Common F18 bugs

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This page documents common bugs in Fedora 18 and, if available, fixes or workarounds for these problems. If you find your problem in this page, do not file a bug for it, unless otherwise instructed. Where appropriate, a reference to the current bug(s) in Bugzilla is included.

Release Notes

Read the F18_release_announcement and the Fedora 18 release notes for specific information about changes in Fedora 18 and other general information.

My bug is not listed

Not every bug is listed in this page, but Bugzilla should be a comprehensive database of known bugs. This page is a sampling of the bugs most commonly discussed on our mailing lists and forums.

To see if your bug has already been reported, you can search Bugzilla. If it has not yet been reported, we encourage you to do so to help improve Fedora for yourself and others. A guide to Bugs and feature requests has been prepared to assist you.

If you believe an already-reported bug report should be added to this page because it is commonly encountered, you can:

• Add it yourself, if you have wiki access. Please follow the style and guidelines explained in the comments in the page source.
• Or, add the CommonBugs keyword to the bug report. Someone from the QA team will then inspect the issue to determine whether the bug should be listed as a common bug. To expedite your request, please add a comment to the bug that includes
  1. a summary of the problem
  2. any known workarounds
  3. an assessment on the impact to Fedora users

For reference, you can query Bugzilla for bugs tagged CommonBugs:

• CommonBugs? (bugs with CommonBugs keyword, but do not yet have a link to this page)
• CommonBugs+(bugs with CommonBugs keyword and contain a link to this page)

Installation issues

Partitions on Solaris 10-formatted disks may appear as free space to installer

link to this item - Bugzilla: #869482

It has been reported that the Fedora 18 installer may not correctly recognize disks formatted by the Solaris 10 installer: it may see partitions on these disks as free (unformatted) space. This may be due to the Solaris 10 installer using an unusual GPT format. If you have disks formatted by the Solaris installer that contain data of value to you, exercise caution in installing Fedora 18. See the bug report for more details.

Installer boot options documentation is outdated

link to this item - Bugzilla: #864468

There are currently two pages documenting the boot options of the installer of Fedora 18 Beta: Anaconda Boot Options and http://wwoods.fedorapeople.org/doc/boot-options.html. Both of them are at least partly outdated. We are hoping to update these pages soon, but in the mean time you can try to look at both and take a guess which of the boot options are current and which are obsolete, if you need to use them. Of course, if you are able to follow the source code, you can check out the anaconda source and derive the currently-valid options from that.

Some old anaconda options - notably, several of the network configuration options - have been replaced by Dracut options, which are documented at Dracut/Options.

Keyboard layout testing and selection during installation does not work as expected

link to this item - Bugzilla: #854557

On the Keyboard screen during Fedora 18 installation there is a text entry box labelled 'Test the selected layout below:'. This label is confusing. The box does not let you test the layout currently highlighted in the list on the left hand side of the screen, but the layout that is active. There is no indicator for the active layout, so it is not easy to know which layout is active. The layout that was in the list when you first entered the screen will stay active until you do one of two things: remove it, or configure a layout switch key combination and use it. So if the English (U.S.) layout was in the list when you first entered the screen, if you add the French (French) layout, it will not be active. If you highlight it in the list, it will not be active. If you move it to the top of the list, it will still not be active. But if you remove the English (U.S.) layout, French (French) will become the active layout. Alternatively, if you add French (French), then click the 'Options' button, pick one or more keyboard layout switch combination(s), click 'OK', and then press a layout switch combination you just configured, French (French) will become active: press it again, and English (U.S.) will be active again. This should be reflected in the test box.

As there is no indication of the current active layout throughout installation, if you are configuring multiple layouts, we recommend you ensure the layout you wish to use for the rest of the install process is active using the test box before leaving the Keyboard screen, and then do not switch layouts until installation is complete.

Installation source shows 'Nothing selected' for network installation

link to this item - Bugzilla: #873468

It is possible that the Fedora 18 installer may fail to correctly set the default remote package source on occasion when booting the network installation image. Instead of showing 'Closest mirror' and 'GNOME Desktop', the 'Installation Source' and 'Software Selection' entries on the installer hub/home screen will show 'Nothing selected'. This will prevent installation from starting until it is rectified. Several possible causes of this bug were eliminated during development of Fedora 18, but it appears the bug may still occur in some rare cases.

If you are affected by this bug, to work around it, you can either just reboot (it will often succeed on a second try), or enter the 'Installation Source' spoke, change the remote source URL to any specific address at all (it does not have to be valid), return to the hub screen, return to the 'Installation Source' spoke, change the source back to 'Closest mirror', and return to the hub screen once again.

Invalid installation source breaks many configuration screens

link to this item - Bugzilla: #875003

If you happen to provide an invalid installation source (in the Installation Source screen) in the Fedora 18 installer, some installer screens might become corrupted even when you provide a correct installation repository (like Closest mirror) afterwards. Most often the package selection screen gets corrupted, but other screens like partitioning or keyboard selection screen might be affected too. The only safe workaround is to reboot and start the installer again.

UEFI boot doesn't work with liveusb-creator

link to this item - Bugzilla: #810112

liveusb-creator is one of the recommended tools for converting optical media ISO images into a bootable USB images. However, this tool still hasn't implemented support for UEFI boot. If you want to install Fedora in native UEFI mode from a USB media, use either dd or livecd-iso-to-disk to create it. The full instructions are at How to create and use Live USB.

Software issues

Automatic login does not work on Desktop Live image

link to this item - Bugzilla: #854722

When you boot the Fedora 18 Desktop Live image, you will not be automatically logged in to the desktop, as was the case in previous releases and as is intended. The login screen will appear with 'Live System User' as the only available user account: clicking this user will log you into the live system, which will then work as usual. There are no further consequences of this bug beyond the minor inconvenience.

System will drop to rescue mode if encryption password not entered after some time

link to this item - Bugzilla: #868421

If you install Fedora 18 with all or some system partitions encrypted, then if you do not enter the encryption password for an encryption partition when prompted at boot, after several minutes the system will drop to rescue mode. It ought to wait indefinitely for password entry. If you encounter this problem, you can simply reboot from the rescue mode and enter the password in time on the next boot attempt. Your data will not be endangered.

GNOME does not have a default keyboard shortcut for switching keyboard layout, does not respect the X layout switch shortcut configuration, and cannot configure modifier-only shortcuts

link to this item - Bugzilla: #873849

The version of the GNOME desktop installed in Fedora 18 does not include a default keyboard shortcut for switching between multiple keyboard layouts, though you can do so graphically via the menu in the top-right hand corner of the screen. The GNOME Control Center's Keyboard utility lets you configure shortcuts for 'Switch to next source' and 'Switch to previous source', but does not allow these to consist entirely of so-called 'modifier' keys, which is the most common type of shortcut to use for this function. Also, if you configure a layout switch shortcut at the X level either manually or via the Fedora system installer (which is capable of configuring a keyboard layout switch shortcut), GNOME will not respect it.

To work around these problems, you can use the gnome-tweak-tool utility. If you do not have it installed, install it with PackageKit or the command su -c 'yum install gnome-tweak-tool'. Then run it - it is present in the Overview under the name Tweak Tool - and click on Typing. The very last setting in this menu, 'Modifiers-only input sources switcher shortcut', lets you choose one of several commonly-used shortcuts for this purpose.