Upgrading to Fedora 18 using Yum - Nouveau causes system freeze?

The documentation for upgrading fedora using yum seems to be much better than before. A very nice script which automates the instructions was terrific. The upgrades of my desktop and the netbook were very smooth. After the upgrade, I installed the Cinnamon desktop as well. It is very nice though I will stick to KDE as I am now comfortable with it.

There was, however, a surprise on the desktop. On booting into Fedora 18, the display vanished and the system hung. The system came up in muti-user mode but not in graphical interface. Gdm was the problem. I switched to kdm. The login screen came and was fine in KDE. However, the system again froze when I tried Cinnamon or Gnome desktops. LXDE worked but the system froze as soon as I started Firefox!

KDE desktop was working with desktop effects disabled. If I enabled them, the desktop froze.

The desktop worked fine with the nomodeset option for booting the kernel. However, it was using the vesa driver. So, the problem is with nouveau driver on "GeForce 6150SE nForce 430" hardware.

Another curious result. The system is working fine with the kernel 3.6.11-1.fc17.x86_64 from fedora 17, which has made it possible to continue with Fedora 18 on the desktop.

Need to reconfirm the problems I faced on the desktop as I did not find a bug report with similar issues.

On Lenovo S10-3, I have so far not faced any issues related to the upgrade.

Fedora 15, CUPS - Why does Canon LBP2900B behave so erratically?

I installed a Canon LBP2900B printer and discovered that the drivers are not included in Fedora. It was easy to get them from http://support-asia.canon-asia.com/contents/ASIA/EN/0900772407.html.

The printer worked but after a reboot, the printer did not seem to work. CUPS insisted on creating an additional LBP2900-2 printer for device usb://Canon/LBP2900, while the correct LBP2900 was on device ccp://localhost:59687.

Ignoring all the false steps, the problem would be overcome by stopping the ccpd server and restarting it.

It took a number of reboots and installing it on Ubuntu 11.04 as well to identify that while the additional entry for the same printer by CUPS was confusing, it was harmless.

The real problem was that /etc/init.d/ccpd service should have two processes. On Fedora 15, it was having only one. However, when I stopped the service and restarted it, it would start correctly with two processes:

$ sudo systemctl status ccpd.service
ccpd.service - LSB: Start Canon Printer Daemon for CUPS
      Loaded: loaded (/etc/rc.d/init.d/ccpd)
      Active: active (running) since Fri, 03 Jun 2011 09:56:52 +0530; 11min ago
     Process: 5681 ExecStop=/etc/rc.d/init.d/ccpd stop (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
     Process: 5693 ExecStart=/etc/rc.d/init.d/ccpd start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
    Main PID: 5698 (ccpd)
      CGroup: name=systemd:/system/ccpd.service
          ├ 5698 /usr/sbin/ccpd
          ├ 5702 /usr/sbin/ccpd
          └ 5703 captmon2 --data-write-fd=8 --data-read-fd=12 --cmd...

The issue appears to be somehow related to systemd starting services in parallel. The ccpd server probably expects some service to be running which has not yet started.
 

System Insists on Rebooting, Ignores Shutdown request!

My mother was patiently waiting for me to start her computer. Actually, the monitor was off but the computer was on. My sister had a problem shutting down the system last night as it insisted on rebooting! So, she had just left it on and powered off the monitor.

Needless to say, my sister was offended when I suggested that she may have clicked in the wrong location. Well, I too failed to get the system to shutdown. And jumped to the conclusion that upgrading to Arch Linux kernel 2.6.36 must be the culprit. It was a coincidence.

The system refuses to shutdown even on the alternate Fedora 12 still installed on the same system. The workaround is to choose the Hibernate option.

I suppose it's time that I get my mother a new computer!

Update: The problem is resolved but the cause was strange. There was a thumb drive attached to the system. I removed the thumb drive and the system shut down gracefully.

Lenovo S10-3 with 2.6.36

Yesterday, I updated the Arch Linux on the Lenovo S10-3 to the 2.5.36 kernel. As expected, ideapad-laptop driver is included with it and more of the hot keys worked.

The broadcom-wl package from AUR needed to be reinstalled and wifi worked fine.

There is one unfortunate surprise. The system malfunctions after sleep. On resumption, the display remains off. I can't seem to turn it on. Just to confirm that it was a kernel issue, I downgraded the kernel to 2.6.35 and sleep and resumption from sleep worked fine.

I may stick to 2.6.35 till I find a solution or a workaround.

Printer Issue after upgrade to Fedora14

I had not realised that I had not used the printer after upgrading to Fedora 14, hence, I suspected the printer. The printer was recognised. Cups would say - printing over. But there was not printout. There appeared to be no interaction with the computer at all.

The printer worked on the netbook, so the problem had to be with Fedora 14 on my desktop. Since everything seemed fine, I removed all referenced to the HP Deskjet, in particular /etc/cups/printers.conf, and that identified the issue.

Now, cups complained. It needed some more packages - foomatic and hpijs. As the upgrade had failed, these two packages were among the ones not installed and had not caused any issues till I decided to use the printer!

S10-3 - Unusual wifi problem

I am not sure when exactly it happened or why. I was playing around with the physical switch to turn the wireless off and using the Reliance broadband usb modem. It was frequently disconnecting and speed was low. It probably was a network issue. But I wanted to be sure that it was not a Lenovo netbook or OS problem.

Anyway, when I tried to use wifi, wireless indicator LED was off and connection failed no matter how hard I tried. The LED hasn't been on since.

The symptoms were similar to a problem reported in Ubuntu forum. However, in my case wl driver is used and not ath9k. I tried the same solution and a simpler variation worked.

Bluetooth capability of the netbook is not discovered at boot time. Wifi doesn't work. The wireless indicator LED remains off. However, on Ubuntu, MeeGo and Arch Linux, if the system is suspended and then restarted, Bluetooth device is recognised. But even more important, wifi just works. However, the LED remains off.

I went to the shop from where I bought it - no luck. They fiddled with hardware, reconnected some cables and symptoms remain the same. They wanted Windows to do anything more.

I thought I would at least email the problem to Lenovo support. No luck - the serial number of my system is rejected as being invalid. I hope it is because the sale is not yet in their system. Oh, well, will have to follow-up.

In the process, I found that a driver ideapad-acpi(ideapad-laptop) has been submitted to the mainline kernel. So, the functions for enabling/disabling wireless should work and that may clear up what is definitely a bios bug.

Meanwhile there is one advantage though - no unauthorised user can use of the wifi on my netbook :)