Common F19 bugs

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This page documents common bugs in Fedora 19 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 F19_release_announcement and the Fedora 19 release notes for specific information about changes in Fedora 19 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

Installer screens sometimes do not appear at full screen width

link to this item - Bugzilla: #869364

Sometimes when you visit a screen in the Fedora 19 Beta installer (a 'spoke') more than once, it will display incorrectly - it will be squeezed into an area less than the full width of the screen, and sometimes less than the full height also. We have been attempting to fix this bug for a while but it is a difficult one to pin down.

Usually you can still use the screen in the reduced size version, though it may look very strange. If you get completely stuck, though, you will unfortunately be required to reboot and restart the installation process. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Sadly, we were unable to resolve this issue ahead of the final release of Fedora 19. We were unable to diagnose the cause of the issue, so without any idea how long it might take to fix or how difficult the fix may be, we could not consider adjusting the release schedule. We will attempt to make sure the issue is fixed for the release of Fedora 20.

Native UEFI install alongside UEFI install of OS X results in you have not created a bootloader stage1 target device error

link to this item - Bugzilla: #979205

If you try to do a native UEFI install of Fedora 19 alongside a native UEFI install of OS X and re-use the existing EFI system partition, the installer will incorrectly consider the existing EFI system partition as invalid and report that you have not created a bootloader stage1 target device. Unfortunately, the Fedora automatic partitioning algorithm will actually attempt to re-use the EFI system partition, and so you will run into this bug in any Fedora 19 installation attempt where you use the automatic partitioning algorithm and do not choose to delete the existing EFI system partition.

Practically speaking, there are a few different approaches to dealing with this problem. If you do not mind losing your OS X installation, you can simply choose to delete it (including the EFI system partition), and let Fedora occupy the rest of the disk. Fedora should create a new EFI system partition and install successfully.

If you wish to preserve your OS X installation, install Fedora 19 Final, and dual boot, you must use the installer's 'custom partitioning' path. Make sure to leave the existing EFI system partition intact, but do not set a mount point for it. Do not use the Create partitions for me button. Instead, manually create a new EFI system partition, and set it to be mounted at /boot/efi. Manually create other partitions as usual. Complete custom partitioning, and your installation should proceed successfully. See the Installation Guide for general instructions on the partitioning process, if necessary.

You could also try installing Fedora 18 or Fedora 19 Beta. These should allow you to use automatic partitioning to install alongside OS X, assuming you do not run into any other bugs they may have contained. You could then upgrade to Fedora 19 Final - with FedUp from Fedora 18, or yum from Fedora 19 Beta. You will still wind up with two EFI system partitions in this case.

We are investigating the possibility of producing an updates image to make it easier to deal with this bug. We apologize for any inconvenience it causes you.

Intel firmware RAID-1+ sets not visible in live installer

link to this item - Bugzilla: #975649

Fedora 19 testing indicates that Intel firmware RAID sets at level 1 and higher (so not level 0) fail to appear as potential target devices in the installer when running from a live image. They appear as normal when installing from a non-live image (the DVD or network installer).

This issue appears to be caused by mdmon failing to start or being killed during the live image start up. It may be possible to work around it by starting mdmon manually prior to running the installer. The other 'workaround' for the issue is simply to install from the DVD or network install image rather than a live image if you wish to install to an affected firmware RAID device.

Problems with Installation Source and Installation Destination spokes when installing from a partially complete kickstart

link to this item - Bugzilla: #972265 - Bugzilla: #972266

If you attempt to install Fedora 19 using a partially-complete kickstart - in particular, a kickstart which specifies a package set but no installation source or destination - you will find that the interactive process for setting those options behaves strangely. On the Installation Source spoke, you may not be able to use the default Closest mirror option. If you are affected by this problem, you can manually enter the URL of the Fedora 19 mirror list, and check the This URL refers to a mirror list. box. The URLs for the 64-bit and 32-bit mirror lists are https://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=fedora-19&arch=x86_64 and https://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=fedora-19&arch=i386 respectively.

The Installation Destination spoke appears to require you to complete it multiple times to complete configuration: each time it will set another element of the configuration. Even after doing this, you may find a bootloader target disk is not selected. To set one, first enter the Full disk summary and bootloader... screen and select not to install a bootloader, and complete the spoke once again. Then complete the spoke one more time, this time selecting the correct target disk for the bootloader, and the configuration should now be complete.

As these issues take some effort to work around, it may be a better idea simply to use a complete kickstart, or at least one which specifies an installation source and destination. The Anaconda/Kickstart page should help you with the required syntax.

Storage devices without media show as 0-byte partitions and can crash the installer

link to this item - Bugzilla: #960794

Several testers have reported an unusual case with certain storage devices in the Fedora 19 installer. Some devices report themselves to the kernel as drives with 'no media present'. Identified cases so far include an Android-based phone when plugged into the system but not set in USB storage mode, and a few types of card reader when no card is inserted.

If such a device is present during installation, it will not be shown in the 'Installation Destination' screen's list of disks, but if you enter the custom partitioning mode, the device will appear as a single 0-byte partition. If you attempt to manipulate this partition in any way, the installer may crash with an error AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'type' .

There are two obvious workarounds for this issue. In most cases it should be possible simply to disconnect the offending device: there is no need to connect your phone or external card reader during installation. If the offending device is not easily removable, you can simply leave the bogus 0-byte 'partition' entirely alone, and your installation should proceed successfully.

UEFI install to ms-dos ('MBR') labelled disk fails with unclear errors

link to this item - Bugzilla: #978430

As veterans of the Fedora 16 release may remember, there are two commonly-used 'disk label' or 'partition table' formats known as 'gpt' and 'ms-dos' or 'mbr'.

Fedora 19's installer effectively requires that native UEFI installations be performed to a disk with the 'gpt' format (in fact, it requires that the EFI system partition be on such a disk). In fact, this is not a requirement of the official UEFI specification: it leaves open the possibility of an EFI system partition residing on an ms-dos labelled disk, though it is possible that some firmwares may not support such a configuration.

In any case, if you attempt to do a native UEFI install of Fedora 19 such that the EFI system partition will reside on an ms-dos labelled disk, this will fail. You are likely get an error of the form you have not created a bootloader stage1 target device, possibly with the note that the volume backing the EFI system partition must have one of the following disklabel types: gpt. You may also observe unusual behaviour on the Reclaim space screen, if you use it in your installation attempt. Note that you can encounter this error message even when installing to a gpt-labelled disk if you use custom partitioning and fail to correctly configure an EFI system partition: when doing a UEFI install you must include a partition of the 'EFI system partition' type, and mount it at the path /boot/efi.

We have found that there appear to be some systems 'in the wild' with existing native UEFI operating system installations to an ms-dos labelled drive. Unfortunately, this bug means you cannot install Fedora 19 in a dual-boot configuration to the same drive as such an operating system. You would need to install to a second drive in order to dual boot.

If you wish to do a native UEFI installation of Fedora 19, it must be to a gpt-labelled disk, or you must configure your installation such that all existing partitions on the disk on which the EFI system partition will reside will be deleted (doing this will cause the installer to reformat it with a gpt disk label). Note that it is not possible to change the label format of a disk in a non-destructive way: it requires a complete re-format.

For Fedora 20, we intend to revise the installer to handle this situation in a better way. We apologize for any inconvenience it causes.

USB stick from which install is running appears as a possible install target

link to this item - Bugzilla: #874381

In some circumstances, when you are installing Fedora 19 from a USB stick, the stick itself will show up as a possible 'target disk' on the Installation Destination screen where you choose which disk(s) to install onto. This is not intended to happen. It is not possible to install to the USB stick from which the installation is running: if you attempt to do this, the installation will fail. Naturally, therefore, we recommend you simply avoid selecting the stick on this screen.

Multipath devices disappear from Installation Destination screen second time through

link to this item - Bugzilla: #955664

If for any reason you visit the Installation Destination screen more than once during a Fedora 19 installation to a system with available multipath storage device(s), the multipath device(s) will show in the device list the first time through, but not on subsequent visits. You will still be able to find it by using the Add a disk... button, though, so you can continue with your installation.

Hidden extlinux install option works only with network install

link to this item - Bugzilla: #970184

The feature Features/SyslinuxOption provides the Fedora 19 installer with a hidden (mostly undocumented) boot parameter extlinux. If you pass this parameter, the installer will attempt to install the extlinux bootloader instead of grub2. However, this obviously requires extlinux to be available to the installer. During live and DVD-sourced installations, extlinux is not available, and any attempt to install with this parameter will fail with the error No such file or directory: '/mnt/sysimage/boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf'. The parameter will work correctly when performing a network installation. So, if you intend to use this hidden feature of Fedora 19, use the non-live installer, and ensure network repositories (or at least some repository containing the extlinux package) is available to the installer.

Reboot after non-live install often delayed for a minute or so

link to this item - Bugzilla: #974383

After successfully completing an installation of Fedora 19 from the DVD or network installation media, you will see a button to Reboot. Sometimes, after you click this, the system will appear to hang at a console. In fact, the reboot process is just delayed; if you leave it for a minute or two, the system will reboot correctly. We do recommend you wait it out to avoid any possibility of filesystem damage, rather than forcing a reset.

'Selected' state for disks is indicated with a small and easily missed check mark

link to this item - Bugzilla: #967682

On the installer screen where you choose which disks will be used for Fedora 19 installation, disks that are selected as installation targets are marked with a fairly small black check mark in the lower right hand corner; disks that are not selected do not have the check mark.

This has been changed since Fedora 18, when disks that were selected were highlighted in blue, and now the blue highlight simply means the UI element is selected. So if you click on a disk that was previously selected as an install target, then you have just de-selected it - so the check mark goes away - but the UI element is active, so it is highlighted in blue.

Add to this that if you only have a single hard disk it will be pre-selected as an install target when you enter the page, and it has become clear that this design is confusing people. Many users have entered the screen and clicked to 'select' their single disk - in fact de-selecting it, because it was already selected, but not noticing the mistake.

Please be aware that the check mark not the blue highlight indicates the disks selected as targets. We will endeavour to improve this interface before the release of Fedora 20.

Bootloader password is required on each boot

link to this item - Bugzilla: #840160

If you set a bootloader password during installation of Fedora 19 (which is only possible when doing a kickstart-based install), the password will be required at each boot of the system. This is a change in behaviour from Fedora 15 and earlier, where the password was required only to change settings from within the bootloader.

Lawrence Lowe suggests that the --unrestricted parameter can be added to menuentry lines in the grub config file to make them available without the password being entered.

Non-GNOME initial setup utility does not warn of failure to create a user account

link to this item - Bugzilla: #965797

In Fedora 19, the new initial-setup utility (shown after a graphical install with any desktop other than GNOME if you do not create a user account during installation) does not present any kind of warning if you leave it without having created a user account. Thus it is relatively easy to arrive at a graphical login screen without any user accounts available.

The old utility would allow you to skip user account creation, but required you to click through a warning in order to do so, to ensure no-one did it inadvertently. This is also how initial-setup should behave.

We have tested that the desktops for which the new tool is used - KDE, Xfce, LXDE, MATE, and Sugar - all allow login as root, so this bug should not present any major roadblocks to accessing the installed system. However, if you do install without creating a user account, we strongly advise that you log in as root only in order to create a user account, and then immediately log out and in future always log in as the user account. Using a graphical desktop with root privileges can increase your vulnerability to remote attack, to simple mistakes having severe consequences, and to bugs caused by software not expecting to be run with root privileges.

This issue does not affect the GNOME initial setup utility: in fact, that utility will not allow you to skip user account creation at all.

Hardware issues

Boot hangs when using NVIDIA discrete graphics on some Thinkpad models (W520, T420)

link to this item - Bugzilla: #752613 Kernel bugzilla: #43054

Multiple testers have reported that various Thinkpad models - including at least the W520 and T420 - that have hybrid Intel/NVIDIA graphics will fail to boot Fedora 19 when using the discrete NVIDIA graphics adapter. Using the onboard Intel adapter, Fedora will boot successfully.

Further testing indicates that this bug is an interaction between several features of these systems and of Fedora: the VT-d advanced virtualization feature, the X2APIC level APIC, and the NVIDIA adapter. If all three of these things are used together, boot fails. If any one is removed from the equation, boot succeeds.

So if you are affected by this bug, you can choose to boot with any two of those things, but not all three together. You can disable the VT-d feature and select which graphics adapter to use through the system firmware. You can disable X2APIC functionality by passing the kernel parameter nox2apic. In this way, you should be able to determine which of the features you want to use.

The kernel developers plan to address this issue in a future kernel update by blacklisting X2APIC functionality on affected systems, when the NVIDIA adapter is in use.

Transition from GDM to desktop fails on systems with old or no 3D graphics adapters

link to this item - Bugzilla: #955779

Several users have reported a problem with logging in from GDM on systems with an old, or no, 3D graphics adapter (including virtual machines). This seems to affect some virtual setups, and older graphics adapters that are blacklisted from being used for 3D acceleration of GNOME Shell: pre-i915 Intel adapters, pre-R300 (Radeon 9500) Radeon adapters, and pre-NV30 (GeForce FX) NVIDIA adapters. The effect of the bug is that, after entering a username and password, the screen remains blank grey, never transitioning to the desktop. Some testers do not seem to be affected by the problem; we are yet to pin down precisely what is causing it.

If you are affected by the problem, the simplest solution is to switch to a different login manager. The best options are likely KDM and LightDM, as they have received the most testing with the widest range of desktops besides GDM. To switch to kdm or lightdm, simply install the kdm or lightdm package and run su -c 'systemctl enable kdm.service' or su -c 'systemctl enable lightdm.service' then su -c 'systemctl disable gdm.service', then reboot. You should see the new login manager, and you should be able to log in successfully with it.

Software issues

System fails to start correctly (due to qxl driver crash) when booting Fedora 19 Beta as a virtual guest on a RHEL 6 or 7 host

link to this item - Bugzilla: #952666

It has been reported that the xorg-x11-drv-qxl driver in Fedora 19 crashes during X startup when trying to boot a Fedora 19 Beta image in a virtual guest configured with qxl/SPICE graphics on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 or 7 (pre-release) host. This likely affects earlier versions of RHEL 6, clones of RHEL 6 such as CentOS, and possibly very old (and unsupported) Fedora releases as well.

To work around this issue, configure your guest to use cirrus/VNC or vga/VNC instead of qxl/SPICE. This is really a bug on the host side rather than the guest side, and updates for RHEL should be made available soon after Fedora 19's release that should resolve this problem.

X may crash when using the qxl driver in a Fedora 19 virtual machine on a Fedora 19 host

link to this item - Bugzilla: #978612

Some testers have reported X.org crashes in Fedora 19 KVM virtual machines running on Fedora 19 hosts when using the qxl graphics driver. The issue seems to be triggered by a resolution change in the guest, but some testers have observed it happening during an installation from the KDE live image: we are not yet sure why. This issue does not seem to affect all testers, and seems to affect some worse than others.

If you find yourself suffering from this issue, there are a couple of possible workarounds. You can configure your virtual machine to use the cirrus video adapter rather than qxl and the VNC display method rather than SPICE (though this may cause issues with GNOME Shell), or you can use the Basic graphics mode option from the Fedora 19 bootloader menu (or simply pass the parameter nomodeset on the kernel command line).

An updated xorg-x11-drv-qxl package has been submitted to the updates-testing repository for testing. Users experiencing this problem are encouraged to test this update and report to Bodhi whether it solves the problem. To test the update, run this command:

su -c 'yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update xorg-x11-drv-qxl'

and then reboot the guest system. Of course, this will not be useful for the initial installation of a Fedora 19 virtual machine: for that phase, try one of the workarounds mentioned above.

Crash when GNOME introductory video attempts to play

link to this item - Bugzilla: #962092

When a user logs into GNOME 3.8 (as included in Fedora 19) for the first time, a short introductory video is intended to play. Fedora 19 testing has indicated that, sometimes, there is a crash, and the video fails to play. On first login to a user account, you may notice a crash report for the /usr/libexec/gnome-initial-setup-player process. Aside from the crash report and the failure of the video to play, this bug appears to have no further consequences. We have not yet identified the circumstances under which the crash occurs.

"Updates available" notification runs online updater

link to this item - Bugzilla: #863592

Fedora 18 introduced a feature called offline system updates. Its description suggests that 'offline' updates - updates performed across a system reboot - are now the default method for graphical updating in Fedora 18 and later, at least when using GNOME. However, the feature's implementation is still somewhat incomplete: GNOME will still pop up notifications of available updates, and if you click on these notifications as you are encouraged to do, the 'online' update process (updates installed within the running system) will be launched.

This is not a major bug - the online update system still works, and while there are valid reasons why offline updates are slightly more robust, online updates are what Fedora used from Fedora Core 1 through Fedora 17 so there is no pressing reason to believe the use of online updates will be a disaster. Both mechanisms perform as intended in Fedora 19, and you can use the online update mechanism as safely in Fedora 19 as you ever did in a previous Fedora release. This note is included simply to explain the situation, in case you are confused as to what's going on.

If you want to trigger an offline update, use the "Install Updates and Restart" entry on the User menu.

biosdevname rather than systemd network interface names used by default

link to this item - Bugzilla: #965718

The Systemd predictable network interface names Feature of Fedora 19 is supposed to mean that network interface names will be set by systemd/udev following the upstream feature, rather than by the biosdevname tool which was introduced as part of the Fedora 15 consistent network device naming feature. The two systems have similar goals, but use different naming schemes.

In practice, as things have turned out with the final Fedora 19, it seems that the Fedora installer still uses biosdevname, and writes the interface names produced by biosdevname into the configuration files for each interface. The biosdevname package is also still installed by default. We therefore expect that Fedora 19 will in fact mostly behave as if biosdevname is still the system in use, both on new installations and upgrades.

This should not cause any problems, but we felt the issue was worth noting in case the question arose as to why the new feature does not seem to be working, or in case certain corner cases appear in which the two systems conflict in some way.

Several x-caja-desktop windows pop up on login to MATE desktop

link to this item - Bugzilla: #886029

Sometimes (the bug is due to a race condition and hence unpredictable), on boot of the Fedora 19 MATE live image or first login with a user account to the MATE desktop, several useless windows labelled x-caja-desktop will open up on the desktop.

The bug has no further consequences and it is quite safe to simply close the windows and continue using the system. The MATE maintainer is currently working to resolve this issue with updated packages.

Low battery warnings not showing up in LXDE

link to this item - Bugzilla: #975826

Fedora 19's original LXDE build relied on the xmessage tool for printing 'low battery' notifications. However, this tool is not included by default in an LXDE installation (or the LXDE live image). This means that these notifications will not show up unless you manually install the xorg-x11-apps package.

An updated lxpanel package has been submitted to the updates-testing repository for testing. Users experiencing this problem are encouraged to test this update and report to Bodhi whether it solves the problem. To test the update, run this command:

su -c 'yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update lxpanel'

This update will not solve the problem with live images. If it is important to you that you get low battery notifications when running the LXDE live image, please manually install the xorg-x11-apps package.

X crashes on Fedora 19 32-bit VirtualBox guests with Guest Additions installed

link to this item - Bugzilla: #972095

Several testers have reported that if you install a 32-bit edition of Fedora 19 to a VirtualBox virtual machine and install the Guest Additions, X will no longer start up successfully.

Please note that Fedora does not officially support or recommend the use of the VirtualBox platform. A fix for this issue is unlikely to come from the Fedora project, but the VirtualBox developers may address it in future releases. To work around the issue, do not install the Guest Additions, or install a 64-bit edition of Fedora 19 rather than a 32-bit edition.