Over a year ago, the hard drive in my primary desktop at home bricked itself and rather than going through the hassle of reinstalling Win7 on the new disk, I decided to go with FC12. I’ve been pretty happy with it in general, since I’ve always been partial to Red Hat and use CentOS primarily at work.

Last week I got the great idea to upgrade to FC14. In hindsight I can’t even recall what led me to try this, but it didn’t end well. I tried the “preupgrade” procedure, which appeared to do the entire upgrade from FC12 to FC14 in place. I left it overnight, and when I looked at it the next day it looked like it was done. I was in FC14 and everything looked ok. But then I tried syncing my photos over NFS and discovered nfs wasn’t running on my desktop. When I tried starting it, it failed. After some trial and error, I used the Google and found that this is just what happens when upgrading to FC14 due to changes between FC12 and FC14, namely the introduction of systemd.

In all the threads I read, the “solution” was a clean install of Fedora. I tried doing this without formatting my / (root) partition, since that had 500 gigs of my stuff on it, but it kept failing. What I ended up doing was downloading partedmagic, which is a totally awesome partitioning tool. If you’re familiar with Partition Magic, this is similar but Linux-based and free. I burned the iso to disc, booted to it, and shrunk my / partition from 900 GB to 850 GB, and created a new 50 GB partition at the end of my disk without losing any of my data:

FC15 Partitions

Once this was done, which took surprisingly little time, I did a net install of FC15. I opted for a net install rather than downloading the ISO because I feel that with FiOS it’s actually faster than reading a DVD, and avoids having to run “yum update” afterwards.

So, I ended up with FC15 clean-installed to the new “/” partition. I moved everything around so the old partition is mounted at /docs and has all my stuff in it. I’d heard that FC15 was causing an uproar but until I logged into Gnome 3 myself I didn’t really understand the fuss. It’s going to take some getting used to, but after adding the tint2 taskbar it’s not too awful.

But back to systemd. In FC15 I wanted to ensure Samba started at boot, since that’s how I share docs between my VMs and host. Chkconfig is still there, but based on my problems with NFS and systemd on FC14 I decided to look into it a bit and see if there’s a “new” way to enable stuff at startup. There is!

Instead of:

# chkconfig smb on

The command is:

# systemctl enable smb.service

Of course, when I did this it apparently fell back to using chkconfig for smb:

[root@evan-fedora ~]# systemctl enable smb.service
smb.service is not a native service, redirecting to /sbin/chkconfig.
Executing /sbin/chkconfig smb on

It does say in the Fedora wiki that systemd respects chkconfig and vice versa, so I guess this post is kind of pointless and I should have just linked to the wiki. But, whatever.

So I’ve gone back to Linux from Mac, due to the SSD issues I had with my Macbook Pro basically making VMware unusable. A Win7 VM would grind the guest and host to a halt on the 7200 RPM SATA OEM drive, and the SSD wouldn’t work, so I put the SSD back in my HP and installed CentOS 6 x86_64. Not really ideal, but at least it works.

CentOS 6 ships with Firefox 3.6.9, which is really old by now. Fine for a server, but I wanted FF6. I grabbed the Firefox 6.0.1 bz2 from VoxCast, unzipped it and copied it to /usr/lib64/firefox-6. Then I ran yum remove firefox to remove 3.6.9 and avoid any issues. I tried the instructions from my older post on this subject but for whatever reason it didn’t work – I’m guessing because I’m not using the distro’s Firefox RPM.

I followed these instructions to get the Flash 11 64-bit plugin installed. It still wasn’t working though.

I ended up creating a symlink:

ln -s /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so /home/evan/.mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so

When I started up Firefox after creating the symlink, Flash worked.

Additionally, to set Firefox 6 as the default browser, run gnome-default-applications-properties, select Custom, and paste /usr/lib64/firefox-6/firefox %s in the Command: field.

Update: I upgraded my home desktop PC from FC12 to FC14 last night and used the above procedure to install Firefox 6.0.2 on it with Flash 11. So, in case anyone was wondering, the above works for Fedora as well.

To aid the flood of visitors apparently looking for Fedora 15 Beta Download ISOs:

Fedora 15 Mirror list

Install DVDs:

• i386

• x86_64

Fedora Desktop LiveCDs:

• i686

• x86_64

Fedora KDE LiveCDs:

• i686

• x86_64

Source: http://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease

Another influx of visitors searching for the answer to this question. I think this is probably coming from listing the referring keywords right on the page, and then Google indexing those. Anyway, to answer the question, apparently not, at least not via official RPMs:

Hi

GNOME 3 won’t be available as a update to Fedora 14. You can try the Fedora 15 Beta that is about to be released in a few days.

Perhaps not you wanted but you can try the Live CD at

http://gnome3.org/tryit.html

__________________
Rahul
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RahulSundaram

Source: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?p=1459175

So I was complaining the other day about losing support for the Radeon X1600 when I upgraded my work laptop from FC12 to FC14. I was on the verge of ordering a new laptop (ThinkPad W510 with quadcore i7 and 1GB Quadro looks niiiice…) when I figured it was worth at least giving a true clean install a shot. I backed up all my stuff to an external USB drive, repartitioned my drive (finally done in a sane way), did a fresh FC14 install, and miraculously everything seemed to work. rsynced all my stuff back over and it was almost perfect. I still have a weird issue when trying to unlock my screen after it goes into screensaver – basically I can’t, it just stays locked and I’ve resorted to doing “init 3″ and then “init 5″ to make it work again. That’s a minor annoyance though at this point. So, yay again for Fedora! I wouldn’t go with ATi for a Linux machine again though.

I’d been running FC12 for quite a while and I noticed the past few weeks have been devoid of yum updates (except for Google Chrome). I figured FC15 is on the horizon; now’s a good time to upgrade to FC14.

I followed the basic procedure laid out here and went 12 -> 13 no problem. 13 -> 14: problem. The upgrade appeared to go well (loooong time to complete, downloading/installing 1+ gigs of packages, even over my 25 mbps home line) but X would not start no matter what. At this point I learned that system-config-display has been deprecated in FC14 and isn’t even there! I tried “Xorg –configure” but that configuration still didn’t work. I then tried doing a yum downgrade to FC13… let me save you the trouble: never try this.

I ended up downloading the FC14 DVD ISO and burning it, and doing a fresh install (repair, of course, just drops you to a shell – the equivalent of throwing you a life preserver in the middle of the ocean and leaving you there) without touching any of my existing partitions. This ended up being pretty painless and after it was complete everything worked. Or so it seemed…

I did the FC14 fresh install on Saturday (after having borked the laptop on Friday). At work on Monday I plugged in my secondary monitor and immediately noticed weirdness. Lines all over both displays, the Gnome panel unusable, any window that was created wasn’t drawing properly. And the topper was rebooting didn’t work – it would go to this colorful jumbley screen and just sit there until I did a hard poweroff. If I unplugged the external monitor and turned the computer on, it worked fine.

I’ve tried several things – installing the akmod-catalyst stuff and x11-catalyst-drv stuff via yum, but none of that seems to make much of a difference. livna-display-config throws an error that I don’t have the radeon drivers installed. I’ve tried the official ATI radeon driver for X1600, which complains that it can’t find XFree86. I tried to get around this by symlinking /usr/bin/Xorg to /usr/bin/XFree86, which got me past that hurdle, but then it complained that I have no adapter. I tried the other Linux radeon driver, which didn’t complain about XFree86 at least, but also said it didn’t find any AMD/ATI adapters.

At this point it seems these are my options:

• Live with one monitor (annoying)
• Downgrade/reinstall to FC13 (eventual obsolescence)
• Switch OS (Not an Ubuntu fan; Win7 doesn’t really make sense)
• Switch to Mac (can’t imagine using one for work)
• Buy a new computer and put FC14 on it (my C2D T7200 is kind of old…)

None of these options is very good. For now I’m just sticking with 1 monitor. Not the end of the world, but it’s annoying to run a WinXP VM and do my regular tasks inside a single screen.

dmesg below showing stupid errors:

[root@ehoffman ~]# aticonfig
aticonfig: No supported adapters detected
[root@ehoffman ~]# uname -a
Linux ehoffman 2.6.35.10-74.fc14.x86_64 #1 SMP Thu Dec 23 16:04:50 UTC 2010 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[root@ehoffman ~]# lspci | grep -i radeon
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc M56P [Radeon Mobility X1600]
[root@ehoffman ~]# dmesg | grep -i radeon
[   14.717757] [drm] radeon defaulting to kernel modesetting.
[   14.717761] [drm] radeon kernel modesetting enabled.
[   14.717827] radeon 0000:01:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
[   14.723052] radeon 0000:01:00.0: VRAM: 256M 0x00000000 - 0x0FFFFFFF (256M used)
[   14.723056] radeon 0000:01:00.0: GTT: 512M 0x10000000 - 0x2FFFFFFF
[   14.723167] radeon 0000:01:00.0: irq 48 for MSI/MSI-X
[   14.723174] radeon 0000:01:00.0: radeon: using MSI.
[   14.723211] [drm] radeon: irq initialized.
[   14.723322] [drm] radeon: 256M of VRAM memory ready
[   14.723325] [drm] radeon: 512M of GTT memory ready.
[   14.725519] [drm] radeon: 1 quad pipes, 2 z pipes initialized.
[   14.733804] [drm] radeon: ring at 0x0000000010000000
[   14.734017] [drm] radeon: ib pool ready.
[   14.734446] [drm] Radeon Display Connectors
[   14.844393] [drm] radeon: power management initialized
[   15.295827] fbcon: radeondrmfb (fb0) is primary device
[   15.296451] fb0: radeondrmfb frame buffer device
[   15.296546] [drm] Initialized radeon 2.5.0 20080528 for 0000:01:00.0 on minor 0
[root@ehoffman ~]#

Edit: I should probably mention that as soon as I install the xorg-x11-drv-catalyst stuff, X won’t start. If I remove it, it boots up fine (though the 2nd monitor screws causes it to freak out). This is pretty strange; I’ve done it several times to confirm:

Feb 08 11:35:09 Erased: fglrx64_6_9_0
Feb 08 11:36:53 Updated: libuuid-2.18-4.8.fc14.i686
Feb 08 11:36:54 Updated: postgresql-libs-8.4.7-1.fc14.x86_64
Feb 08 11:36:54 Updated: libuuid-devel-2.18-4.8.fc14.x86_64
Feb 08 11:41:52 Updated: google-chrome-stable-9.0.597.94-73967.x86_64
Feb 08 11:44:11 Installed: fglrx64_7_5_0-8.812-1.x86_64
Feb 08 11:48:21 Erased: fglrx64_7_5_0
Feb 08 12:25:01 Installed: xorg-x11-drv-catalyst-libs-10.12-2.fc14.x86_64
Feb 08 12:25:07 Installed: xorg-x11-drv-catalyst-10.12-2.fc14.x86_64
Feb 08 12:25:08 Installed: akmod-catalyst-10.12-1.fc14.x86_64
Feb 08 12:39:16 Erased: kmod-catalyst-2.6.35.10-74.fc14.x86_64
Feb 08 12:39:20 Erased: xorg-x11-drv-catalyst-libs
Feb 08 12:39:21 Erased: xorg-x11-drv-catalyst
Feb 08 12:39:21 Erased: akmod-catalyst

HP Compaq nc8430, Core 2 Duo T7200 2.0GHz. Fedora Core 12 x86_64, kernel 2.6.32.19-163.fc12.x86_64 (just updated via yum).

At idle, with nothing running in the foreground, the CPU is around 70-72° Celsius, and the other sensors are 80°+. Why is this? It seems like every time I run yum update the machine gets hotter. I wonder if there’s any way to figure out what’s causing this. In any case, it’s pretty annoying. It’s uncomfortable putting the thing on my lap for any length of time.

Notice the temperatures at the top. The first two are Core0 and Core1, the other 2 are other sensors. The CPU is running at 1.0 GHz due to SpeedStep and the temp is still 70°C.

Edit: I forgot I’ve been logging temperature via sensord. I just turned the computer on after having it off all night and within 10 minutes the CPU is back up to > 60°C.

Aug 26 00:01:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 00:06:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 00:11:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 66.0 C
Aug 26 00:16:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 66.0 C
Aug 26 00:21:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 66.0 C
Aug 26 00:26:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 00:31:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 00:36:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 00:41:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 66.0 C
Aug 26 00:46:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 00:51:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 00:56:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 66.0 C
Aug 26 01:01:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 66.0 C
Aug 26 01:06:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 01:11:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 01:16:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 01:21:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 01:26:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 01:31:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 01:36:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 01:41:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 01:46:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 01:51:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 01:56:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 02:01:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 64.0 C
Aug 26 02:06:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 64.0 C
Aug 26 02:11:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 64.0 C
Aug 26 02:16:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 02:21:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 02:26:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 02:31:34 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 02:36:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 64.0 C
Aug 26 02:41:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 02:46:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 02:51:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 02:56:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 03:01:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 03:06:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 03:11:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 03:16:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 03:21:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 03:26:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 03:31:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 03:36:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 03:41:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 03:46:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 03:51:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 03:56:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 04:01:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 04:06:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 04:11:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 04:16:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 04:21:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 04:26:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 66.0 C
Aug 26 04:31:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 66.0 C
Aug 26 04:36:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 66.0 C
Aug 26 04:41:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 66.0 C
Aug 26 04:46:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 66.0 C
Aug 26 04:51:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 66.0 C
Aug 26 04:56:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 05:01:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 66.0 C
Aug 26 05:06:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 66.0 C
Aug 26 05:11:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 66.0 C
Aug 26 05:16:35 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 05:21:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 05:26:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 05:31:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 05:36:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 05:41:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 05:46:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 66.0 C
Aug 26 05:51:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 05:56:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 06:01:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 06:06:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 06:11:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 06:16:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 66.0 C
Aug 26 06:21:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 66.0 C
Aug 26 06:26:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 06:31:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 06:36:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 06:41:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 06:46:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 06:51:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 06:56:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 07:01:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 07:06:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 07:11:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 07:16:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 64.0 C
Aug 26 07:21:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 64.0 C
Aug 26 07:26:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 64.0 C
Aug 26 07:31:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 63.0 C
Aug 26 07:36:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 63.0 C
Aug 26 07:41:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 63.0 C
Aug 26 07:46:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 64.0 C
Aug 26 07:51:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 64.0 C
Aug 26 07:56:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 64.0 C
Aug 26 08:01:36 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 64.0 C
Aug 26 08:06:37 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 64.0 C
Aug 26 08:11:37 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 64.0 C
Aug 26 08:16:37 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 64.0 C
Aug 26 08:21:37 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 08:26:37 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 08:31:37 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 08:36:37 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 08:41:37 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 08:46:37 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 08:51:37 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 08:56:37 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 09:01:37 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 65.0 C
Aug 26 09:06:37 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 66.0 C
Aug 26 09:11:37 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 66.0 C
Aug 26 09:16:37 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 78.0 C
Aug 26 09:21:37 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 83.0 C
Aug 26 09:26:37 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 70.0 C
Aug 26 09:31:37 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 72.0 C
Aug 26 09:36:37 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 74.0 C
Aug 26 09:41:37 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 72.0 C
Aug 26 09:46:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 71.0 C
Aug 26 09:51:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 71.0 C
Aug 26 09:56:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 72.0 C
Aug 26 10:01:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 73.0 C
Aug 26 10:06:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 71.0 C
Aug 26 10:11:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 78.0 C
Aug 26 10:16:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 71.0 C
Aug 26 10:21:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 72.0 C
Aug 26 10:26:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 72.0 C
Aug 26 10:31:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 73.0 C
Aug 26 10:36:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 74.0 C
Aug 26 10:41:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 76.0 C
Aug 26 10:46:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 73.0 C
Aug 26 10:51:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 73.0 C
Aug 26 10:56:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 74.0 C
Aug 26 11:01:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 74.0 C
Aug 26 11:06:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 74.0 C
Aug 26 11:11:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 75.0 C
Aug 26 11:16:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 74.0 C
Aug 26 11:21:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 75.0 C
Aug 26 11:26:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 75.0 C
Aug 26 11:31:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 74.0 C
Aug 26 11:36:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 75.0 C
Aug 26 11:41:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 73.0 C
Aug 26 11:46:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 74.0 C
Aug 26 11:51:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 74.0 C
Aug 26 11:56:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 73.0 C
Aug 26 12:01:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 74.0 C
Aug 26 12:06:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 74.0 C
Aug 26 12:11:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 73.0 C
Aug 26 12:16:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 86.0 C
Aug 26 12:21:38 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 77.0 C
Aug 26 12:26:39 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 74.0 C
Aug 26 12:31:39 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 73.0 C
Aug 26 12:36:39 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 77.0 C
Aug 26 12:41:39 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 79.0 C
Aug 26 12:46:39 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 96.0 C
Aug 26 12:51:39 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 95.0 C
Aug 26 12:56:39 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 75.0 C
Aug 26 13:01:39 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 94.0 C
Aug 26 13:06:39 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 73.0 C
Aug 26 13:11:39 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 94.0 C
Aug 26 13:16:39 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 94.0 C
Aug 26 13:21:39 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 77.0 C
Aug 26 13:26:39 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 94.0 C
Aug 26 13:31:39 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 94.0 C
Aug 26 13:36:39 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 95.0 C
Aug 26 13:42:18 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 80.0 C
Aug 26 13:47:18 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 72.0 C
Aug 26 13:52:18 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 70.0 C
Aug 26 13:57:18 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 71.0 C
Aug 26 14:02:18 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 69.0 C
Aug 26 14:07:18 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 77.0 C
Aug 26 14:12:18 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 78.0 C
Aug 26 14:17:18 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 72.0 C
Aug 26 14:22:18 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 70.0 C
Aug 26 14:27:18 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 70.0 C
Aug 26 14:32:18 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 72.0 C
Aug 26 14:37:18 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 71.0 C
Aug 26 14:42:18 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 70.0 C
Aug 26 14:47:18 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 71.0 C
Aug 26 14:52:18 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 70.0 C
Aug 26 14:57:18 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 69.0 C
Aug 26 15:02:18 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 69.0 C
Aug 26 15:07:18 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 69.0 C
Aug 26 15:12:18 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 70.0 C
Aug 26 15:17:18 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 70.0 C
Aug 26 15:22:18 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 70.0 C
Aug 26 15:27:18 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 69.0 C
Aug 26 15:32:19 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 69.0 C
Aug 26 15:37:19 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 68.0 C
Aug 26 15:42:19 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 70.0 C
Aug 26 15:47:19 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 69.0 C
Aug 26 15:52:19 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 70.0 C
Aug 26 15:57:19 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 70.0 C
Aug 26 16:02:19 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 70.0 C
Aug 26 16:07:19 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 70.0 C
Aug 26 16:12:19 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 71.0 C
Aug 26 16:17:19 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 70.0 C
Aug 26 16:22:19 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 70.0 C
Aug 26 16:27:19 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 71.0 C
Aug 26 16:32:19 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 72.0 C
Aug 26 16:37:19 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 71.0 C
Aug 26 16:42:19 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 73.0 C
Aug 26 16:47:19 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 73.0 C
Aug 26 16:52:19 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 72.0 C
Aug 26 16:57:19 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 75.0 C
Aug 26 17:02:19 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 71.0 C
Aug 26 17:07:19 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 71.0 C
Aug 27 08:23:10 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 43.0 C
Aug 27 08:28:10 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 55.0 C
Aug 27 08:33:09 ehoffman sensord:   Core 0: 62.0 C

I thought this would be a pretty straightforward task. It was, though it took several minutes to track down the CSS library needed for decryption of the DVD. All I want to do is copy Talking Words Factory to my phone so my kid can watch it in the car if needed. It looked like Brasero was the tool for the job, but I got some error about needing a plugin for it to be able to decrypt it. I found libdvdcss here and after installing the RPM, everything worked. Now I just need to encode it with ffmpeg.

Updated 8/31/2011 See my newer post on this subject.

I know I’ve been through this before because I’ve setup Fedora before and it’s working. But I just installed FC12 on my desktop at home (since my Seagate drive bricked itself a few days ago and I had to reinstall anyway) and while I finally got the Adobe Flash plugin working, it didn’t have any audio, which made YouTube kind of suck. Anyway, this of course was a solved problem, I just forgot where the fix was located… but duh, it’s on the Fedora website. A simple

yum install flash-plugin nspluginwrapper.x86_64 \
    nspluginwrapper.i686 alsa-plugins-pulseaudio.i686 \
    libcurl.i686

and everything appears to be fine. Thank you Fedora!

I upgraded my work laptop from FC11 to FC12 yesterday using the “preupgrade” tool. It was pretty simple, though it took a lot longer than I expected. There was some funkiness with my screen going crazy after the upgrade – my external monitor and the laptop’s LCD both did this crazy wavy-line thing. I tried changing the refresh rate, running system-config-display, nothing worked. I found a post that suggested passing “nomodeset” to the kernel boot options – that solved it. Yay!

The other problem I had was reinstalling VMware Workstation – I couldn’t. I got this error: /tmp/vmware-root/modules/vmnet-only/vnetUserListener.c:240: error: ‘TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE’ … etc. I ended up having to edit the vmplayer source files directly (!!!) to get them to compile – instructions found here

So far FC12 seems exactly like FC11. But that’s fine – I only upgraded because I didn’t want to be on a dead-end version once FC13 is released.

This is pretty weird. Bluetooth worked fine under Win XP. The computer is an HP/Compaq nc8430. When I go to the Bluetooth control panel I get “Your computer does not have any Bluetooth adapters plugged in.” The weird thing is, sometimes I’ll see the bluetooth logo in the taskbar at the top, but then when I look again it’s gone and I have no idea how to get it back. When I booted it up this morning I noticed the icon was there so I ran some of the debugging tools for Bluetooth and checked dmesg and this time at least it looks like at least there’s proof that Linux CAN see the Bluetooth adapter, I just don’t get why it then stops recognizing it after just a minute or two, and a reboot doesn’t even consistently bring it back.

Here’s what lspci -nn showed while the it was up:

[root@ehoffman ~]# cat lspci-bluetooth
00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS, 943/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub [8086:27a0] (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS, 943/940GML and 945GT Express PCI Express Root Port [8086:27a1] (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller [8086:27d8] (rev 01)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 [8086:27d0] (rev 01)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 [8086:27d2] (rev 01)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 4 [8086:27d6] (rev 01)
00:1d.0 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 [8086:27c8] (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 [8086:27c9] (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 [8086:27ca] (rev 01)
00:1d.3 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 [8086:27cb] (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller [8086:27cc] (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge [8086:2448] (rev e1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge [8086:27b9] (rev 01)
00:1f.1 IDE interface [0101]: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller [8086:27df] (rev 01)
00:1f.2 SATA controller [0106]: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) SATA AHCI Controller [8086:27c5] (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: ATI Technologies Inc M56P [Radeon Mobility X1600] [1002:71c5]
02:06.0 CardBus bridge [0607]: Texas Instruments PCIxx12 Cardbus Controller [104c:8039]
02:06.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394) [0c00]: Texas Instruments PCIxx12 OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller [104c:803a]
02:06.2 Mass storage controller [0180]: Texas Instruments 5-in-1 Multimedia Card Reader (SD/MMC/MS/MS PRO/xD) [104c:803b]
02:06.3 SD Host controller [0805]: Texas Instruments PCIxx12 SDA Standard Compliant SD Host Controller [104c:803c]
02:06.4 Communication controller [0780]: Texas Instruments PCIxx12 GemCore based SmartCard controller [104c:803d]
08:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5753M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express [14e4:16fd] (rev 21)
10:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG [Golan] Network Connection [8086:4222] (rev 02)

When I did “hcitool dev” it actually showed something:

[root@ehoffman ~]# cat hcit.dev
Devices:
	hci0	00:16:41:BA:C6:xx

Here’s where it looks like it started working and then stopped working from /var/log/messages:

Nov  6 08:57:58 localhost dbus-daemon: Rejected send message, 2 matched rules; type="method_call", sender=":1.47" (uid=42 pid=2844 comm="/usr/bin/pulseaudio --start --log-target=syslog ") interface="org.bluez.Manager" member="ListAdapters" error name="(unset)" requested_reply=0 destination="org.bluez" (uid=0 pid=2390 comm="/usr/sbin/bluetoothd "))
Nov  6 08:57:58 localhost pulseaudio[2844]: bluetooth-util.c: Error from ListAdapters reply: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.AccessDenied
Nov  6 08:58:03 localhost kernel: fuse init (API version 7.11)
Nov  6 08:58:03 localhost pulseaudio[3108]: pid.c: Daemon already running.
Nov  6 08:58:15 localhost kernel: usb 2-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2
Nov  6 08:58:16 localhost kernel: usb 2-1: New USB device found, idVendor=03f0, idProduct=171d
Nov  6 08:58:16 localhost kernel: usb 2-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
Nov  6 08:58:16 localhost kernel: usb 2-1: Product: HP Integrated Module
Nov  6 08:58:16 localhost kernel: usb 2-1: Manufacturer: Broadcom Corp
Nov  6 08:58:16 localhost kernel: usb 2-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Nov  6 08:58:16 localhost kernel: Bluetooth: Generic Bluetooth USB driver ver 0.5
Nov  6 08:58:16 localhost kernel: usbcore: registered new interface driver btusb
Nov  6 08:58:16 localhost bluetoothd[2390]: HCI dev 0 registered
Nov  6 08:58:16 localhost bluetoothd[2390]: HCI dev 0 up
Nov  6 08:58:16 localhost bluetoothd[2390]: Starting security manager 0
Nov  6 08:58:16 localhost kernel: Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized
Nov  6 08:58:16 localhost kernel: Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized
Nov  6 08:58:16 localhost kernel: Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.11
Nov  6 08:58:16 localhost bluetoothd[2390]: Adapter /org/bluez/2390/hci0 has been enabled
Nov  6 08:58:16 localhost dbus-daemon: Rejected send message, 2 matched rules; type="method_call", sender=":1.47" (uid=42 pid=2844 comm="/usr/bin/pulseaudio --start --log-target=syslog ") interface="org.bluez.Adapter" member="ListDevices" error name="(unset)" requested_reply=0 destination="org.bluez" (uid=0 pid=2390 comm="/usr/sbin/bluetoothd "))
Nov  6 08:58:16 localhost pulseaudio[2844]: bluetooth-util.c: Error from ListDevices reply: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.AccessDenied
Nov  6 08:58:21 localhost NetworkManager:   Wireless now enabled by radio killswitch
Nov  6 08:58:21 localhost NetworkManager:   (wlan1): bringing up device.

Nov  6 09:01:05 localhost kernel: usb 2-1: USB disconnect, address 2
Nov  6 09:01:05 localhost kernel: btusb_intr_complete: hci0 urb ffff8800899c73c0 failed to resubmit (19)
Nov  6 09:01:05 localhost kernel: btusb_bulk_complete: hci0 urb ffff8800899c7540 failed to resubmit (19)
Nov  6 09:01:05 localhost kernel: btusb_bulk_complete: hci0 urb ffff8800899c7600 failed to resubmit (19)
Nov  6 09:01:05 localhost kernel: btusb_send_frame: hci0 urb ffff88008f43a840 submission failed
Nov  6 09:01:05 localhost bluetoothd[2390]: HCI dev 0 down
Nov  6 09:01:05 localhost bluetoothd[2390]: Adapter /org/bluez/2390/hci0 has been disabled
Nov  6 09:01:05 localhost bluetoothd[2390]: Stopping security manager 0
Nov  6 09:01:05 localhost bluetoothd[2390]: HCI dev 0 unregistered
Nov  6 09:01:05 localhost bluetoothd[2390]: Unregister path: /org/bluez/2390/hci0
Nov  6 09:01:05 localhost kernel: usb 2-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3
Nov  6 09:01:10 localhost kernel: hub 2-0:1.0: unable to enumerate USB device on port 1

It looks like it worked until I turned on wireless via the hardware switch. But even if I start up with wireless off it doesn’t work. Hmm.

So I got this 128 gig Corsair SSD and put it in my laptop at work. After some fiddling I copied my old disk over to my new disk by booting to Knoppix and doing dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=4k conv=notrunc,noerror. It’s a lot faster, but what’s really fast now is my Windows XP VM. Anyway, I was looking into other filesystems to try out on SSD to improve speed and I found this article claiming that NILFS is the best choice. So I decided to test it using the same ghetto test I always use for filesystem performance: dd!

Drive info:

Model: ATA CORSAIR CMFSSD-1 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 128GB

The nilfs version in use is whatever’s in yum:

[root@ehoffman ~]# rpm -qai nilfs-utils
Name        : nilfs-utils                  Relocations: (not relocatable)
Version     : 2.0.14                            Vendor: Fedora Project
Release     : 2.fc11                        Build Date: Thu 30 Jul 2009 07:16:08 PM EDT
Install Date: Tue 27 Oct 2009 04:18:28 PM EDT      Build Host: xenbuilder4.fedora.phx.redhat.com
Group       : System Environment/Base       Source RPM: nilfs-utils-2.0.14-2.fc11.src.rpm
Size        : 211949                           License: GPLv2+
Signature   : RSA/8, Thu 30 Jul 2009 09:25:18 PM EDT, Key ID 1dc5c758d22e77f2
Packager    : Fedora Project
URL         : http://www.nilfs.org
Summary     : Utilities for managing NILFS v2 filesystems
Description :
Userspace utilities for creating and mounting NILFS v2 filesystems.

NILFS volume on /dev/sda9, ext3 on /dev/sda8

/dev/sda8 on /docs type ext3 (rw)
/dev/sda9 on /nilfs type nilfs2 (rw,gcpid=3711)

I found this pretty unsettling when I mounted the nilfs volume:

[root@ehoffman ~]# mount -t nilfs2 /dev/sda9 /nilfs/
mount.nilfs2: WARNING! - The NILFS on-disk format may change at any time.
mount.nilfs2: WARNING! - Do not place critical data on a NILFS filesystem.

Write a 100 MB file and a 1.0 GB file to the nilfs volume and the ext3 volume:

[root@ehoffman ~]# dd if=/dev/zero of=/docs/zeros.dat bs=4k count=25600
25600+0 records in
25600+0 records out
104857600 bytes (105 MB) copied, 0.434741 s, 241 MB/s
[root@ehoffman ~]# rm -f /docs/zeros.dat
[root@ehoffman ~]# dd if=/dev/zero of=/docs/zeros.dat bs=4k count=256000
256000+0 records in
256000+0 records out
1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 19.6931 s, 53.2 MB/s
[root@ehoffman ~]# rm -f /docs/zeros.dat
[root@ehoffman ~]# dd if=/dev/zero of=/docs/zeros.dat bs=4k count=256000
256000+0 records in
256000+0 records out
1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 12.7625 s, 82.2 MB/s
[root@ehoffman ~]# rm -f /docs/zeros.dat
[root@ehoffman ~]# dd if=/dev/zero of=/nilfs/zeros.dat bs=4k count=25600
25600+0 records in
25600+0 records out
104857600 bytes (105 MB) copied, 5.42617 s, 19.3 MB/s
[root@ehoffman ~]# dd if=/dev/zero of=/nilfs/zeros.dat bs=4k count=256000
256000+0 records in
256000+0 records out
1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 47.4966 s, 22.1 MB/s
[root@ehoffman ~]# rm -f /nilfs/zeros.dat

With 100 MB, ext3 writes at 200+MB/s and with 1 gig it writes around 50+ MB/s. I think the SATA controller on my laptop is SATA I (not SATA II). On nilfs it seems to hover around 20-25 MB regardless of file size. Anyway, based on this I guess I’ll be staying with ext3/4 for the foreseeable future.

I’m giddy! I found this post on mozdev.org which was magical.

[evan@ehoffman ~]$ java -version
java version "1.6.0_17"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_17-b04)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 14.3-b01, mixed mode)

[root@ehoffman plugins]# uname -a
Linux ehoffman 2.6.30.8-64.fc11.x86_64 #1 SMP Fri Sep 25 04:43:32 EDT 2009 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[root@ehoffman plugins]# pwd
/usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins
[root@ehoffman plugins]# ln -s /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_16/jre/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so

The main thing I was missing was that the plugin isn’t libpluginjava_oji.so, or whatever I thought it was, but libnpjp2.so. Once I created the symlink into /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins it worked (as verified on http://www.java.com/en/download/help/testvm.xml and http://www.java.com/en/download/installed.jsp).

That’s all it takes to get the Sun Java plugin working in Firefox on Linux.

My work laptop, which I got around the end of 2006, was starting to run like crap. Pretty sure it started around the time I put antivirus on it, which reinforces my theory that antivirus is a virus itself. Anyway, being bored with Windows XP and having already played with Windows 7 at home, I decided to install Linux. The last time I tried Linux desktop was around RedHat 7.3, which was a long time ago… pre-Fedora even. I’m pretty happy with CentOS on the server side and was set to try CentOS 5.3 on my laptop when someone suggested I go with FC due to more bleeding-edge driver support. Even though the hardware is pretty old at this point I figured it was worth a shot.

Generally everything works pretty well. Everything pretty much works out of the box – I had dual screens up at native resolution, it even recognized my phone as a camera when I plugged it in to charge it. Best of all, I was able to resize the NTFS partition (rather than blowing it away) so I can still boot back to XP when the need arises.

There are 2 problems I’ve had so far though:

• the computer now hovers between 76 and 85 degrees Celsius, whereas under Win XP it generally peaked around 68 C. I tried underclocking the CPU down to 250 MHz but the problem persisted.
• The Java plugin for Firefox … wtf? How can this not work? I downloaded Sun’s JDK and symlinked the libjavaplugin_whatever into /usr/lib64/mozilla/whatever/ and that didn’t work. Then I tried “yum install java-plugin” or something like that and that installed some OpenJava-ish plugin which looked like it was going to work, but when I logged into the Raritan KVM and clicked “Connect” it wouldn’t work. I booted up Win XP in a VM and Firefox with Java works fine. Really annoying and dumb.

I’ll probably try Ubuntu tomorrow as several people suggested it runs cooler than Fedora. If that fails then I guess I’ll go to Win7 after all. I also want an SSD for my work laptop now… my Windows VM seems to spent eternity spinning my crappy 5400 rpm drive. Plox.