Fedora 16 instabilities
- From: "David A. De Graaf" <dad@xxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:00:09 -0500
Here's why Fedora 16 isn't ready for prime time.
Many of these have been BZ'd, without effect.
- I won't even discuss the gnome3 controversy. I've used xfce for
many years and am very happy with it.
- The worst aspect of Fedora 16 is it has made computing a stochastic
process. Instead of the rock-solid behaviour of previous releases,
Fedora 16 behaves randomly.
- On two laptops with encrypted disks, when booting, one asks for the
passphrase once; the other twice. The second request can only be
seen if rhgb is removed from the kernel boot line, and you watch the
systemd spewage carefully.
- The command 'reboot' typed in an X terminal emulator, sometimes
works; but often hangs the machine, requiring pressing reset.
- Shutdown takes much too long, and often fails completely, like
reboot. This is quite annoying, especially with laptops.
- The 'df' command has been rendered nearly useless due to the
voluminous extraneous output.
- The mount command, which was once useful, isn't any more. It's
simply unreadable.
- The systemd system has replaced the simple and easily understood
sysv init system with a jumbled mess. The output during boot is
scrambled and the terminology is grossly verbose and confusing.
It may be a tiny bit quicker to boot on a multicore machine, but the
loss of comprehensibility and reliability is much too high a price.
- The systemd alternative to editing /etc/inittab with runlevel = 3
is grotesque.
- /var/log/boot.log is empty, sometimes. When it is written, it
contains no dates.
- If 'startxfce4' is used at a console prompt to start an xfce session,
root windows have $DISPLAY undefined, and cannot run privileged
programs. Critical tabs in various windows (shutdown, nm-applet
editing, etc.) are greyed out. A workaround is to create $HOME/.xinitrc
with this cryptic line:
ck-launch-session dbus-launch --sh-syntax --exit-with-session startxfce4
and then use 'startx', as if starting gnome. :-(
- grub2 fails to correctly initialize /boot/grub2/grub.cnf when older
kernel objects are present in /boot, and alternate root partitions
exist.
- grub2 sometimes sets the default kernel to an older one; sometimes
to the newest one.
- Changing UID's to start at 1000 instead of 500 is just annoying.
- The latest kernel, 3.1.7-1.fc16.x86_64, causes skype to crash
unless it is run with strace, in which case it fails to fail.
Go figure!
- With earlier kernels, skype was merely unreliable, sometimes with no
microphone, sometimes no sound, sometimes no video. The popup that
announces an incoming call fails to appear - sometimes. Despite its
non-open status, skype is a critical utility. Some way must be found
to support it so it is reliable. Making changes to the kernel that
destroy it is not acceptable.
- Some programs fail at random, unpredictible and unrepeatable times.
Qtstalker occasionally simply stops working. It's window can be
deleted, but a zombie remains.
- Systemd doesn't know how to tell time. During boot, time is off by
4 hours, then is fixed when ntp gets going. Perhaps as a result,
sometimes, not always, X starts with a screensaver. It's random!
- The cups print system can no longer print full Legal size pages.
The print space is shifted upward and truncated.
- The /etc/rc.d/rc.local file has been deleted. It can be recreated,
but you must know to start it with #!/bin/sh and make it
executable. Why not simply retain a properly constructed dummy?
- gkrellm -s remotesys often quits without reason. Then, sometimes,
it cannot be restarted without rebooting remotesys.
More randomness.
- When xfce is restarted, the session manager restarts gkrellm windows
with the bottom section truncated - sometimes. Another randomness.
The full length can be restored by manually running the
Configuration popup and changing some item, then changing it back.
- The session manager for xfce seems unable to restart roxterm
windows, but can handle xterm's fine. Why?
- On one laptop the NumLock will sometimes turn itself on. This can
be annoying if a password must be typed.
- On one machine, the password had be typed quickly in a console. The
root password was too hard to type to meet that requirement.
However, if it was entered by cut-and-paste, it was OK.
In X, there was no problem.
- On one machine (of seven) the CD drawer pops open at random times.
- An older nvidia NV18 GeForce4 MX 440 card requires the earlier
version of the nvidia driver - which is no longer supported. The
nouveau driver doesn't work nearly as well. A perfectly functional
video card is rendered disfunctional.
- Libreoffice insists on making files inaccessible via nfs.
A workaround is to edit /usr/lib64/libreoffice/program/soffice to
comment out these two lines:
## SAL_ENABLE_FILE_LOCKING=1 ## export SAL_ENABLE_FILE_LOCKING
but this must be redone whenever a new update comes along.
- The rt2500usb driver for my DLink USB wireless transceiver won't
work reliably unless I disable power management with:
iwconfig wlan0 power off
However, trying to do this automatically in a control file,
/etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/16-power
only works sometimes. Another puzzling and annoying randomness.
- A directory, ~/.gvfs, cannot be read even by root. This should be
impossible in a sane Linux system. This unacceptable behaviour can
be expunged by removing the gvfs-fuse package, which takes with it
the shotwell, totem, and totem-nautilus packages. So far, I haven't
noticed any loss of functionality.
- The microphone on one machine (but not others) wouldn't work until I
added a cryptic line to the beginning of
/etc/modprobe.d/dist-alsa.conf:
options snd-hda-intel model=auto
- Fedora 16 simply cannot be used with mythtv. It refuses to detect
any of my three TV receiver cards.
- The mythfrontend program wouldn't start on a remote machine until I,
cryptically, removed ~/.ICEAuthority. I have no idea what this is
all about.
- Firefox can be configured to print a header and footer to record
the URL, etc. However, the cups printers refuse to print it,
truncating this useful info.
- My son, after reviewing this list, adds some more:
Pnmixer fails to start roughly 1/3 of the time - meaning no sound -
in XFCE4. (I don't have pnmixer installed, so cannot confirm.)
- Login and logout can take a variable length of time - from roughly
one second to roughly one minute - for no apparent reason. So far
this happens only on a newly built machine.
- The problem of gkrellm not properly redrawing on restart may have
been fixed. We'll see... IT'S RANDOM!!!
--
David A. De Graaf DATIX, Inc. Hendersonville, NC
dad@xxxxxxxx www.datix.us
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