Mandriva Linux 2007 Errata
Mandriva Linux 2007 Errata page
List of errata related to Mandriva Linux 2007
Introduction
This page contains the Errata for Mandriva Linux 2007. This means it
contains information on known problems with Mandriva Linux 2007 and,
where available, how to fix, avoid or work around them. You should
also see MandrivaLinux2007ReleaseNotes , which contains more general
information on the Mandriva Linux 2007 release.
Errata for earlier Mandriva Linux releases
Other errata pages are also available for older versions:
* MandrivaLinux2006Errata
* MandrivaLinux2005Errata
Installation
General instructions: installation problems often require the use of
kernel parameters. To specify kernel parameters during installation,
simply boot the installer as usual. On the very first interactive
screen, where you are presented with the options "Boot from Hard
Disk", "Installation" and so on, highlight "Installation" and then
just type the kernel parameter required. You will see it being added
to the "Boot Options" text box near the bottom of the screen. When you
have typed the required kernel parameters, simply hit Enter.
* Boot problems may be related to bad MSI interrupts: to de-activate
MSI interrupts boot with the pci=nomsi kernel parameter.
* PNP (Plug 'n' Play) may trigger bad interactions: in this case,
boot with the pnpacpi=off pnpbios=off kernel parameters. This is
known to be a problem with the Dell Optiplex sx280. See
bug_small.png Bug #23279.
Kernel
General instructions: kernel problems often require the use of kernel
parameters. To set up kernel parameters to be used at every boot, run
Mandriva Control Center and go to the Boot tab. Click on "Set up how
the system boots". Click on "next". Choose the menu entry you usually
use to boot the system (normally just 'linux', the default choice) and
click 'Modify'. Then type the required kernel parameters into the
'Append' box, click 'OK', and then click 'Finish'.
* The PAE memory addressing mode used in kernel-enterprise to
support more than 4GB of physical memory is currently incompatible
with ACPI suspend/restore; a future update of the Intel AGP driver
should resolve this issue.
* XFS stability issues: XFS is currently not a recommended
filesystem with kernel-2.6.17; updates should be available shortly
after release to improve support for this filesystem. For now, we
recommend you do not use it.
* JFS issues during install: the mkjfs program may abort during
install when used in the presence of a reiserfs partition.
Slow internet response (particularly web browsing): IPv6
There is a known problem with all Linux distributions that enable IPv6
networking (the new standard for network addresses which uses a
longer, hexadecimal address format to provide a much larger number of
possible addresses. The old standard is IPv4, which gives the
four-groups-of-three-digits decimal address format most people are
familiar with, e.g. 216.105.167.65). Some systems and networks do not
cope well if your system has IPv6 networking enabled. If you
experience sluggish response on the Internet - especially when
browsing web sites - and cannot find the cause, you should try
disabling IPv6. To do this, edit the file /etc/sysconfig/network, add
the following line, and reboot:
NETWORKING_IPV6=no
Issue with networking/firewire on Zepto/Compal models including Znote 6515WD
Using these laptops you will get "Disabling IRQ# 11" (or similar)
resulting in broken networking.
After installation this can be fixed by making a few changes to the
/etc/modprobe.conf file:
blacklist ohci1394
blacklist ieee1394
Sound always plays through speakers on Zepto / Compal Znote 6515WD
On this laptop model, sound always plays through the internal speakers
even if you plug a pair of headphones or speakers into the headphone /
speaker output jack. If you want to be able to toggle between using
the internal speakers and the headphone / speaker output jack, there
is a script that can help you. To use it, first download the script,
filename 'speaker'. Open a console and navigate to the directory where
you saved the script. Now run this command, to make it executable:
chmod ugo+x speaker
Next, run the command su and enter your root password to gain root
privileges. Then run this command, to make root the owner of the
script:
chown root.root speaker
Finally, run this command to move the file to the /usr/bin directory,
so you can run it from anywhere:
mv speaker /usr/bin
You can now switch between the internal speakers and the headphone
jack with these two commands:
speaker on
speaker off
Please note that this script will not work for all laptops that
display the same symptom (sound always playing through internal
speakers). For many models, you can toggle between the internal
speakers and the headphone / speaker jack by toggling one of the
switches in the KDE or GNOME volume control applets.
ipw2200: Firmware error detected. Restarting.
To fix this add the following to the /etc/modprobe.conf file:
options ipw2200 hwcrypto=0
PC Card devices not found
See also bug_small.png Bug #26112. Users of some (particularly new)
laptop models may find that the system does not seem to recognise PC
Card devices at all. If you are having trouble with PC Card devices,
check whether they show up in the output of the command lspci run as
root. If not, you may be suffering from this problem. To fix it, you
can try rebooting after adding the following kernel parameter (for
instructions on using kernel parameters, see the start of this
section):
pci=assign-busses
This is known to be a problem on the following systems: Acer
Travelmate 2410 series (2413).
Hardware support
Incorrect display resolution on machines with Intel graphics chipsets:
XFdrake cannot install 915resolution package
Certain laptops with Intel display adapters have a problem where the
BIOS does not correctly report the available graphical resolutions to
the operating system, making it impossible to configure the correct
display resolution for the laptop's flat panel (flat panel displays
have a single native resolution which should always be used:
displaying at any other resolution results in a considerable drop in
display quality). On Linux, the 915resolution program exists to
resolve this problem: it corrects the list of available resolutions
provided by the BIOS, enabling the system to use the correct
resolution.
Unfortunately, this package was inadvertently left out of the
Powerpack and Discovery editions of Mandriva Linux 2007. If you cannot
configure the correct resolution for your laptop, and XFdrake (the
graphics configuration tool) complains of being unable to install the
915resolution package, please use the software media manager
application to set up your system to download and install packages
from our public package mirrors in addition to your installation
disc(s).
To do this, run the Software Media Manager: open the Mandriva Control
Center, and go to the Software Management tab. Click the link titled
'Select from where software packages are downloaded when updating the
system'. Click 'yes' when asked if it is OK to continue. Now click the
'Add...' button on the right hand side of the new screen. When asked
whether to add 'Official updates' or 'Distribution sources', click
'Distribution sources'. Click 'Yes' in reply to the question about the
mirror list. When the mirror list appears, choose a mirror close to
your geographical location. Wait for the process to complete. If it
completes successfully, you're done. If it does not, choose another
mirror and try again (since the 2007 release is very new, the mirrors
will be very busy and some may not be properly set up for 2007 yet).
Once this process is complete, XFdrake should be able to download and
install the 915resolution package, and enable the correct display
resolution.
Issues with Bluetooth support
See also bug_small.png Bug #24359. Mandriva Linux 2007 includes the
latest version (3.2) of bluez, the Linux Bluetooth support layer.
Unfortunately, this version made several changes that the KDE and
GNOME Bluetooth desktop support applications have not yet entirely
caught up with. To use Bluetooth with Mandriva Linux 2007, you will
have to run some commands manually.
First of all, at each boot, you should run the command:
passkey-agent --default /bin/bluepin
Alternatively, you can install the keychain package, which will
register the passkey agent at every boot. It also acts as an agent for
ssh and GPG keys.
Secondly, if you wish to pair with your computer from another
Bluetooth device, your computer's Bluetooth adapter must be in
discoverable mode. Unfortunately, with the new bluez it is currently
not possible to set the computer to be permanently discoverable or to
make it discoverable from the KDE or GNOME Bluetooth support
applications. You must do it with the following console command:
hciconfig hci0 piscan
This will make your computer discoverable for a few minutes. You must
run this command each time you wish to make the computer discoverable.
System startup
Potential issues with the parallel initialization system
Mandriva Linux 2007 introduces a new parallel initialization system.
For more information on this, see the Release Notes. There are some
potential problems with this system in certain cases.
Many previously hidden race conditions (a problem where, depending on
the speed of your hardware and other possible factors, processes or
commands may be run at the wrong time or in the wrong order) appear.
In particular, some buggy network drivers are only usable a few
seconds after their initialization, but incorrectly inform the system
that they are usable immediately. This can cause services that depend
on the network being available to start too early. Such services
include autofs and ntp. There are various possible solutions:
* disable ifplugd. ifplugd is the daemon used to detect when the
network link is available. To disable it, you need to know the
name(s) of your network interface(s). You can find this
information from the output of the command ifconfig, run as root
at a console. For instance, wired ethernet interfaces are usually
named ethX, where X is a number - the first such interface is
eth0, the second is eth1, and so forth. Wireless interfaces can
have various names depending on the driver used, including but not
limited to athX and wlanX. Use ifconfig to find the names of all
affected network interfaces. To disable ifplugd, you must edit
their configuration files. The configuration files can be found in
the directory /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ with names in this
format: ifcfg-(interface name). For instance, the configuration
file for the eth0 interface is
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 . For each affected
interface, edit the appropriate configuration file and add this
line:
MII_NOT_SUPPORTED=yes
In the case that there is already a line reading:
MII_NOT_SUPPORTED=no
simply change the 'no' to 'yes'.
* set a timeout for the affected interfaces. The network
initialization system can be configured to wait for a short time
after the network driver claims it is available before actually
starting any network-dependent systems. To do this, identify the
affected interfaces and edit their configuration file(s) (see the
instructions in the previous bullet point) and add a line like
this:
LINK_DETECTION_DELAY=5
This would set a timeout of 5 seconds. For a longer or shorter
timeout, change the 5. The network configuration tool sets a timeout
automatically for some drivers which are known to have this problem.
* disable the parallel initialization system. To do this, use
nopinit as a kernel parameter. For instructions on using kernel
parameters, see the Kernel section above.
For more information on this issue, see bug_small.png Bug #18986.
Software issues
Alacarte does not work
See also bug_small.png Bug #25389. Alacarte, the GNOME menu editor,
contains a bug which causes it not to work correctly in Mandriva. The
program will run and seem to function correctly, but adding new menu
entries and modifying / deleting existing ones will not work. Our
GNOME maintainer has submitted a patch for alacarte to GNOME's bug
tracking system: GNOME bug 355830. Once this patch is integrated by
the GNOME developers, the updated version of Alacarte will be provided
as an official update for Mandriva Linux 2007, which will resolve this
problem. In the mean time, we recommend using another XDG-compliant
menu editor, such as the KDE-native menu editor kmenuedit.
GNOME Power Manager no longer working after resume
See also bug_small.png Bug #23603. After a hibernate/resume cycle,
GNOME Power Manager will display incorrect information and will no
longer react to power events, such as pressing the power button or
plugging in and unplugging the power cord. This is because
suspend-scripts restarts the haldeamon service upon resume to ensure
it catches hardware that got plugged in or removed while the machine
was suspended. GNOME Power Manager does not reconnect correctly to HAL
and no longer sees any events reported by it. Until an update is
provided, a workaround is to edit the /etc/sysconfig/suspend file and
remove haldaemon from the RESTART_SERVICES list. Please note that by
doing this you may have problems if you plug in or remove hardware
while the machine is suspended.
Banshee may not start on some systems
On some 32-bit systems with the SSE2 feature and for users of either
KDE systems or users who do not use Gnome applications, Banshee may
fail to start. The workaround is to start 'gst-inspect-0.10' in a
terminal. This will create the ~/.gstreamer-0.10 settings directory
required by Banshee. Refer to bug #26183 for details.
GDB
Developers may experience restrictions when trying to replace an
executable after a gdb session. If a executable has been accessed
through gdb, a 'cp' operation will fail with an 'insufficient access'
error. The workaround is to remove the faulty executable, then copy or
move the new version to its previous place.
3D-accelerated desktop (AIGLX, Xgl)
3D-accelerated desktop non-functional with Mandriva Club edition for
Standard members
Mandriva Club members at the 'Standard' level are entitled to download
a special edition of each Mandriva Linux distribution which consists
of the first four CDs of the Powerpack edition. Unfortunately, an
oversight in the process of building the 2007 release meant that the
task-3ddesktop package, which is needed by drak3d (the tool that
allows you to enable and disable the 3D-accelerated desktop feature)
was placed on the fifth CD of the Powerpack edition. This means that
with the four CD edition, you cannot enable the 3D-accelerated desktop
feature.
To remedy this problem, please use the software media manager
application to set up your system to download and install packages
from our public package mirrors in addition to your installation CDs.
To do this, run the Software Media Manager: open the Mandriva Control
Center, and go to the Software Management tab. Click the link titled
'Select from where software packages are downloaded when updating the
system'. Click 'yes' when asked if it is OK to continue. Now click the
'Add...' button on the right hand side of the new screen. When asked
whether to add 'Official updates' or 'Distribution sources', click
'Distribution sources'. Click 'Yes' in reply to the question about the
mirror list. When the mirror list appears, choose a mirror close to
your geographical location. Wait for the process to complete. If it
completes successfully, you're done. If it does not, choose another
mirror and try again (since the 2007 release is very new, the mirrors
will be very busy and some may not be properly set up for 2007 yet).
Once this process is complete, you should be able to use drak3d to
enable the 3D-accelerated desktop feature.
3D-accelerated desktop not starting under GNOME
Some users, especially those upgrading or preserving /home directories
from previous versions of Mandriva, may find themselves unable to
enable the 3D-accelerated desktop under GNOME. Even after running
drak3d and selecting one of the 3D-accelerated desktop options, on
login to GNOME the native window manager (metacity) will start up and
no 3D desktop effects will be observed. This problem can usually be
rectified by removing the file ~/.gnome2/session . We recommend you
simply move this file somewhere else (for example, your home
directory), rather than deleting it, so it can be restored if problems
arise as a result of its removal. Once you have removed the file, log
out of GNOME and log back in, and you should observe that compiz is
started instead of metacity, and the 3D desktop effects appear.
3D-accelerated desktop and video playback
If you use the 3D accelerated desktop technologies included in
Mandriva Linux 2007 (AIGLX or Xgl), you may notice that video playback
does not work very well - moving, resizing, maximising the video
window will cause problems, or you may see strange artifacts in or
through the video. You may also notice that, if you use the 'cube'
feature of compiz, the video does not play while you rotate the cube.
To avoid these problems, you should set your video player to use an
output driver which does not use video overlay. The way to do this is
different for different video players.
* For players that use gstreamer (for e.g. totem-gstreamer), run
gstreamer-properties, go to the "Video" tab, and set the video
output to "X Window System (No Xv)".
* For mplayer, add this line to ~/.mplayer/config (and also to
~/.mplayer/mplayerplug-in.conf if you use the mplayerplugin
browser plugin):
vo=x11
* For xine, go to the settings menu, set your configuration
experience level to "Advanced", then go to the video tab and
change "video driver to use" to "xshm".
* For Kaffeine, go to the settings menu, select "Xine backend
configuration" and in the video tab change the driver to "xshm".
* For KMplayer, go to Settings -> Configure KMplayer. Then in the
"General Options" section go to the Output tab. In this section
change Video Driver to "X11Shm".
Note that for all applications you may have success using the OpenGL
video output driver, depending on your hardware and whether you use
Xgl or AIGLX, but some combinations will still have problems with the
OpenGL output driver: X11 is the only choice that will always be safe.
3D-accelerated desktop and some Java/Swing applications
See also bug_small.png Bug #25900. Some Java applications using Swing
may not display correctly under Xgl/AIGLX with compiz - the usual
symptom is that text is not displayed. A possible solution is to run
the following command at a console before launching your java
application:
export AWT_TOOLKIT=MToolkit
If this works, you may want to add these two lines to the file
~/.bash_profile (that is, the file .bash_profile in your home
directory):
AWT_TOOLKIT=MToolkit
export AWT_TOOLKIT
Some people have also reported that this issue is fixed in
compiz-quinnstorm, an alternative version of the compiz compositing
manager that is used to implement 3D accelerated desktop effects.
These packages are available in the contrib media. To test them, you
will need to remove the compiz package and install the following
packages from contrib: compiz-quinnstorm compiz-manager
compiz-quinnstorm-plugins cgwd cgwd-themes csm. Please note that
compiz-quinnstorm will not recognise configuration changes made by
gset-compiz, the compiz configuration tool launched by drak3d. You
must use the new csm configuration tool instead.
3D-accelerated desktop and multiple logins
See also bug_small.png Bug #24863. There is an issue with AIGLX which
may prevent users from logging out and in again multiple times when
using the KDM or GDM display managers (by default, KDM is used). One
way to work around this issue is to force your display manager to
restart X on logout.
For KDM you should edit the file /etc/kde/kdm/kdmrc and check you have
in the [X-:*-Core] section the following line:
TerminateServer=true
For GDM you should edit the file /etc/X11/gdm/gdm.conf or
/etc/X11/gdm/custom.conf and check you have in the [daemon] section
the following line:
AlwaysRestartServer=true
Another option is to use this script to log out. Save the following
text as a file, for example, logout.sh:
#!/bin/bash
rm -f /tmp/.X93-lock
rm -f /tmp/.X11-unix/X93
dcop kdesktop default logout
Make the file executable, either with the chmod +u logout.sh command
or by using the graphical File Properties dialog. Running this script
will log the current user out and remove the lockfiles that prevent
another user from logging in, which should allow you to login again
with no problems. You can create a desktop launcher that runs the
script, for ease of use. Please note that this script will only work
in KDE.
3D-accelerated desktop and KDE shortcuts
See also bug_small.png Bug #25394. When you use the 3D accelerated
desktop feature you may find some commonly-used KDE keyboard shortcuts
no longer work correctly. This is because the compiz compositing
manager used to provide 3D desktop effects does not know how to pass
these shortcuts on to KDE correctly. The most commonly experienced
problem is that alt-F2 no longer brings up the 'run program' dialog
box. To fix this problem, run this command:
gconftool-2 -t str --set /apps/compiz/general/allscreens/options/run_command0_k
ey '<Alt>F2' --set /apps/compiz/general/allscreens/options/command0 'dcop kdesk
top KDesktopIface popupExecuteCommand' --set /apps/compiz/general/allscreens/op
tions/run_key 'Disabled'
If you wish to reverse this change, run these two commands:
gconftool-2 --unset /apps/compiz/general/allscreens/options/run_command0_key --
unset /apps/compiz/general/allscreens/options/command0
gconftool-2 -t str --set /apps/compiz/general/allscreens/options/run_key '<Alt>
F2'