail.

My Bug Is Not Listed
Not every bug is listed in this page. You can use bugzilla queries in the bottom of this page for that. We have collected this based on commonly discussed issues in our mailing lists and forums. If you believe any particular bug report is missed out here and if you have wiki access, add it this page or contact RahulSundaram with the bugzilla report number explaining why you believe that particular report qualifies as a common issue.

Proprietary (third-party) video drivers
link to this item

Fedora ships a new X.Org X11 server (1.4.99) which brings a large number of benefits to users and a new ABI as described in the feature list.

All drivers contained within Fedora have been ported to use this ABI and mostly work as expected. Third-party drivers from some vendors (AMD (fglrx)) are not yet compatible with this new X.Org ABI. (nVidia has also taken their time, but as of May 28, 2008, an updated driver is available from them and from third-party repositories.) This is not a bug in Fedora, nor even something Fedora can fix, only the third-party vendors can update the drivers due to their choice of licensing. Refer LWN for more details at

http://lwn.net/Articles/283291/

You can usually find proprietary drivers in third party repositories such as Livna at http://rpm.livna.org

Note that Fedora Project does not recommend or support proprietary software.

Touchpad doesn't work
link to this item - Bugzilla: #439386 along with 232630, 172797, 436641.

Touchpad doesn't work on a number of systems.

Some Samsung hard disks crash the installer
link to this item - Bugzilla: #442457

Some Samsung hard disks respond to certain queries with a model string that ends in a slash ("/"). This confuses HAL and produces an error that prevents normal installation, although the Live installer is unaffected.

We are working on an patch to fix the problem. For now, users are advised to install from Live or use a different hard disk model if possible.

Emacs not upgrading cleanly
link to this item - Bugzilla: #394131

If you are upgrading to Fedora 9 and use, you must upgrade to the latest version of   for your prior release to ensure a clean upgrade. Fedora 8 users must have  or later, while Fedora 7 users must have.

Emacs flyspell-mode produces "Enabling Flyspell mode gave an error"
link to this item - Bugzilla: #448414

As a result of the dictionary consolidation work , attempts to use M-x flyspell-mode, or to automatically enable it via lines in your .emacs file such as: (add-hook 'text-mode-hook '(lambda (flyspell-mode t))) (add-hook 'prog-mode-hook '(lambda (flyspell-prog-mode t))) fail with the error message quoted above. One circumvention is to (also) add to your .emacs file the following: (setq ispell-program-name "hunspell")
 * for Fedora 9 where ispell dictionaries are gone ...

README-BURNING-ISOS document is ugly
link to this item - Bugzilla: #446092

Due to a problem with the XML conversion package, the   file on the Fedora 9 ISO images is hard to read. You can find a current readable version at: http://docs.fedoraproject.org/readme-burning-isos/

Xfce-media-installs
link to this item - Bugzilla: #446621

The Xfce group may show as available for install on media installed (cd/dvd), when the Xfce packages are not available on the media. The install will complete, but no Xfce desktop will be available. After the install, run a 'yum groupinstall XFCE' or install the Xfce group from the add/remove software GUI. This will install the Xfce desktop.

No Sound with Adobe Flash
link to this item - Bugzilla: #447108

If there is no sound after installing adobe flash plugin, install package libflashsupport. yum install libflashsupport

Xen Dom0 (host) support
link to this item - Bugzilla: #437930

Fedora 9 does not provide support for running Xen Dom0 (hosts). The provided Xen kernel is for Guest (DomU) installs running under another operating systems Dom0. You can continue to run Fedora 8 Dom0's until Fedora 10 is released.

system-config-printer won't start
link to this item - Bugzilla: #443205

If there is a print server on the local network that advertises a Windows shared printer (anything with a  URL), the printer administration tool   may fail to start.

This will be fixed with a soon-to-be-released update.

GDM language selector isn't available initially
link to this item - Bugzilla: #445631

The very first time GDM starts up the language selector will not appear when a user is selected. Subsequent runs of GDM work okay. This is going to be addressed in an F9 update.

Installer crashes when customizing packages, if using Russian
link to this item - Bugzilla: #445517

Due to a problem with the Russian translation for the installer, if you attempt to customize your packages the installer may crash when you click a checkbox in the customization screen.

You can work around this problem by either choosing to customize packages after installation, or by installing in a different language, and changing the system language to Russian after installation.

USB Drives Cause Install to Fail
link to this item - Bugzilla: #466106

USB drives that are attached to the system and powered up may cause the install to fail. If possible power down the device, remove it and restart the installation. Once the system is updated the device(s) will work properly.

NetworkManager now handles static configuration files
link to this item

NetworkManager can now handle the static network configuration files written by Anaconda and, which reside in.

This may cause problems if you enable both the  service and the   service.

New Package Manager (PackageKit)
link to this item

Fedora 9 includes PackageKit, a new distribution-neutral package management system. It has some important differences from the older system - read the PackageKitFaq for details.