Distrowatch: What went wrong with Fedora Core 4

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Thu, 14 Jul 2005, Gene Heskett wrote:

> On Thursday 14 July 2005 19:30, Michael A. Peters wrote:
>> Those don't sound like yum bugs to me - sound like bugs in either
>> the software or the packages. Or am I missing something?
>
> No, I don't think you are.  I *think* I'm trying to shoot the
> messenger.
>
> The real question seems to me, how did this new kernel get past
> testing if it won't even boot?  Thats now vmlinuz-2.6.12-1.1390_FC4,
> the matching initrd, System.map etc.  The .1-1369 seems to be ok if I
> don't want to run X.

Obviously, it boots for most people.  And it boots for the testers, or it 
would *not* have made it out the door.  The question is, what's different 
about *your* setup that's causing the failure, and is it a kernel bug or 
something misconfigured?

>
> And, what broke X?

Indeed.  But again, X is working for most people.  What's different about 
your setup and has it triggered a bug or is it a setup problem?

>
> And, what broke kde's kicker panel?  On a previous install, there was
> a report from yum that kde3/launcher_panelapplet.so errored, and it
> was repeated during this most recent yum session.  That I believe is
> part of kdebase, which yum replaced everytime I could get a boot that
> could run yum.  I think the kde3/launcher_panelapplet.so is related
> to the loss of the kicker panel at the bottom of the x screen that I
> had after the first yum update a week and about 7 installs back,
> correct?
>
> I just tried both gnome and kde, neither will run x.  At this point, I
> don't think its an x problem or it would log an error.  It is not now
> logging any errors.

I'm curious, have you tried running updates with up2date?  That's worked 
for me, except for a bug with the Livna repo.  rhn-applet doesn't work, 
but that doesn't prevent up2date from working once the right GPG keys are 
installed.  I've used yum for things I got from Livna with no trouble.

Apropos of your original X problem, I'm pretty sure I had 1600x1200 with 
my GeForce 5500 using the nv with no problem, but I'm using the nVidia 
proprietary drivers from Livna at 1600x1200 and "millions of colors" 
(probably 24 bits).  I'm not saying this to dismiss your issue, just 
pointing out that it is possible to make it work.

-- 
 		Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs