4 times a charm - Update problem

[steelaworkn]

O.k., so I don't really know what I'm doing. Everything worked fine until I made some desktop changes on the kdedesktop. All I did was put up some of the cool widgets last night. I even watched a nice movie on totem with no problems. Then I shut it down for the night and the next day CRASH.

I got the stupid Signal 11 crash. No way to enter the console via desktop interface. I could get into it on the log in screen. This is driving me nuts.

So, please help a beginner. What do I need to do to get Fedora to be stable? Is the KDE desktop stable or is it going to be crashing every other day? It seems it crashes every time I do some slight push-button changes to the desktop.

I also have the NVIDIA driver installed when the crashes happen.

There seems to be a whole lot of repositories out there, I don't know what I need.

Here is what I want to do with my machine:

Internet
DVD Movies
Streaming Video
Office applications
Picture editing
Movie Editing
Modding the desktop once in while
E-mail

[steelaworkn]

Oh, the 13g hd is only a temporary prototype. I'm planning on installing a larger hd for the Fedora side of things once I get a stable set-up.

[Wayne]

You should never enable any updates-testing or development repos, not unless you want to seriously bork your machine. You should also not mix third-party repos like rpmfusion and atrpms (and others) They have conflicting packages which can also lead to nightmares. You can have atrpms installed, but not active, so you can install individual packages, using:

yum enablerepo=atrpms install packagename

You set the enabled bit to 0 in the repo's config file:

gedit /etc/yum.repos.d/atrpms.repo

and set: enabled=1 to: enabled-0

Wayne

[steelaworkn]

Well, what about this automatic updater thingy that just popped up? I postponed cause it wants to do 178 updates. The problem is, it only downloads them and never installs them, seemingly, that is.

[Wayne]

Cancel it and open a Terminal and type:

su

give the root password and type:

yum update

If there are any errors, let us know!

Wayne

[steelaworkn]

O.k. Will this update the kde stuff also? And do I really need to install the NVIDIA driver??

[steelaworkn]

The yum update installs 2 updates and then just downloads 177 updates without installing? So these 177 updates are just there for "just in case" or something???

[Wayne]

You really need to post the output, just saying they didn't install doesn't help. If it installed two updates, I'm guessing they were yum or packagekit related, I don't have a Fedora box so can't check. Run yum update again... Post the output/any errors.

Wayne

[YaKillaCJ]

OK Im Somewhat of a n00b myself and my system crashes here and there. But Im learning and heres what Ive gathered. Yum is the way to go as far as installing large packages and updates in general. For some reason I got alot father with it and avoiding the Graphical Add/Remove (PackageKit).
su
yum update

Heres something important. If for whatever reason during an update or installation it crashes/freeze. The moment you reboot, complete it by doing the following:
su
yum-complete-transaction

Another common issue I ran into was making sure I have the right nVidia Drivers. Be careful. The main thing to watch for is that the Ver/Type of card matches the card and ALSO the Kernal. Heres the link that helped me along with many other things including setting up RMPFusion:
http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-nvidia.html
I ran into a problem because my PC crashed during the Kernel update. Resulting in it being under the list of installed Packages but not showing up in Grub. All I did was Unistall (nVidia Drivers), Unistall (Kernel), Reinstall (Kernal), Reboot, Reinstall (nVidia Drivers), reboot.

If you're having Audio issues (Pulse Audio) which seems to be common. For me I just removed it all together and running fine. Its being discussed here:
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=206868&highlight=Pulse+audio

This is another helpful site for us n00bs:
http://www.fedorafaq.org/

This 1 helped me setup Compiz-Fusion:
http://www.my-guides.net/en/content/view/125/26/1/9/

This is for the New Plymoth OS Load Screen:
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f10/en_US/What_is_New_for_Installation_and_Live_Images.html# sn-Plymouth

Login GUI as root via Gnome. This is not recommended and you shouldnt do it unless you needed to and thats why I added it last. Heres the instructions:
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=205657&highlight=login+root

Again Im new myself and learning also but I want to give back and help others like Ive been helped and Im hoping this is a good gather of information.

[steelaworkn]

Thanks guys. I did yum update and had no problems. Using the console to update is much better because I was able to see everything that was going on. And to answer my own question, yes yum update actually does update stuff, not merely download.

[JohnVV]

And do I really need to install the NVIDIA driver??
yes install the kmod-nvidia or akmod-nvidia and let yum or packagekit take care of updating the driver .
for EVERY new kernel the driver must be updated
if you installed the nvidia.run installer from nvidia then you will have to reinstall it by hand for every and all kernel,xorg,and X11 updates .

[steelaworkn]

Ok I did the NVIDIA install...on a new system I have to :

yum install binutils
yum install gcc
yum install make
yum install kernel-devel
su
sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86.177.82pkg1.run
The NVIDIA shell did the rest of the work
Reboot
And now I'm off to install (again) Adobe Flash, and Streaming Support and Java

[Wayne]

As John said, it's easier to use the akmod-nvidia driver from rpmfusion as it gets rebuilt automatically each time the kernel is updated. If you use the kmod-nvidia from rpmfusion you may have to wait a day or two till a new kmod is built. Using the driver from nvidia is not recommended as you have to reinstall it manually each time there's a new kernel.

Get rid of the official driver and just do:

yum install akmod-nvidia

Wayne

[PatchesKB]

Do you guys know how to get the ksmserver working? As soon as I type my password and my user name in and try to log on this box apears that says 'Could not start ksmserver. Check your instalation.' I had just instaled my nvidia driver.

[JohnVV]

hi steelaworkn use the akmod . It will make your life a lot easer.The only reason i am using the *.run installer is it is a BETA driver for my VERY VERY old card.

[PatchesKB]

How do you get akmod?

[PatchesKB]

Hope to get this going soon.

[steelaworkn]

Ok. I've added all the esentials again the the exception of NVIDIA. I'll be doing that next. Where I start to have problems is when I add widgets or try to change the wallpaper or theme.

[JohnVV]

hi steelaworkn with out a driver for your card -- forget about doing anything with "add widgets or try to change the wallpaper or theme."

PatchesKB
How do you get akmod?
read the how to
" F10 & F9 Nvidia driver guides"
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=204752
-- the second set of code in the FIRST post
and
"Nvidia driver installation" -- uses the kmod, not akmod
http://www.dnmouse.org/nvidia.html

[steelaworkn]

I haven't had a crash since you guys steered me towards the proper set up for NVIDIA. I am able to change desktops and add widgets freely. Thanks

My sound is all screwed up. The sound settings area says I have Pulse Audio. Realtek has a driver package for my HD audio but come to find out, it is just the alsa driver. Needless to say, I found this out late so I have screwed up my sound package. Have any ideas? I'm thinking I need to track back my steps and strip all traces of sound drivers and then reinstall the alsa package. What do you think?

[PatchesKB]

Thanks, it worked. :)

[JohnVV]

that would be a new thread ,but a quick start would to search for reinstalling pulse audio
uninstall it and reinstall it

[steelaworkn]

I suppose this is my reinstall Fedora for the 4th time thread so I'm thinking asking sound questions would be ok as long as the Mods don't mind.

I have both alsa and pulse installed, so should I get rid of them and do an update? Would that fix things?

[steelaworkn]

Ooops.....Total Crash....I think I know what went wrong. But, I'm new so I'll be more careful on build 5. :D

[JohnVV]

hi steelaworkn i borked fedora 4 and 5 countless times before i finally got to the point that i ,for the most part, stopped killing the OS myself.

[timebandit]

OK I've been hammered twice now by agreeing to what the automatic updater suggests. It wasn't big tears because I'm just setting up a new server with a Fedora 9 distribution disk. After an install the system is working fine and then I let the auto-updater run and the system becomes psychotic. So I'm reloading a fresh install now for the third time. What I'm taking away from this thread is that if I use the command yum update from the terminal I won't be having to start over for the fourth time? How about the add/remove software window from the GUI, is that safe? Also then it is unwise to use the rpm command ever?

With these updates, where can you find what has recently been installed/updated and is there a way to uninstall one of these system-hosing updates?

[steelaworkn]

After the 5th time, I have learned some things. Fedor 10 comes with a bunch of stuff. When I build my system, I have to decide what I want on there and then figure out if it is already in the Fedora package or if I need to go to 3rd part repositories.

1st, the NVIDIA support is already available through 3rd Party and the OEM driver will crash every time. I used everones advise and went with the 3rd party repositories on this one.
2nd I have the HD Intel audio on my Intel board that was originally supported by Sigmatel. Realtek Audio has a linux driver but it doesn't work and it clashes because the alsa driver is already packed with Fedora 10. It works just fine. So, no OEM supplied audio driver.
3rd Getting Flash and various audio and video codecs was a plus for me.
4th Getting Java

Right now I am working on CD recognition and need a few more DVD codecs to be able to run some of the New DVDs coming out.

[steelaworkn]

OK I've been hammered twice now by agreeing to what the automatic updater suggests. It wasn't big tears because I'm just setting up a new server with a Fedora 9 distribution disk. After an install the system is working fine and then I let the auto-updater run and the system becomes psychotic. So I'm reloading a fresh install now for the third time. What I'm taking away from this thread is that if I use the command yum update from the terminal I won't be having to start over for the fourth time? How about the add/remove software window from the GUI, is that safe? Also then it is unwise to use the rpm command ever?

With these updates, where can you find what has recently been installed/updated and is there a way to uninstall one of these system-hosing updates?

You can use the rpm command, you can use the add/remove software window, and yum update as well as the automatic updater. But...here is the catch, you have to personally know what the machine is going to do when it updates. You can manually mark which packages to update and which ones to be left alone. I'm thinking, and I am a real greenhorn here, that we should only install what we need on the machine, get rid of the rest of the junk, and then let the machine update what we got. If I am wrong, someone please correct me.

[Wayne]

Or you could have saved yourself a lot of time by reading this :)

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=171660

Wayne

[steelaworkn]

Thanks Wayne. I got to leave Dangermouse a big thanks for all the work he has done. My first build I used his script, but I screwed it up my adding a bunch of stuff (ignorantly of course :) ). I have a lot to learn. I'm just glad all you guys are so willing to help such greenies lilke me. Thanks.

By the way, that is a big read, but well worth it.

[JohnVV]

well keep plugging away it dose get better
I've killed win 95 and 98 and xp and fedora4,5,6 learning them and fedora is easer to reinstall than windows is , no activation .

[Wayne]

Yeah, I think about half a dozen botched installs is probably average, I know I didn't get it right first time... or second :D Once you start getting to know more then you start changing your partition scheme and what you want installed/removed, which means another install... and so it goes on! ;)

Wayne

[steelaworkn]

Well, so far, I have not crashed my 5th build. I can't seem to get the media software to recognize cds. Do I need to manually mount the cd/dvd drive or something? I get great dvd playback but no cd.

[steelaworkn]

OK I've been hammered twice now by agreeing to what the automatic updater suggests. It wasn't big tears because I'm just setting up a new server with a Fedora 9 distribution disk. After an install the system is working fine and then I let the auto-updater run and the system becomes psychotic. So I'm reloading a fresh install now for the third time. What I'm taking away from this thread is that if I use the command yum update from the terminal I won't be having to start over for the fourth time? How about the add/remove software window from the GUI, is that safe? Also then it is unwise to use the rpm command ever?

With these updates, where can you find what has recently been installed/updated and is there a way to uninstall one of these system-hosing updates?

I got a link for you.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/YumUpgradeFaq#head-56b13936246769f517ac488a0098d193c7fc3600

Read through this. It covers updating your system. It seems that just opening a console and doing yum update is not the right way to do stuff. Boy, no wonder I'm on my 5th install. It covers cleaning the system and everything.

[JohnVV]

about media on my box video dvd's like "Kelly's Heroes" will auto mount in/media/"name of the movie"

BUT music cd's are a different story .They DO NOT mount but must be accessed by a program
for dvd's i use VLC and cd's xmms or smplayer or gnome-mplayer or the KDE" KsCD" or vlc

[steelaworkn]

Hmmm, now it is working on most all the media players. Wierd. Seems like Fedora needs rebooting quite a bit before everything functions. Now the cds are working. Not automatically. I still have to tell the media player to play the disc. Amarock doesn't work right though. But, in time it will.

[JohnVV]

Now the cds are working. Not automatically.I still have to tell the media player to play the disc.
this IS normal music cd DO NOT mount

[Wayne]

You can tell your music player to start up and play a CD when one is inserted (in Gnome) Open up your file browser (Nautilus) and click on Edit > Preferences and go to the last tab (Media) and set-up your multimedia apps.

Wayne

[PatchesKB]

Do you know anything about screen savers? I can't find out how to get them so I can use them.

[JohnVV]

try this there are A LOT

yum search screensaver
and you might want to install
xscreensaver
xscreensaver-extras
xscreensaver-extras-gss
xscreensaver-gl-base
xscreensaver-gl-extras
xscreensaver-gl-extras-gss

[Wayne]

That was also an off-topic post for this thread. You really should have started a new thread on screensavers.

Wayne