This page documents common bugs in Fedora 12 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 Fedora 12 release notes for specific information about intentional changes in Fedora 12, 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. Remember to try and follow the style and guidelines explained in the comments in the page source.
- Add the CommonBugs keyword to the bug report, and contact the Fedora QA team with the Bugzilla report number explaining why you believe that particular report qualifies as a common issue. You can contact Fedora QA through any of the methods listed here.
Issues when upgrading from previous releases
As usual, the supported methods for upgrading from previous Fedora releases are to do an 'upgrade install' from the regular installation media, or to use preupgrade (see How_to_use_PreUpgrade). Upgrading by using yum directly is not supported, but may in practice work. For known issues when upgrading via yum, see the page on this upgrade method.
Preupgrade free space check on /boot not thorough
link to this item - Bugzilla: #530541
Preupgrade is intended to provide a hassle-free method for upgrading a system to the current release of Fedora. Testing identified that users of Fedora 11 (and earlier) who installed their systems using the recommended /boot partition size of 200MB may not be able to upgrade their systems using preupgrade. The /boot filesystem is used to store the kernel and initial ramdisk images that form the core of the Fedora operating system. required by several utilities including grub, kernel and preupgrade.
The preupgrade utility was not properly detecting the amount of available space on the /boot filesystem prior to beginning the system update process. As a result, preupgrade would successfully complete pre-upgrade operations, and reboot the system into the installer to continue with the upgrade. After reboot, the installer would then fail indicating that insufficient disk space was available to perform the update. A screenshot of the failure message is available.
A preupgrade update is available that will properly detect the amount of disk space available in /boot. Users are advised to update to the following 
preupgrade
- Fedora 12 - https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/F12/FEDORA-2009-11536
- Fedora 11 - https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/F11/FEDORA-2009-11547
- Fedora 10 - https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/F10/FEDORA-2009-11530
Tips for preupgrade users in need of additional disk space in /boot
Before proceeding, be sure to install the updated preupgrade packages noted in #preupgrade-boot. The default /boot filesystem size of 200MB may not be sufficient to perform a preupgrade. This section outlines several tips that have been known to work. As always when performing administrative tasks, be sure to back-up any data before proceeding.
First, try to remove any kernel packages not currently in use on your system. The kernel-prune.py script can be used to identify kernels that may be safely removed. If you choose to remove additional kernels, be prepared with installation media should you be unable to return to your previously installed system.
Next, adjust the number of reserved filesystem blocks using the command tune2fs. You'll first need to identify the block device for your /boot file system. In the example below, /dev/sda1 is the block device for the /boot filesystem.
# mount | grep "/boot" /dev/sda3 on /boot type ext4 (rw)
Now, adjust the number of reserved blocks for the /boot filesystem using the command tune2fs. Normally, a small amount of space on ext filesystem formatted partitions is 'reserved' and can only be used by the system administrator; this is to prevent an entirely full partition from rendering a system unbootable, and allow the administrator some space in which to work in order to clean up 'full' partitions. However, neither of this cases really applies to the /boot filesystem, so removing this reserved space is safe.
# tune2fs -r 0 /dev/sda1
Last, try removing unnecessary files from the /boot filesystem. This will largely depend on how your system is set up. Removing the incorrect files may result in a unbootable system. Some candidates for removal include /boot/efi and /boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz.
Installation issues
/boot must be a minimum of 300 MB
link to this item - Bugzilla: #510970
If you use a separate /boot partition, it is highly recommended that it be at least 300MB in size.
Windows recovery partition available as boot option instead of Windows partition
link to this item - Bugzilla: #534066
When installing Fedora alongside Windows on a system whose manufacturer provides a special 'recovery partition' to allow the re-installation of a clean copy of Windows, the Fedora installer may incorrectly configure the system boot to the recovery partition - rather than the main Windows partition - when the Other boot menu choice is selected. To resolve this issue, edit the file /boot/grub/menu.lst - you will need root privileges to edit this file - and adjust the Other entry accordingly. In most cases, the recovery partition will be the first partition on the first hard disk, and the real Windows partition the second partition on the first hard disk. In this case, the incorrect entry will look like this:
title Other rootnoverify (hd0,0) chainloader +1
It should be corrected to look like this:
title Other rootnoverify (hd0,1) chainloader +1
If you are not sure about your partition layout, the output of the command fdisk -l can help. The restore partition and the real Windows partition should be shown with different types. The output of this command uses /dev/sda to denote the first hard disk, /dev/sdb the second, and so on; and appends the partition numbers starting at 1, rather than 0. So /dev/sda1 in the fdisk output is equivalent to (hd0,0) in grub's format, while /dev/sda2 would be equivalent to (hd0,1) and /dev/sdc5 would be equivalent to (hd2,4).
Miscellaneous problems with Intel graphics adapters
If you are suffering from problems with an Intel graphics adapter such as failure of X to start at all, hangs or freezes or crashes in the graphical environment, display corruption, failure of 3D accelerated applications to work properly or similar problems, and your issue is not specifically covered elsewhere on this page, the following general advice may be of use.
Several such issues may be worked around by disabling kernel mode setting. To do this, add
nomodeset
as a kernel parameter. If this solves your problem, please check whether a bug has already been reported for it, and if not, file a new bug report on the xorg-x11-drv-intel component, explaining your symptoms, and providing all the usual information required for X.org bug reports. In future kernel mode setting will be the only available method, and so we wish to ensure all problems caused by kernel mode setting are fixed.
If this does not resolve your issue, one other potential workaround is to change to a different acceleration method. To do this, add a line:
Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
or:
Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"
to the Device section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf. If that file does not exist, see How_to_create_xorg.conf for instructions on how to create it. Again, if doing this works around the problem you are experiencing, please check whether a bug report on the problem has already been filed, and if not, please file a new bug report on the xorg-x11-drv-intel component, explaining your symptoms, and providing all the usual information required for X.org bug reports. These legacy acceleration methods will be removed in future, so any bugs in the new acceleration method (UXA) need to be fixed.
Miscellaneous problems with ATI / AMD graphics adapters
link to this item - Bugzilla: #498457
If you are experiencing failure to start the graphical desktop, hanging or freezing, corruption, or slow performance with an ATI / AMD graphics adapter, you may try the following.
Some issues may be worked around by disabling kernel mode setting. To do this, add
nomodeset
as a kernel parameter. If this solves your problem, please check whether a bug has already been reported for it, and if not, file a new bug report on the xorg-x11-drv-ati component, explaining your symptoms, and providing all the usual information required for X.org bug reports. In future kernel mode setting will be the only available method, and so we wish to ensure all problems caused by kernel mode setting are fixed.
If this does not resolve your issue, one other potential workaround is to change to a different acceleration method. To do this, add a line:
Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"
to the Device section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf. If that file does not exist, see How_to_create_xorg.conf for instructions on how to create it. Again, if doing this works around the problem you are experiencing, please check whether a bug report on the problem has already been filed, and if not, please file a new bug report on the xorg-x11-drv-ati component, explaining your symptoms, and providing all the usual information required for X.org bug reports. These legacy acceleration methods will be removed in future, so any bugs in the new acceleration method (EXA) need to be fixed.
If this does not resolve your issue, there is another configuration option to try. Add a line:
Option "AccelDFS" "off"
to the Device section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf. If that file does not exist, see How_to_create_xorg.conf for instructions on how to create it. Again, if doing this works around the problem you are experiencing, please check whether a bug report on the problem has already been filed, and if not, please file a new bug report on the xorg-x11-drv-ati component, explaining your symptoms, and providing all the usual information required for X.org bug reports.
Finally, if this still does not resolve your issue, try adding this line:
Option "DRI" "off"
to the Device section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Again, if doing this works around the problem you are experiencing, please check whether a bug report on the problem has already been filed, and if not, please file a new bug report on the xorg-x11-drv-ati component, explaining your symptoms, and providing all the usual information required for X.org bug reports.
Software issues
Encrypted disks can't be unencrypted for non-graphical boot
link to this item - Bugzilla: #530896
Due to an unidentified bug early in the boot cycle, some users are unable to access encrypted disks or partitions at boot up when using a non-graphical boot splash. This issue can be worked around by booting with:
rhgb vga=0x318
on the kernel command line (specified at grub time).
If you are installing Fedora 12 and intend to use encrypted partitions, or are upgrading a system with encrypted partitions to Fedora 12 from an earlier release, it is recommended that you use the traditional installer - not a live image - to install, and make sure to enable the Fedora 12 - Updates repository during installation. This will ensure you are not affected by this issue.
An updated plymouth package has been released to address this issue. Update your system as usual to receive this update, if you do not yet already have it. You may need to rebuild your initial ramdisk after applying the update on an installed Fedora 12 system by running the following command: /usr/libexec/plymouth/plymouth-update-initrd as root. Make sure that you are booted into the latest installed kernel before rebuilding the initial ramdisk.
Missing printer drivers
link to this item - Bugzilla: #536831
The yum install foomatic.
CD tray problems or slow boot after installation from live CD
link to this item - Bugzilla: #527781
When installing from a live CD, the anaconda package is installed on the system. It includes some custom udev rules in the file /lib/udev/rules.d/70-anaconda.rules. These rules have been reported to cause various problems, ranging from CD trays closing again right after ejecting a CD or boot hanging in udev for a long time.
If your system shows these symptoms, you can simply remove the
Intel BIOS RAID arrays created after installation not detected
link to this item - Bugzilla: #537329
Due to incomplete handling in the initialization scripts, Fedora 12 will not correctly recognize Intel BIOS-managed RAID sets created after Fedora has been installed. This type of RAID set will, however, be correctly handled if it exists at install time. This issue can be worked around by adding the parameter iswnomd to the kernel command line, which can be achieved by editing /boot/grub/menu.lst. You may also wish to consider creating the array as a Linux software RAID array rather than a BIOS-managed array; this will make it portable between different Linux systems, and avoid this issue.
An update may be made available to address this issue, however it is not a straightforward issue to fix so this may not be possible or may take some time.
Problems when using the proprietary NVIDIA graphics driver (especially with KDE)
link to this item - Bugzilla: #533620
The root cause of this problem is not Fedora, but rather software provided by NVIDIA. If you are interested in a fix for this issue, you must contact that vendor through their web site.
We encourage Fedora users to use the free nouveau driver, rather than the proprietary nvidia driver, whenever possible.
Due to a bad interaction between the proprietary NVIDIA driver and a fix in Fedora 12's X.org server package for an unrelated problem, current versions of the said driver have several problems in Fedora 12. In particular, they render KDE almost unusable, as discussed in the bug report cited above. Fedora does not provide or support these proprietary drivers and cannot fix this issue. However, users who wish to use the proprietary driver with Fedora 12 can find an unsupported alternative build of the X.org server packages in a comment on the bug report, which several users have reported to work around this issue.
Adobe Reader fails to run
The root cause of this problem is not Fedora, but rather software provided by Adobe. If you are interested in a fix for this issue, you must contact that vendor through their web site.
We encourage Fedora users to use a free alternative to Adobe reader, such as Evince, whenever possible.
The latest release of Adobe Reader (AdobeReader_enu-9.2-1.i486) works in Fedora 12. Previous releases of Adobe Reader do not run by default on Fedora 12. To work around this problem, launch Adobe Reader with the following command: GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1 acroread.
Non-Fedora Mozilla/Firefox binaries may crash
The root cause of this problem is not Fedora, but rather software provided by Mozilla. If you are interested in a fix for this issue, you must contact that vendor through their web site.
There is a conflict between binary software downloaded from Mozilla and software included in Fedora which may lead to a crash, often seen when using Flash. See this page for details and workarounds.