F10 on Homebuilt Box - Absolutely Brutal...!!!!

[Robert L Cochran]

I build my own desktop boxes and usually pick a motherboard that Fedora
is known to work on. Some motherboards just don't work, at least with
older versions of Fedora.

For example the motherboard I'm using now is the Asrock 939SLI32-eSATA2
and I'm using an PCI Express nVidia graphics card -- I forgot the name a
long time ago. Point is, I asked on the x86_64 list for board
recommendations and then bought the recommended board. I seem to recall
there was a problem with the onboard network chip but I fixed it quickly
by finding the right driver and compiling it. Then future kernel updates
had it by default.

I have not paid it the slightest attention in the last few years, but I
believe there is a hardware compatibility list you can check.

You may have seen some of my earlier posts asking about the Dell
Latitude E-series notebooks. I was wondering if others have gotten F10
to install on that. There were no responses -- interesting.

My suggestion is, ask around for a motherboard that works with Fedora
10, and buy and install that. It isn't too tough to change a
motherboard. It might cost you something for new memory though -- and
I've noticed the memory prices Dell quotes for 4 Gb chips are really
high...hmmm. I don't know if that's a market trend.

My current Asrock system is sorely in need of replacement, and I'm
thinking of retiring the desktop entirely and replacing it with a notebook.

Bob Cochran




Christopher A. Williams wrote:
> I decided to take the plunge and install F10 x86_64 preview on my main
> system at home. This was absolutely the WORST and MOST BRUTAL
> installation of Fedora I have ever experienced!!! What in wide world of
> sports is going on here??? I was up until midnight trying to get my
> system working again.
>
> Had I been a newbie, my impression on Fedora and Linux would have been
> that it truly sucks big time. Have I gotten anyone's attention yet...?
>
> ...Good. Here's what's wrong and (hopefully) what's needed to fix it.
>
> First here's a summary of my system config (output of lshal available):
>
> Motherboard:
> eVGA e7100/630i
> This MB uses nVidia onboard GeForce 7100 video with the nForce 630i
> chipset. It also uses nVidia MCP73 High Definition Audio
>
> CPU: Intel 2.4GHZ Core2 Quad
> 4GB RAM
> 320GB Western Digital SATA drive (WDC_WD3200AAKS)
> Monitor: Acer P243W (connected via DVI cable)
>
> OK - Here we go...
>
> Installation was a nightmare (as witnessed by a friend who also
> frequents this list). The main thing that was wrong was video. Simply
> put, it just doesn't work - and to the point that the Live CD is
> unusable and the Install DVD will only install in text mode. What I
> found (after a lot of troubleshooting) was that F10 in the default
> configuration just doesn't recognize the nVidia card correctly. To get
> this to even come up, I had to:
>
> 1) Build a bootable USB drive from the live CD with a 2GB persistent
> overlay
> 2) Boot the USB drive, and (because you get a BLANK SCREEN for a GDM
> login window) use Alt-F2 to switch to a different tty
> 3) Login as root and then install system-config-display to the pen drive
> 4) Switch to run level 3
> 5) Run the command: system-config-display --reconfig and accept the
> default configuration (which meant using the VESA driver and NOT the nv
> driver)
> 6) launch launch X via startx and then run the installer
>
> Notes on this (after "fixing" the USB drive):
> 1) Loading ANY video driver other than the VESA driver fails miserably.
> 2) Running the autologin loads a session, which immediately goes to a
> blanked out white screen after trying to load 2 "untitled" windows (not
> sure what these are), but just makes the desktop unusable. You must
> switch to runlevel 3, login as root, load X, and then install.
> 3) Prior to installing, the hard disk MUST BE MANUALLY PARTITIONED with
> fdisk such that ALL partitions are removed. If partitions exist on the
> drive, the installer fails when trying to re-partition the drive. You
> MUST REBOOT before attempting to install after removing all partitions
> because the kernel apparently refuses to use the new partition table.
> 4) Something in the installation process takes a REALLY LONG TIME to
> finish (I mean 20 minutes or more). I later found out that it has
> something to do with kernel install / updates.
>
> After getting to a successful completion of an install, reboot from the
> hard disk and X will again no longer work. You have to do the following
> next:
>
> 1) Boot the system, and switch to a different tty (as before)
> 2) Switch to runlevel 3
> 3) Install system-config-display (again)
> 4) Run "system-config-display --reconfig" and accept the VESA driver
> defaults (again)
> 5) Reboot the machine so that firstboot can do its thing
>
> Next, you get F10 in all its 800x600, 16 color display resolution glory
> (think Monty Python style "...and there was great rejoicing" applause
> here)...
>
> First, run all of the rawhide patches. ANOTHER PROBLEM - the kernel
> update alone took over 20 minutes to complete. Why??? It only seemed to
> move forward after I put selinux into permissive mode - at which point
> several hal oriented messages came through. I think this is also why the
> last part of the install took 20 minutes (looking like it was dead at
> the time). Reboot after the patches are done.
>
> Next, go get the RPMFusion nVidia drivers (after poking around in all of
> the /etc/yum.repos.d based repository files to point them to something
> that actually works). Apparently, RPMFusion is currently still confused
> over if we should be looking at the rawhide or pre-F10 repositories.
> Doing this multiple times last night, there was no rhyme or reason to
> this I could figure out, but eventually the rawhide repos worked.
>
> Reboot one more time, and F10 came up on my screen in accelerated
> 1920x1200 resolution with all of the colors intact.
>
> So now I have F10 running and all of my data has been restored from
> backups.
>
> * Flash works kind of - there's no sound.
> * Speaking of sound, the sound tests work, but I don't actually GET any
> sound to play until a few seconds after something tries to play. Thus,
> the login sound never gets heard, neither does the logoff sound, etc.
> * Evolution Bogofilter can't seem to figure out how to look for junk
> mail. Loads of "Error checking for Junk" messages. Spamassasin works,
> but is impressively slow (incredibly slow if you do remote tests).
>
> I'm sure I'll find more as I dig into this deeper.
>
> So there you have it. A very BRUTAL installation session for F10 preview
> and an upgrade to rawhide.
>
> I really hope we can do a lot better than this. My lshal output is
> available upon request.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Chris
>
> --
> ==================================
> By all means marry;
> If you get a good wife, you'll be happy.
> If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
>
> --Socrates
>
>