Fedora 7 FAQ

This is a Fedora 7 specific FAQ. If you are looking for general answers on Fedora, take a look at the FAQ.

What's New in Fedora 7?

Ability to remix Fedora or create custom appliances easily.
New GNOME 2.18 and KDE 3.5.6 based live images that can be installed to hard disk or USB disk.
2.6.21 based kernel
Extended Wireless network management. New 80211Mac (Devicescape) network stack and new wireless drivers. Network Manager is enabled by default in the Live images. Support for Intel 3945, rt2x00 and zd1211 based devices among others.
Fast User Switching with console kit integration
New desktop theme
Comprehensive SELinux GUI config tool (system-config-selinux)
Automatic hotplugging display devices (X-server 1.3)
Fedora Directory Server
Tickless kernel for better power management
New Free and open source experimental 3D Nvidia driver
Much faster Yum, Pirut, Pup
Virtualization: KVM, Xen and Qemu supported with a new graphical installer and management tool virt-manager.
Improved I18N support with SCIM
Smolt hardware profiler
New Firewire stack
NTFS-3g and Liberation fonts which provide metric equivalents to key Microsoft fonts for better interoperability
Improved infrastructure via new build, updates system and mirror management

Where can I find Fedora 7 screenshots?

Are there any media references?

Where can I download Fedora 7?

Make sure you read the release notes and installation guide from http://docs.fedoraproject.org for important information about new installations and upgrades.

What are the choices available?

Name	Size	Description
Fedora 7 i386	2.8G	DVD image for installation on 32-bit PCs
Fedora 7 x86_64	3.4G	DVD image for installation on 64-bit PCs
Fedora 7 ppc	3.5G	DVD image for installation on POWER-based systems, including non-Intel Macs
Fedora 7 Live i686	701M	Live CD/DVD with Gnome for 32-bit PCs
Fedora 7 KDE Live i686	688M	Live CD/DVD with KDE for 32-bit PCs
Fedora 7 Live x86_64	781M	Live DVD with Gnome for 64-bit PCs
Fedora 7 KDE Live x86_64	833M	Live DVD with KDE for 64-bit PCs

Where can I find cover artwork for CD or DVD's?

See Artwork/CDArt

Are there Installable Live CD/DVD images?

Yes. Beginning with Fedora 7, it is recommended to use Live images to install on a system with a CD-ROM only. It is also possible to use a boot.iso, a rescue.iso (which fit on a CD) or a boot.img that fits on a USB, zip or super disk, and can be used to start a network or a harddrive install.

Live images can be burned to CD or DVD disks. Live disks lets the user boot directly into the Fedora system in a graphical environment, try it out or demonstrate it to the other end users. You can also install it to your hard disk or usb disk with a graphical installer. Fedora 7 provides GNOME and KDE based Live images which can be installed to hard disks and USB disks. The x86 versions are CD size images and the x86_64 ones are DVD sizes. The x86_64 also include x86 equivalents of some packages for compatibility reasons referred to as "multilib" and hence the images sizes are larger.

Are there regular CD installation images ?

Yes. Fedora 7 includes a DVD image that has the features of a regular installation. We don't provide CD variants for the regular installation. The DVD image includes a subset of the Fedora repository which has around 7500 packages. CD variants of the regular installation have been provided unofficially by the community at

http://fedora.kanarip.com/torrents/

Are there regular installation images that include all the software available in Fedora?

Not by the Fedora Project. The Everything folder in the mirrors provides an installable repository but ISO images are not provided since they would be around 9 GB and not many mirrors would be willing to carry it. All installations of Fedora use the same central repository and all the packages are available via yum and front ends.

There are retail vendors who provide a 11 CD set that contains all the software. Take a look at http://www.pctech101.com/fedora7_cd_set.php

There is also an unofficially, community sponsored 14 CD Disc set, or 3 DVD Disc set at http://fedora.kanarip.com/torrents

What are the differences between Live images and regular installations ?

Live images provide a subset of packages available in the regular DVD image. Both connect to the same repository that has all the packages.
SSH is disabled by default and Network Manager is enabled by default in the Live images. SSH is disabled because the default username in the Live images do not have any password. Installation to hard disk prompts for creating a new user name and password however. Network Manager is enabled by default since Live images target desktop users. The plan for Fedora 8 is to more deeply integrate Network Manager throughout the distribution and enable it by default in all instances.
Live image installations do not allow any package selection or upgrade capability since they copy entire the filesystem from media to hard disk or USB disks. After the installation is complete and booted into, packages can be added and removed as desired with yum.
Live images do not work on i586 architecture.

Where can I find documentation?

See http://docs.fedoraproject.org

Why are all the hard disks in my system called /dev/sdX?

This is expected behavior with latest kernel provided in Fedora 7. See http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f7/en_US/sn-Kernel.html

Are there any notes on upgrading from a previous release?

Yes. See http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f7/en_US/sn-Installer.html

Is it possible to upgrade to Fedora 7 from a previous release using yum?

Yes. See YumUpgradeFaq

Is there a list of common issues in Fedora 7 specifically?

Yes. See Bugs/F7Common

What are the booting options to try if my system hangs while trying to install Fedora 7?

The full set of options are documented in the [http://docs.fedoraproject.org/install-guide/f7/en_US/ installation guide. The following are commonly used. ]


linux text (Text mode installation. Useful for low memory systems. Installed system will boot in text mode (run level 3) by default)
askmethod (Enables a network installation)
acpi=off
maxcpus=1 (Some Dell dual core systems require this workaround. See common bugs page for more details.)
noapic
nolapic
dodmraid
nodmraid
ide=nodma
fb=no
vga=769       # 256 color 640x480 ; see other choices in tables below

Since the full set of vga option values are not documented in the installation guide, many of these values are listed below. Use vga=ask to see a list of values expressed in character columns and rows. This video mode option may only affect the presentation of the initial console text lines on the screen and in the virtual terminals. Selecting a value that allows more characters to be displayed on your screen may allow more information to be gathered if an installation or system boot fails to complete normally.

If VESA BIOS Extensions v2.0 are not completely implemented in your system, some of these values may appear to have no effect, or even display no visible text. Even if one selects a VGA VESA mode which is expressed in pixels (as contrasted with columns x rows of characters), this choice may only briefly change the display of text and have no effect on the X session that is eventually started. This choice for the size of the screen in pixels is NOT communicated to the running system, or more precisely, the video mode will likely be reset at least once or twice more before the system startup completes. Once an install or normal boot progresses to its graphical phase, or a Live CD progresses to the graphical boot progress screen or login greeter screen or the desktop, the appearance is unaffected by whatever value was passed via vga=_.

VGA modes (expressed as decimal numbers)

Colors (depth)	640x480	800x600	1024x768	1280x1024
256 ( 8 bit)	257	259	261	263
32,768 (15 bit)	272	275	278	281
65,536 (16 bit)	273	276	279	282
16.8M (24 bit)	274	277	280	283

VESA VGA modes (expressed as decimal numbers)

Colors (depth)	640x480	800x600	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
256 ( 8 bit)	769	771	773	775	796
32,768 (15 bit)	784	787	790	793	797
65,536 (16 bit)	785	788	791	794	798
16.8M (24 bit)	786	789	792	795	799

Where can I report bugs or request enhancements?

You can do that via http://bugzilla.redhat.com. See BugsAndFeatureRequests for more details. Posting bug reports to fedora-list or other end user forums are not very useful for developers as they might not be able to keep track of the issues easily.

What do I do if my system does not suspend/hibernate properly?

See http://people.freedesktop.org/~hughsient/quirk/index.html

Where can I find information about creating custom spins of Fedora?

Where can I ask questions for more information about custom spins?

The following mailing lists are useful for live cd tools, pungi and revisor in that order:

Where is the new SELinux management tool?

SELinux management tool is installed by default in Fedora 7. You can access via the menu, System=> Administration=> SELinux or system-config-selinux in the command line. If you have upgraded from a previous release or if it is not installed on your system already you can do so using Add/Remove programs(Pirut) or the following command as root user.


yum install policycoreutils-gui

I know answers to questions I want to add to this FAQ. How can I do that?

If you have wiki access just edit this page and add them. If not contact RahulSundaram who is the FAQ maintainer. Avoid mailing the FAQ maintainer for end user help. See the next answer.

My question is not in this FAQ. Where can I find answers?

If you are looking for help, ask in http://fedoraforum.org or ask in fedora-list . If it is a question to developers, ask in fedora-devel list . See Communicate for more information.

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