Architectures/IA64/F9BetaRelnotes

= Release notes for F9-beta on ia64 =

Welcome
Welcome to the F9 beta release Fedora for ia64. F9 is the first Fedora release to be officially supported on ia64. This ia64 build of fedora is the first to be released under the "secondary architectures" project. We have made efforts to make sure that the ia64 release is equal to the release of Fedora for x86, x86_64, ppc and ppc64, however there are some differences that should be noted.

General information on the Fedora-ia64 project can be found at:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/IA64

For more information about the secondary architectures project for Fedora see:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures

Download location
The beta can be downloaded from:

http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora-secondary/releases/test/9-Beta/

This will redirect you to one of the available mirrors for this content. However, at this point there is only 1 public mirror. We encourage anyone who managers a public mirror site to mirror the secondary arch Fedora bits. Info on how to become a Fedora mirror can be found at:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure/Mirroring

See the section with special information on secondary arch mirroring. The mirroring system also allows for setting up a private mirror only visible to clients connecting from a specific range of ip addresses (useful for users inside of large corporations).

SRPM location
Since the ia64 release was not done in sync with the other architectures it does not contain identical versions on all packages. Since the fedora MirrorManager assumes that SRPMs are identical for all arches downloading sources using yumdownloader will sometimes get a different version of the sources than was built for ia64. The entire tree containing binaries and the exact sources used for this release are kept together in the tree.

Bug reporting
Open source software survives on defect reports from end users. We would appreciate bugs reports if you find problems. Bugs should be filed at:

http://bugzilla.redhat.com/

Use the component "Fedora" and the version "rawhide" when you file a bug aginst this beta release. Please add fedora-ia64-committee@redhat.com to the CC list so we can investigate if it is specific to our ia64 build. Also, please include the full version of the package that contains the bug (such as anaconda-11.4.0.75-1 or kernel-2.6.25-1.fc9) since the versions in the ia64 beta often do not match the version that was shipped with the beta for other arches.

No live image
We do not yet have live DVD images for ia64. We hope to have this for Fedora 10.

Known issues and workarounds
There are some known issues with this release. An updated list along with workarounds can be found at:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/IA64/Workarounds

Known issues at the time of this writing are:

Installing using VNC fails
There is no known workaround for this at this time. You must use either the text or the normal GUI install under X.

/boot/efi must be "efi" type not "vfat"
Manually partitioning fails if /boot/efi is selected as "vfat" filesystem type. The workaround is to select "efi" from the list of filesystem types. This issue is also seen when trying to reuse an existing /boot/efi partition. When re-using an existing /boot/efi partition the installation will fail unless you specify to reformat it.

HP Smart Array boot failures
Occasional boot failures on HP Smart Array (aka "cciss") devices. This is still under investigation and it is unclear what the root cause is. Users who have seen this report good results by booting with selinux disabled (selinux=0).

Anaconda crash on HP Smart Array with no disks
When installing on a system that has an HP Smart Array card that has no disks configured, anaconda will crash.

The workaround is to:


 * Step 1: When you get the warning "Unable to determine geometry ..."

choose "Ignore".

was unreadable .... Would you like to initialize this drive, erasing ALL DATA?"
 * Step 2: When you are asked "The partition table on device cciss/c1d0

choose "No"

Firefox does not run on ia64
Attempting to run firefox gives the error:

Could not find compatible GRE between version 1.9b5pre and 1.9b5pre.

This has been resolved in the current rawhide tree. Updating the browser with "yum update firefox" should resolve this.