Notes with regard to Fedora Core 2; for older versions, see down the page.

No NVIDIA binary drivers?

At FC2 release time, there was no NVIDIA driver that supported a new feature in the 2.6 Linux Kernel shrinking the stack size to 4k. NVidia's binary driver (version 5336 and earlier) don't work with the 4k stack size.

There is a new drive that fixes this issue - download version 1.0-6106 for IA32 with support for 4K stacks and many other new features.

To make a 5336-or-earlier driver work:

• Grab Linuxant's recompiled kernel which is the standard Fedora kernel recompiled without 4k stacks.
• Get a kernel.org kernel and compile back to 8k stacks.
• Get a Red Hat kernel, reverse the "make 4K stacks permanent patch" and rebuild it with 8k stacks (ATrpms maintained a few of these)

No ATI binary drivers?

These are easier to fix, but equally nasty for new players. See RadeonNotes - the drivers work with the new stack size but you need to patch them for regparm and apply other Fedora fixes.

How do I stop Nautilus from opening a new window for every folder?

Where is Nautilus hiding the navigation buttons and the location bar?

How do I make Nautilus not suck? How do I make Nautilus not spatial?

• gconf-editor -> apps -> nautilus -> preferences -> always_use_browser

How do i turn off the graphical startup and make the kernel more verbose when it is booting?

• Edit /etc/sysconfig/init and change GRAPHICAL to no

How do i make the kernel more verbose before it spawns init?

• Edit /etc/grub.conf and remove the quiet option passed to the kernel

Why does Gaim not connect to the Jabber server in FedoraCore 2?

The initial version of Gaim packaged in FC2 had a bug where it wouldn't fall back to IPv4 when it cannot connect to a jabber server on IPv6.

This was fixed in version 0.77? of Gaim and the latest Fedora Core packages.

See the bug report

If you really want to live on the edge you can get a recent CVS build, see http://michelinakis.gr/Dimitris/gaim/.

Why is my networking slow in FedoraCore 2?

Probably because you have IPv6 enabled but your IPv6 routing is broken.

How do I disable IPv6 in FedoraCore 2?

• You probably want to disable IPv6 in FedoraCore 2.

echo "alias net-pf-10 off" >> /etc/modprobe.conf echo "alias ipv6 off" >> /etc/modprobe.conf

• See also http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2004-March/msg00310.html.

Why does VI not recognize my Arrow Keys?

FedoraCore 2 no longer requires vim-common to be installed when you install vim-minimal. This makes vim not work very well. Install the vim-common rpm and all should be resolved.

Why doesn't CrossoverOffice work under FedoraCore 2?

Several features enabled by default in FedoraCore break Wine and therefore CrossoverOffice. Upgrade to at least 3.01 or see CXOfficeNotes for details how on to fix this.

Why is named broken?

I'm getting rndc: connect failed: connection refused when i try and stop named

named in FedoraCore uses a chroot jail to run in (/var/named/chroot). The configuration files for named (/etc/named.conf, /etc/rndc.key) need to be copied into /var/named/chroot/etc so named can read them when it loads up. Forget about the ones in /etc, it's broken.
For more info see Bugzilla 124992

NTFS support?

Disabled by Red Hat for patent reasons; get pre-compiled NTFS kernel RPMS for Fedora here.

Which Repositories Should I Use?

An excellent question! It appears that selecting a good set of repositories to use with FC2 is a little bit of an art. If you just use the standard FC2 repository then you will be missing things such as mp3 support and many other "good" things that have patents restricting their distribution inside the US. However if you start adding external repositories willy nilly to your system you can end up in all sorts of trouble with conflicting versions of packages.

The best combination that I have come up with is

• download.fedora.us
• atrpms
• dag
• freshrpms
• newrpms

I think you can safely live without fedora.us. I use apt for my package management, although I still use yum through the RHN applet to keep up to date with newly released packages from RedHat.

For more information about Fedora, see our FedoraProject page.

Older stuff...

NVIDIA GLX Drivers with Fedora Core 1.

• The current NVIDA GLX drivers don't compile out of the box on Fedora. They require you to "export CC=gcc32" before running the installer. This was not the case on RedHat 9. Perhaps the Installer detected the compiler correctly on RH9??

  • FC1 ships with gcc 3.3, but the kernel doesn't compile with it yet so its compiled with 3.2 This means all kernel drivers need to be compiled with gcc3.2, which is included for just this reason. -- AlastairPorter
• The drivers linked off the NVIDIA drivers webpage are older than the current driver set. The current set (as of 22/12/03) is 1.0-5328. I assume these match up with the ForceWare? 53 series for Windows.

• The only version of the NVIDIA drivers I could get to work with my GeForce 5700 were 5328. I've not nailed down the complete set of variables but I got it to work fine with the following options in the "Device" section

  Option "NvAGP" "3" Option "!ConnectedMonitor?" "DFP" Option "!UseEdidFreqs?" "on"

Note that I have a Digital Flat Panel monitor connected to the DVI port on my card. I'm going to play with TwinView etc later so will update on success/failure of doing that.