Common F16 bugs

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This page documents common bugs in Fedora 16 and, if available, fixes or workarounds for these problems. If you find your problem in this page, do not file a bug for it, unless otherwise instructed. Where appropriate, a reference to the current bug(s) in Bugzilla is included.

Fedora 16 pre-release
Fedora 16 has not yet been released. During this pre-release period, this page will cover known issues in the Fedora 16 pre-releases. Issues that are fixed will be removed from the page once a fix is available (for instance, an issue that affects the Beta but is fixed in the final release will be removed at the time of that release).

Release Notes

Read the F16 Alpha release announcement and the Fedora 16 release notes for specific information about changes in Fedora 16 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. Please follow the style and guidelines explained in the comments in the page source.
• 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

Attempting to upgrade a system with /var on a different partition or LV to / will fail

link to this item - Bugzilla: #748119

If you have your system set up with /var on a separate logical volume or partition to that used for the root filesystem (/), then anaconda will not find the RPM db in /var/lib/rpm/ and fail to offer the option to upgrade. This happens with preupgrade as well as upgrade from install media. One workaround is to copy the contents of /var/lib/rpm/ to the root filesystem volume. Anaconda will then detect your current installation and be able to upgrade it.

Upgrade from Fedora 14 to Fedora 16 with preupgrade leaves bootloader in previous configuration

link to this item - Bugzilla: #737731

If you use the preupgrade utility to upgrade from Fedora 14 to Fedora 16, the bootloader configuration will be left in its previous state. This is due to preupgrade not recognizing that anaconda cannot 'update' the bootloader configuration in such an upgrade, due to the migration from grub to grub2 that should occur as part of the upgrade. This will result either in the system attempting to boot with a Fedora 15 kernel, or failing to boot entirely (depending on whether the previously-installed kernel is still present following the upgrade).

This issue should be resolved with an update to the Fedora 14 preupgrade shortly. We recommend waiting for this update or upgrading via the DVD or network install image, rather than using a non-fixed preupgrade package. You may also pre-upgrade first to Fedora 15, and from there to Fedora 16.

No workable bootloader action in text mode upgrade

link to this item - Bugzilla: #742207

If you use the text mode of the Fedora installer to perform an upgrade from Fedora 15 to Fedora 16 Beta, there is no usable option at the stage where you are asked what to do with the bootloader. The update option cannot be used due to the switch from grub to grub2, and the skip option will often result in an unbootable system as the kernel(s) referenced in the bootloader configuration will no longer be installed.

The easiest workaround for this issue is to avoid using the installer's text mode, if you can. If you cannot avoid this, you should select Skip bootloader and then manually update the bootloader configuration from the installer shell (available on VT2) or from another OS (such as a live boot) following the upgrade process.

Bootloader installation fails when installing via serial console

link to this item - Bugzilla: #736993

When using the serial console interface for installation of Fedora 16 Beta, installation of the bootloader will fail, as in this configuration, grub2-mkconfig relies on /boot/grub2 being populated, which is only the case if grub2-install has been run previously.

To work around this issue, after installation has completed (and bootloader installation has failed) but before rebooting from the installer, run these commands from the console:

# chroot /mnt/sysimage
# grub2-install /dev/sda
# grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Bootloader installation fails on NVIDIA BIOS RAID arrays

link to this item - Bugzilla: #742226

The limited testing done so far indicates that, when installing Fedora 16 Beta to an NVIDIA BIOS-controlled RAID array, bootloader installation will fail, leaving the system unbootable. The error reported in the logs will be of the form /sbin/grub2-probe: error: cannot find a GRUB drive for /dev/mapper/nvidia_cjfffajep2. Check your device.map.

There is currently no known workaround for this issue besides using Linux software RAID in preference to BIOS RAID.

Software issues

X crashes when KDE starts up in a qemu / KVM virtual machine

link to this item - Bugzilla: #731245

If you try to log in to a KDE environment in Fedora 16 Alpha on a virtual machine using the Fedora qemu/kvm stack (such as a machine created via virt-manager, X will crash. If using a login manager, you will see the KDE startup sequence, then the login manager will reappear.

To work around this issue, use the vesa driver: select the Boot (Basic Video) option if booting the live image, or the Install system with basic video driver option if booting the traditional installer. The installed system will use the same driver, and KDE should work.

3D-accelerated applications crash when using NVIDIA proprietary driver

link to this item - Bugzilla: #737223

Third-party vendor issue
The root cause of this problem is not Fedora, but rather software provided by NVIDIA. If you are interested in a fix for this issue, you must contact that vendor through their web site.

Due to an incompatibility between a recent change to glibc and the proprietary NVIDIA driver, if you install the proprietary NVIDIA driver on a Fedora 16 Beta system, all 3D-accelerated applications will crash on launch with a segfault in NVIDIA's libGL library.

Fedora would naturally recommend the use of the open source nouveau driver as preferable to use of the proprietary driver, but it has been reported that downgrading to glibc-2.14.90-4 or earlier is a workaround for those who require the proprietary driver.

Glibc may cause applications to crash with large groups

link to this item - Bugzilla: #750361

Groups with either a large number of users or simply a large number of characters forming the user list may have problems with the glibc shipped in the release. The symptoms of this will vary depending on how you store your group information. If using a file in /etc/group programs which attempt to access group information for a user in that group will crash. If using a local nss db, the group will simply fail to be added to the user's list of groups when the user logs in. The latter may be worked around by running "newgrp groupname". At this time, it's unknown how these bugs affect other nss backends.

Frequent crash in telepathy-mission-control

link to this item - Bugzilla: #699015

There appears to be a severe bug in the telepathy-mission-control package included in Fedora 16 Beta which causes it to crash frequently. This package forms part of GNOME 3's Empathy / Telepathy combination which handles chat support, so you will notice it when running Empathy and setting up or using IM accounts.

There is no known workaround for the crash, but other IM software is freely available in the Fedora repositories if the crashes render Telepathy unusable for you. One commonly-used alternative is pidgin. The desktop team is working to resolve the issue in telepathy-mission-control as soon as possible.

Kernel updates not handled correctly if both grub and grub2 are installed (e.g. after EFI installation)

link to this item - Bugzilla: #725185

When installing an updated kernel, the grubby utility is called to update the bootloader configuration. If both grub and grub2 packages are installed, grub is the active bootloader, and a version of grubby older than 8.3-1.fc16 is used, the entry for the new kernel will have no initrd= line and will likely fail to boot as a consequence. This bug should rarely be encountered in the ordinary course of events, but unfortunately, when installing Fedora 16 Beta natively (not via BIOS compatibility) on an EFI-capable system, this is the default configuration.

To avoid running into this problem, please ensure you update the grubby package before installing any kernel updates, after installing Fedora 16 Beta via EFI. If you are hit by this problem, the first kernel installed as part of Beta installation should still boot correctly, and you can fix up the other bootloader entries from that kernel.

A kernel update which requires the fixed version of grubby should be issued shortly, which should make it impossible to be affected by this problem.