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Copyright © 2006 Red Hat, Inc. and others
This document is released under the terms of the Open Publication License. For more details, read the full legalnotice in Section 3, “Legal Notice”.
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Latest Release Notes on the Web |
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These release notes may be updated. Visit http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/release-notes/ to view the latest release notes for Fedora Core 5. |
| Revision History | ||
|---|---|---|
| Revision 0.5.0.0 | 2006-02-28 | quaid |
|
Finished port of wiki for FC5 release. | ||
| Revision 0.5.0.1 | 2006-04-14 | quaid |
|
Errata release notes for FC5 release. | ||
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Latest Release Notes on the Web |
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These release notes may be updated. Visit http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/release-notes/ to view the latest release notes for Fedora Core 5. |
You can help the Fedora Project community continue to improve Fedora if you file bug reports and enhancement requests. Refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugsAndFeatureRequests for more information about bugs. Thank you for your participation.
To find out more general information about Fedora, refer to the following Web pages:
Fedora Overview (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Overview)
Fedora FAQ (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAQ)
Help and Support (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate)
Participate in the Fedora Project (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/HelpWanted)
About the Fedora Project (http://fedora.redhat.com/About/)
You can find a tour filled with pictures and videos of this exciting new release at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Tours/FedoraCore5.
This release is the culmination of nine months of development, and includes significant new versions of many key products and technologies. The following sections provide a brief overview of major changes from the last release of Fedora Core.
Some of the highlights of this release include:
There is a completely revamped appearance with a bubbly new theme and the first use of the new Fedora logo.
Early work from the Fedora Rendering Project is integrated into the desktop. This new project (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RenderingProject) is going to provide the technical foundations for advanced desktop interfaces based on OpenGL.
Innovative new versions of the popular desktop environments GNOME and KDE are included in this release. The GNOME desktop is based on the 2.14 release (http://www.gnome.org/start/2.14/notes/C/), and the KDE 3.5 desktop is the general 3.5 release (http://kde.org/announcements/announce-3.5.php).
The latest versions of GNOME Power Manager (http://www.gnome.org/projects/gnome-power-manager/) and GNOME Screensaver(http://live.gnome.org/GnomeScreensaver/) provide new and integrated power management capabilities.
The new GNOME User Share facility provides simple and efficient file sharing.
LUKS (http://luks.endorphin.org/) hard disk encryption is integrated with HAL and GNOME in this release. Refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Software/LUKS for more information.
Software suspend (hibernate) capability is now provided for a wide variety of hardware. Suspend to RAM feature has also been improved due to infrastructure work done to support hiberation.
The previous graphical software management utilities have been
replaced with the first versions of a new generation of tools.
This release includes Pup, a
simple interface for system updates, and Pirut, a new package manager that
replaces system-config-packages. These applications
are built on the yum utility to provide consistent
software installation and update facilities throughout the system.
This release of Fedora includes Mono support for the first time, and Mono applications such as Beagle, a desktop search interface; F-Spot, a photo management utility; and Tomboy, a note-taking application.
Desktop applications now built using the fully-open
java-gcj-compat include Azureus, a BitTorrent client, and RSSOwl, a RSS feed reader, now
available in Fedora Extras.
You can now enjoy enhanced multimedia support with version 0.10 of the Gstreamer media framework. This milestone release brings major improvements in robustness, compatibility, and features over previous versions of Gstreamer. The Totem movie player and other media software in this release have been updated to use the new framework.
There is dramatically improved internationalization support with SCIM in Fedora Core 5. The SCIM language input framework provides an easy to use interface for inputting many different non-English languages. SCIM replaces the IIIMF system used in previous Fedora releases.
The default Web browser is the latest in the Firefox 1.5.0.x series (http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/releases/1.5.html), which has many new features for faster, safer, and more efficient browsing.
The office applications suite OpenOffice.org 2.0.2 (http://www.openoffice.org/product/index.php) now makes better use of general system libraries for increased performance and efficiency.
A large number of GTK and GNOME programs take advantage of the Cairo 2D graphics library (http://cairographics.org/), included in this release, to provide streamlined attractive graphical interfaces.
There are new experimental drivers that provide support for the widely-used Broadcom 43xx wireless chipsets (http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/).
NetworkManager (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Tools/NetworkManager) has received numerous menu, user interface, and functionality improvements. However, it is disabled by default in this release as it is not yet suitable for certain configurations, such as system-wide static IPs or bonding devices.
This release includes libnotify, a library that
features simple and attractive notifications for the desktop.
Fedora Core now uses gnome-mount, a more efficient
mechanism that replaces fstab-sync, and uses HAL to
handle mounting.
Printing support is improved in this release with the inclusion of
the hplip utility, which replaces hpijs.
Improvements for administrators and developers include:
The Xen virtualization system
has enhanced support. The tools to configure Xen virtual machines on your Fedora
Core system now use the standard graphical installation process,
run as a window on your desktop. Fedora developers have also
created gnome-applet-vm, which provides a simple
virtual domains monitor applet, and libvirt (http://libvirt.org/), a
library providing an API to use Xen virtualization capabilities.
The industry-leading anaconda installation system
continues to evolve. New features for this release include remote
logging and improved support for tracebacks. Package management in
the installation system is now provided by yum. This
enhancement is the first step in enabling access to Fedora Extras
from within the installation process.
Version 2.2 of the Apache HTTP server is now included. This release provides enhancements to authentication, database support, proxy facilities, and content filtering.
The latest generation of database servers are packaged in this release, including both MySQL 5.0 and PostgreSQL 8.1.
Several native Java programs are now available compiled with
GCJ, such as the Geronimo J2EE server and the Apache Jakarta Project, in addition to
the Java programs and development capabilities in the previous
releases.
There are new tools for system monitoring and performance analysis. This release includes SystemTap (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SystemTap), an instrumentation system for debugging and analyzing performance bottle necks, and Frysk (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Frysk), an execution analysis technology for monitoring running processes or threads which are provided as technology previews in this release.
This release includes system-config-cluster, a
utility that allows you to manage cluster configuration in a
graphical setting.
The combination of Kexec and Kdump (http://lse.sourceforge.net/kdump/) utilities provides modern crash dumping facilities and potential for faster bootup, bypassing the firmware on reboots. Kexec loads a new kernel from a running kernel, and Kdump can provide a memory dump of the previous kernel for debugging.
This release includes iscsi-initiator-utils, iSCSI
daemon and utility programs that provide support for hardware
using the iSCSI interface.
fedora-release now includes the software
repositories for debuginfo packages and source
rpm packages.
fedora-release now includes the software
repositories for Fedora Legacy community maintenance project.
(disabled by default)
X.org X11R7.0 is included in this release. The new modular architecture of R7.0 enables easier driver upgrades and simplifies development, opening the way for rapid improvement in Linux graphics.
The GCC 4.1 compiler (http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.1/changes.html) is included, and the entire set of Fedora packages is built with this technology. This provides security and performance enhancements throughout the system.
The kernels for this release are based on Linux 2.6.16. Refer to the section on the kernel in these release notes for other details.
The PCMCIA framework used by laptop and mobile devices has
changed. The older pcmcia-cs package using the
cardmgr/pcmcia service has been replaced with a new
pcmciautils package. With pcmciautils,
PCMCIA devices are handled directly and dynamically by the
hotplug and udev subsystems. This update
increases both efficiency and performance of the system. For more
information about these changes, refer to http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/pcmcia/pcmcia.html.
SELinux implementation has undergone a major change, with a switch to the SELinux reference policy (http://serefpolicy.sourceforge.net/). The SELinux reference policy can support binary policy modules. It is now possible to move SELinux policies into individual packages, making it easier for users to ship site-specific policy customizations when required. This version also adds support for Multi-Category Security (MCS), enabled by default, and Multi-Level Security (MLS). SELinux continues to offer support for TE (Type Enforcement), enabled by default, and RBAC (Role-Based Access Control). Refer to the section on SELinux in these release notes for other details and links to SELinux resources on the Fedora Project pages.
udev provides a new linking for device names that
includes the physical name of the device. For example, if your
CD-ROM is /dev/hdc, it gets symlinked to the friendly
name /dev/cdrom-hdc. If you have additional matching
devices, the same rule applies, so /dev/hdd is
symlinked to /dev/cdrom-hdd. This is true for
/dev/scanner, /dev/floppy,
/dev/changer, and so forth.
The typical name /dev/cdrom is also created, and
udev assigns it randomly to one of the
/dev/cdrom-hdX devices. This random assignment usually
sticks, but in some configurations the symlink may change on boot
to a different device. This does not affect CD burning
applications, but some CD player applications such as
kscd may be affected. If you wish, you can set your CD
player application to point at a specific CD-ROM device, such as
/dev/cdrom-hdc. This situation only occurs if you
have more than one of a type of device.
The proposed plans for the next release of Fedora are available at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RoadMap.
Copyright (c) 2006 by Red Hat, Inc. and others. This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, v1.0, available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/.
Garrett LeSage created the admonition graphics (note, tip, important, caution,
and warning). Tommy Reynolds <Tommy.Reynolds@MegaCoder.com>
created the callout graphics. They all may be freely redistributed with
documentation produced for the Fedora Project.
FEDORA, FEDORA PROJECT, and the Fedora Logo are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc., are registered or pending registration in the U.S. and other countries, and are used here under license to the Fedora Project.
Red Hat and the Red Hat "Shadow Man" logo are registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. in the United States and other countries.
All other trademarks and copyrights referred to are the property of their respective owners.
Documentation, as with software itself, may be subject to export control. Read about Fedora Project export controls at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal/Export.
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Feedback for Release Notes Only |
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This section concerns feedback on the release notes themselves. To provide feedback on Fedora software or other system elements, please refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugsAndFeatureRequests. A list of commonly reported bugs and known issues for this release is available from http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Bugs/FC5Common. |
Thanks for your interest in giving feedback for these release notes. If you feel these release notes could be improved in any way, you can provide your feedback directly to the beat writers. Here are several ways to do so, in order of preference:
Edit content directly at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Beats
Fill out a bug request using this template: http://tinyurl.com/8lryk - This link is ONLY for feedback on the release notes themselves. (Refer to the admonition above for details.)
A release note beat is an area of the release notes that is the responsibility of one or more content contributors to oversee. For more ifnormation about beats, refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/ReleaseNotes/Beats.
Thank you (in advance) for your feedback!
This section outlines those issues that are related to Anaconda (the Fedora Core installation program) and installing Fedora Core in general.
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Downloading Large Files |
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If you intend to download the Fedora Core DVD ISO image, keep in mind
that not all file downloading tools can accommodate files larger than
2GB in size. |
This section provides notes that are specific to the supported hardware architectures of Fedora Core.
This section covers any specific information you may need to know about Fedora Core and the PPC hardware platform.
Minimum CPU: PowerPC G3 / POWER4
Fedora Core 5 supports only the “New World” generation of Apple Power Macintosh, shipped from circa 1999 onward.
Fedora Core 5 also supports IBM eServer pSeries, IBM RS/6000, Genesi Pegasos II, and IBM Cell Broadband Engine machines.
Recommended for text-mode: 233 MHz G3 or better, 128MiB RAM.
Recommended for graphical: 400 MHz G3 or better, 256MiB RAM.
The disk space requirements listed below represent the disk
space taken up by Fedora Core 5 after installation is
complete. However, additional disk space is required during
installation to support the installation environment. This
additional disk space corresponds to the size of
/Fedora/base/stage2.img
(on Installtion Disc 1) plus the size of the files in
/var/lib/rpm
on the installed system.
In practical terms, additional space requirements may range from as little as 90 MiB for a minimal installation to as much as an additional 175 MiB for an "everything" installation. The complete packages can occupy over 9 GB of disk space.
Additional space is also required for any user data, and at least 5% free space should be maintained for proper system operation.
The Option key on Apple systems is equivalent to the
Alt key on the PC. Where documentation and the installer
refer to the Alt key, use the Option key.
For some key combinations you may need to use the Option
key in conjunction with the Fn key, such as
Option - Fn - F3 to switch to
virtual terminal tty3.
Fedora Core Installation Disc 1 is bootable on supported
hardware. In addition, a bootable CD image appears in the
images/
directory of this disc. These images will behave differently
according to your system hardware:
Apple Macintosh
The bootloader should automatically boot the appropriate 32-bit or 64-bit installer.
The default
gnome-power-manager
package includes power management support, including sleep
and backlight level management. Users with more complex
requirements can use the
apmud
package in Fedora Extras. Following installation, you can
install
apmud
with the following command:
su -c 'yum install apmud'
64-bit IBM eServer pSeries (POWER4/POWER5)
After using OpenFirmware to boot the CD, the bootloader (yaboot) should automatically boot the 64-bit installer.
32-bit CHRP (IBM RS/6000 and others)
After using OpenFirmware to boot
the CD, select the
linux32
boot image at the
boot:
prompt to start the 32-bit installer. Otherwise, the
64-bit installer starts, which does not work.
Genesi Pegasos II
At the time of writing, firmware with full support for ISO9660 file systems is not yet released for the Pegasos. However, you can use the network boot image. At the OpenFirmware prompt, enter the command:
boot cd: /images/netboot/ppc32.img
You must also configure
OpenFirmware on the Pegasos
manually to make the installed Fedora Core system
bootable. To do this, set the
boot-device
and
boot-file
environment variables appropriately.
Network booting
You can find combined images containing the installer
kernel and ramdisk in the
images/netboot/
directory of the installation tree. These are intended for
network booting with TFTP, but can be used in many ways.
yaboot
supports TFTP booting for IBM eServer pSeries and Apple
Macintosh. The Fedora Project encourages the use of
yaboot
over the
netboot
images.
This section covers any specific information you may need to know about Fedora Core and the x86 hardware platform.
In order to use specific features of Fedora Core during or after installation, you may need to know details of other hardware components such as video and network cards.
The following CPU specifications are stated in terms of Intel processors. Other processors, such as those from AMD, Cyrix, and VIA that are compatible with and equivalent to the following Intel processors, may also be used with Fedora Core.
Minimum: Pentium-class — Fedora Core is optimized for Pentium 4 CPUs, but also supports earlier CPUs such as Pentium, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III, and compatible AMD and VIA processors. Fedora takes this approach because Pentium-class optimizations actually result in reduced performance for non-Pentium class processors. In addition, scheduling for Pentium 4 processors, which make up the bulk of today's processors, is sufficiently different to warrant this change.
Recommended for text-mode: 200 MHz Pentium-class or better
Recommended for graphical: 400 MHz Pentium II or better
AMD64 processors (both Athlon64 and Opteron)
Intel processors with Intel® Extended Memory 64 Technology (Intel® EM64T)
Minimum RAM for text-mode: 128MiB
Minimum RAM for graphical: 192MiB
Recommended for graphical: 256MiB
The disk space requirements listed below represent the disk
space taken up by Fedora Core after the installation is
complete. However, additional disk space is required during
the installation to support the installation environment.
This additional disk space corresponds to the size of
/Fedora/base/stage2.img
on Installation Disc 1 plus the size of the files in
/var/lib/rpm
on the installed system.
In practical terms, additional space requirements may range from as little as 90 MiB for a minimal installation to as much as an additional 175 MiB for an "everything" installation. The complete packages can occupy over 9 GB of disk space.
Additional space is also required for any user data, and at least 5% free space should be maintained for proper system operation.
This section covers any specific information you may need to know about Fedora Core and the x86_64 hardware platform.
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x86_64 Does Not Use a Separate SMP Kernel |
|---|---|
The default kernel in x86_64 architecture provides SMP (Symmetric Multi-Processor) capabilities to handle multiple CPUs efficiently. This architecture does not have a separate SMP kernel unlike x86 and PPC systems. |
In order to use specific features of Fedora Core 5 during or after installation, you may need to know details of other hardware components such as video and network cards.
This list is for 64-bit x86_64 systems:
Minimum RAM for text-mode: 128MiB
Minimum RAM for graphical: 256MiB
Recommended RAM for graphical: 512MiB
The disk space requirements listed below represent the disk space
taken up by Fedora Core 5 after the installation is complete.
However, additional disk space is required during the installation
to support the installation environment. This additional disk space
corresponds to the size of /Fedora/base/stage2.img on
Installation Disc 1 plus the size of the files in
/var/lib/rpm on the installed system.
In practical terms, additional space requirements may range from as little as 90 MiB for a minimal installation to as much as an additional 175 MiB for an "everything" installation. The complete packages can occupy over 9 GB of disk space.
Additional space is also required for any user data, and at least 5% free space should be maintained for proper system operation.
RPM supports parallel installation
of multiple architectures of the same package. A default package
listing such as rpm -qa might appear to include duplicate
packages, since the architecture is not displayed. Instead, use the
repoquery command, part of the yum-utils
package in Fedora Extras, which displays architecture by default. To
install yum-utils, run the following command:
su -c 'yum install yum-utils'
To list all packages with their architecture using
rpm, run the following command:
rpm -qa --queryformat "%{name}-%{version}-%{release}.%{arch}\n"
You can add this to /etc/rpm/macros (for a system wide
setting) or ~/.rpmmacros (for a per-user setting). It
changes the default query to list the architecture:
%_query_all_fmt %%{name}-%%{version}-%%{release}.%%{arch}
The following sections contain information regarding software packages that have undergone significant changes for Fedora Core . For easier access, they are generally organized using the same groups that are shown in the installation system.
The
coreutils package now follows the POSIX standard version 200112. This
change in behavior might affect scripts and command arguments
that were previously deprecated. For example, if you have a
newer system but are running software that assumes an older
version of POSIX and uses sort +1 or tail +10, you can work around any compatibility problems by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment. Refer to the section on standards in the coreutils info manual for more information on this. You can run the
following command to read this information.
info coreutils Standards
Fedora is building Firefox with the Pango system as the text renderer. This provides better support for certain language scripts, such as Indic and some CJK scripts. Pango is included with with permission of the Mozilla Corporation. This change is known to break rendering of MathML, and may negatively impact performance on some pages. To disable the use of Pango, set your environment before launching Firefox:
MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1 /usr/bin/firefox
Alternately, you can include this environment variable as part of a wrapper script.
The kernel implementation of smbfs to support the Windows file sharing protocol has been deprecated in favor of cifs, which is backwards compatible with smbfs in features and maintenance. It is recommended that you use the cifs filesystem in place of smbfs.
A yum plugin written by Red Hat developers is provided by default
within the yum package which only retains the latest two kernels
in addition to the one being installed when you perform updates
on your system. This feature can be fine tuned to retain more or
less kernels or disabled entirely through the /etc/yum/pluginconf.d/installonlyn.conf file. There are other plugins and utilities available as part of yum-utils package in Fedora Extras software repository. You can install
them using the following command.
yum install yum-utils
By default, yum is now configured to remove headers and
packages downloaded after a successful install to reduce the ongoing
disk space requirements of updating a Fedora system. Most users have
little or no need for the packages once they have been installed on the
system. For cases where you wish to preserve the headers and packages
(for example, if you share your /var/cache/yum directory
between multiple machines), modify the keepcache option to
1 in /etc/yum.conf.
The hotplug and device handling subsystem has undergone significant
changes in Fedora Core. The udev method now handles all
module loading, both on system boot and for hotplugged devices. The
hotplug package has been removed, as it is no longer
needed.
Support for hotplug helpers via the /etc/hotplug,
/etc/hotplug.d, and /etc/dev.d directories is
deprecated, and may be removed in a future Fedora Core release. These
helpers should be converted to udev rules. Please see
http://www.reactivated.net/writing_udev_rules.html
for examples.
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mlocate Has Replaced
slocate |
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The new |
The locate command should be completely compatible.
The configuration file /etc/updatedb.conf is
compatible.
Syntax errors that slocate would not detect are now
reported.
The DAILY_UPDATE variable is not supported.
The updatedb command is not
compatible, and custom scripts that use updatedb may
have to be updated.
The system-config-mouse configuration utility has been dropped in this release because synaptic and three-button mouse configuration is handled automatically.
Serial mice are no longer supported.
The up2date and rhn-applet packages have been
removed from Fedora Core 5. Users are encouraged to use the
yum tool from the command line, and the Pirut software manager and Pup update tool from the desktop.
Fedora systems use Network Manager to
automatically detect, select, and configure wired and wireless network
connections. Wireless network devices may require third-party software
or manual configuration to activate after the installation process
completes. For this reason, Fedora Core provides Network
Manager as an optional component.
Refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Tools/NetworkManager
for more information on how to install and enable Network
Manager.
Fedora Core includes a new version of the dovecot IMAP
server software, which has many changes in its configuration file. These
changes are of particular importance to users upgrading from a previous
release. Refer to http://wiki.dovecot.org/UpgradingDovecot
for more information on the changes.
The kudzu utility, libkudzu library, and
/etc/sysconfig/hwconf hardware listing are all deprecated,
and will be removed in a future release of Fedora Core. Applications
which need to probe for available hardware should be ported to use the
HAL library. More information on HAL is available at http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/hal.
The fstab-sync facility has been removed. In Fedora Core ,
the fstab-sync program is removed in favor of desktop
specific solutions for mounting removable media. Entries for hotplug
devices or inserted media are no longer automatically added to the
/etc/fstab file. Command-line users may migrate to
gnome-mount, which provides similar functionality.
As part of the changes to the mounting infrastructure, the desktop's
automatic mountable devices detection now includes policy definitions
that ignore all fixed disk devices from. This was done to increase
security on multi-user systems. People on multi-user systems who want to
make changes to disk mounting that could impact the multi-user
environment are advised to understand the implications of the default
HAL policy decisions and to review the HAL policy files in
/usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/.
If you are on a single-user system and would like to recover the functionality to mount fixed disk items such as IDE partitions from the desktop, you can modify the default HAL policy. To enable deskop mounting for all fixed disks:
su -c 'mv /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/99-redhat-storage-policy-\ fixed-drives.fdi /root/' su -c '/sbin/service haldaemon restart'
If you need more fine-grained control and only want to expose certain fixed disks for desktop mounting, read over how to create additional HAL policy to selectively ignore/allow fixed disk devices.
The PostgreSQL backend for GnuCash has been removed, as it is unmaintained upstream, does not support the full set of GnuCash features, and can lead to crashes. Users who use the PostgreSQL backend should load their data and save it as an XML file before upgrading GnuCash.
The Mozilla application suite is
deprecated. It is shipped in Fedora Core and applications can expect to
build against mozilla-devel, however it will be removed in
a future release of Fedora Core.
Booting Fedora Core without the use of an initrd is deprecated. Support for booting the system without an initrd may be removed in future releases of Fedora Core.
The libstdc++so7 package has been added. This package
contains a preview of the GNU Standard C++ Library from
libstdcxx_so_7-branch. It is considered experimental and
unsupported. Do not build any production software against it, as its ABI
and so-version will change in future upgrades. To build software using
this library, invoke g++-libstdc++so_7 instead of
g++.
The LinuxThreads library is no longer available. LinuxThreads was deprecated in Fedora Core 4 and is no longer available in this release. The Native POSIX Threading Library (NPTL), which has been the default threading library since Red Hat Linux 9, has replaced LinuxThreads completely.
This section covers changes and important information regarding the kernel in Fedora Core 5.
This distribution is based on the 2.6 series of the Linux kernel. Fedora Core may include additional patches for improvements, bug fixes, or additional features. For this reason, the Fedora Core kernel may not be line-for-line equivalent to the so-called vanilla kernel from the kernel.org web site:
To obtain a list of these patches, download the source RPM package and run the following command against it:
rpm -qpl kernel-<version>.src.rpm
To retrieve a log of changes to the package, run the following command:
rpm -q --changelog kernel-<version>
If you need a user friendly version of the changelog, refer to http://wiki.kernelnewbies.org/LinuxChanges. A short and full diff of the kernel is available from http://kernel.org/git. The Fedora version kernel is based on the Linus tree.
Customizations made for the Fedora version are available from http://cvs.fedora.redhat.com .
Fedora Core includes the following kernel builds:
Native kernel, in both uni-processor and SMP (Symmetric
Multi-Processor) varieties. SMP kernels provide support for
multiple CPUs. Configured sources are available in the
kernel-[smp-]devel-<version>.<arch>.rpm
package.
Virtual kernel hypervisor for use with the Xen emulator
package. Configured sources are available in the
kernel-xen0-devel-<version>.<arch>.rpm
package.
Virtual kernel guest for use with the Xen emulator package.
Configured sources are available in the
kernel-xenU-devel-<version>.<arch>.rpm
package.
Kdump kernel for use with kexec/kdump capabilities.
Configured sources are available in the
kernel-kdump-devel-<version>.<arch>.rpm
package.
You may install kernel headers for all kernel flavors at the
same time. The files are installed in the
/usr/src/kernels/<version>-[xen0|xenU|kdump]-<arch>/
tree. Use the following command:
su -c 'yum install kernel-{xen0,xenU,kdump}-devel'
Select one or more of these flavors, separated by commas and no spaces, as appropriate. Enter the root password when prompted.
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x86_64 Default Kernel Provides SMP |
|---|---|
There is no separate SMP kernel available for the x86_64 architecture in Fedora Core 5. |
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PowerPC Kernel Support |
|---|---|
There is no support for Xen or kdump for the PowerPC architecture in Fedora Core 5. |
Kexec and kdump are new features in the 2.6 mainstream kernel. Major portions of these features are now in Fedora Core 5. Currently these features are available on x86, x86_64, and ppc64 platforms.
The purpose of these features is to ensure faster boot up and creation of reliable kernel vmcores for diagnostic purposes. Instructions on the kexec and kdump pages verify that the features work on your systems. For more information refer to:
Refer to http://kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/lkml/reporting-bugs.html for information on reporting bugs in the Linux kernel. You may also use http://bugzilla.redhat.com for reporting bugs which are specific to Fedora.
Many of the tutorials, examples, and textbooks about Linux
kernel development assume the kernel sources are installed under
the
/usr/src/linux/
directory. If you make a symbolic link, as shown below, you
should be able to use those learning materials with the Fedora
Core packages. Install the appropriate kernel sources, as shown
earlier, and then run the following command:
su -c 'ln -s /usr/src/kernels/kernel-<all-the-rest> /usr/src/linux'
Enter the root password when prompted.
Fedora Core does not include the kernel-source package provided by older versions since only the kernel-devel package is required now to build external modules. Configured sources are available, as described in this kernel flavors section.
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Instructions Refer to Current Kernel |
|---|---|
To simplify the following directions, we have assumed that you want to
configure the kernel sources to match your currently-running kernel.
In the steps below, the expression <version> refers to the kernel
version shown by the command: |
Users who require access to Fedora Core original kernel sources can find them in the kernel .src.rpm package. To create an exploded source tree from this file, perform the following steps:
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Do Not Build Packages as Super-user (root) |
|---|---|
Building packages as the superuser is inherently dangerous and is not
required, even for the kernel. These instructions allow you to install
the kernel source as a normal user. Many general information sites
refer to |
Prepare a RPM package building environment in your home directory. Run the following commands:
su -c 'yum install fedora-rpmdevtools yum-utils' fedora-buildrpmtree
Enter the
root
password when prompted.
Enable the appropriate source repository definition. In
the case of the kernel released with Fedora Core 5, enable
core-source by editing the file
/etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-core.repo, setting the option
enabled=1. In the case of update or testing kernels,
enable the source definitions in
/etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo or
/etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates-testing.repo as
appropriate.
Download the
kernel-<version>.src.rpm
file:
yumdownloader --source kernel
Enter the root password when prompted.
Install
kernel-<version>.src.rpm
using the command:
rpm -Uvh kernel-<version>.src.rpm
This command writes the RPM contents into
${HOME}/rpmbuild/SOURCES and
${HOME}/rpmbuild/SPECS, where ${HOME}
is your home directory.
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Space Required |
|---|---|
The full kernel building process may require several gigabytes of extra space on the file system containing your home directory. |
Prepare the kernel sources using the commands:
cd ~/rpmbuild/SPECS rpmbuild -bp --target $(uname -m) kernel-2.6.spec
The kernel source tree is located in the
${HOME}/rpmbuild/BUILD/kernel-<version>/ directory.
The configurations for the specific kernels shipped in
Fedora Core are in the
configs/
directory. For example, the i686 SMP configuration file is
named
configs/kernel-<version>-i686-smp.config
. Issue the following command to place the desired
configuration file in the proper place for building:
cp configs/<desired-config-file> .config
You can also find the .config file that matches your
current kernel configuration in the
/lib/modules/<version>/build/.config file.
Every kernel gets a name based on its version number. This is the
value the uname -r command displays. The kernel name is
defined by the first four lines of the kernel Makefile.
The Makefile has been changed to generate a kernel with
a different name from that of the running
kernel. To be accepted by the running kernel, a module must be
compiled for a kernel with the correct name. To do this, you must
edit the kernel Makefile.
For example, if the uname -r returns the string
2.6.15-1.1948_FC5 , change the
EXTRAVERSION definition from this:
EXTRAVERSION = -prep
to this:
EXTRAVERSION = -1.1948_FC5
That is, substitute everything from the final dash onward.
Run the following command:
make oldconfig
You may then proceed as usual.
An exploded source tree is not required to build a kernel
module, such as your own device driver, against the currently
in-use kernel. Only the
kernel-devel
package is required to build external modules. If you did not
select it during installation, use
Pirut to install it, going to
Applications > Add/Remove
software or use
yum
to install it. Run the following command to install the
kernel-devel
package using
yum
.
su -c 'yum install kernel-devel'
For example, to build the foo.ko module, create the
following Makefile in the directory containing the
foo.c file:
obj-m := foo.o
KDIR := /lib/modules/$(shell uname -r)/build
PWD := $(shell pwd)
default:
$(MAKE) -C $(KDIR) M=$(PWD) modules
Issue the make command to build the foo.ko
module.
Fedora Core has support for clustered storage through the Global
File System (GFS). GFS requires special kernel modules that work
in conjunction with some user-space utilities, such as
management daemons. To remove such a kernel, perhaps after an
update, use the
su -c 'yum remove kernel-<version>'
command instead. The
yum
command automatically removes dependent packages, if necessary.
|
|
|
The GFS kernel modules are not built for the PowerPC architecture in Fedora Core 5. |
GNOME 2.14 (or a release candidate) and KDE 3.5.1 are included in Fedora Core 5. The following list includes notable changes to the desktop interface in this release.
gnome-power-manager
The GNOME Power Manager is a session daemon for the GNOME desktop environment that makes it easy to manage your laptop or desktop system. It takes advantage of HAL (which provides a hardware abstraction layer) and DBUS (Inter Process Communication software) written and maintained by Fedora Core developers.
gnome-screensaver
The GNOME Screensaver provides an integrated user interface to screensavers and the lock screen dialog.
Memory optimizations in the fontconfig and shared-mime-info packages. These now use shared memory-mapped caches for this data.
Starting with GNOME 2.12, the terminal option has been removed
from the desktop context menu. The
nautilus-open-terminal
package in Fedora Extras provides a enhanced replacement for
those who require it. You can install it with the following
command.
su -c 'yum install nautilus-open-terminal'
In Fedora Core 5, only a small assortment of screensavers is
installed by default. Some users find certain screensavers
unpleasant, and other screensavers may abruptly terminate the
graphical interface. This tends to happen more often with
OpenGL animated screensavers provided within the
xscreensaver-gl-extras
package, when used with poorly-supported video hardware. To
install these extra screensavers, run the following command:
su -c 'yum install xscreensaver-extras xscreensaver-gl-extras'
This section highlights changes and additions to the various GUI server and system configuration tools in Fedora Core.
You can now browse for Samba print shares across subnets. If you
specify at least one WINS server in /etc/samba/smb.conf,
the first address is used when browsing.
The system-config-printer application supports Kerberos authentication when adding a new SMB printer. To add the printer, the user must possess a valid Kerberos ticket and launch the printer configuration tool. Select System > Administration > Printing from the main menu, or use the following command:
su -c 'system-config-printer'
No username and password is stored in
/etc/cups/printers.conf. Printing is still possible if
the SMB print queue permits anonymous printing.
Samba is now listed in the Trusted services list. To permit the firewall to pass SMB traffic, enable this option.
When you define Other Ports in the system-config-securitylevel tool, you may
now specify port ranges. For example, if you specify
6881-6999:tcp, the following line is added to
/etc/sysconfig/iptables:
A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 6881:6999 \ -j ACCEPT
This section refers to file transfer and sharing servers. Refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Beats/WebServers and http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Beats/Samba for information on HTTP (Web) file transfer and Samba (Windows) file sharing services.
Fedora includes version 2 of Netatalk, a suite of software that enables Linux to interact with Macintosh systems using the AppleTalk network protocols.
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Use Caution When Upgrading |
|---|---|
|
You may experience data loss when upgrading from Netatalk version 1 to version 2. Version 2 of Netatalk stores file resource forks using a different method from the previous version, and may require a different file name encoding scheme. Please read the documentation and plan your migration before upgrading. Refer to the upgrade information available directly from the Netatalk site at http://netatalk.sourceforge.net/2.0/htmldocs/upgrade.html. |
The documentation is also included in the
netatalk
package. Refer to either
/usr/share/doc/netatalk-2.0.2/doc/htmldocs/upgrade.html
or
/usr/share/doc/netatalk-2.0.2/doc/Netatalk-Manual.pdf
(numbered page 25, document page 33).
This section contains information on Web-related applications.
Fedora Core now includes version 2.2 of the Apache HTTP Server. This release brings a number of improvements over the 2.0 series, including:
greatly improved caching modules ( mod_cache,
mod_disk_cache, mod_mem_cache )
a new structure for authentication and authorization support, replacing the security modules provided in previous versions
support for proxy load balancing (mod_proxy_balance)
large file support for 32-bit platforms (including support for serving files larger than 2GB)
new modules mod_dbd and mod_filter, which
bring SQL database support and enhanced filtering
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Upgrading and Security Modules |
|---|---|
If you upgrade from a previous version of |
The following changes have been made to the default httpd
configuration:
The mod_cern_meta and mod_asis modules are
no longer loaded by default.
The mod_ext_filter module is now loaded by default.
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Third-party Modules |
|---|---|
Any third-party modules compiled for |
The complete list of new features is available at http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/new_features_2_2.html
For more information on upgrading existing installations, refer to http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/upgrading.html.
Version 5.1 of PHP is now included in Fedora Core. This release brings a number of improvements since PHP 5.0, including:
improved performance
addition of the PDO database abstraction module
The following extension modules have been added:
date, hash, and Reflection
(built-in with the php package)
pdo and pdo_psqlite (in the
php-pdo package
pdo_mysql (in the php-mysql package)
pdo_pgsql (in the php-pgsql package)
pdo_odbc (in the php-odbc package)
xmlreader and xmlwriter (in the
php-xml package)
The following extension modules are no longer built:
dbx
dio
yp
This section covers various developer tools.
This section highlights various security items from Fedora Core.
A general introduction to the many proactive security features in Fedora, current status and policies is available at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Security.
Pam_stack is deprecated in this release. Linux-PAM 0.78
and later contains the include directive which obsoletes
the pam_stack module. pam_stack module usage
is logged with a deprecation warning. It might be removed in a future
release. It must not be used in individual service configurations
anymore. All packages in Fedora Core using PAM were modified so they
do not use it.
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Upgrading and PAM Stacks |
|---|---|
|
When a system is upgraded from previous Fedora Core releases and the
system admininstrator previously modified some service
configurations, those modified configuration files are
not replaced when new packages are installed.
Instead, the new configuration files are created as
diff -u /etc/pam.d/foo /etc/pam.d/foo.rpmnew |
The following example shows the /etc/pam.d/login
configuration file in its original form using pam_stack,
and then revised with the include directive.
#%PAM-1.0 auth required pam_securetty.so auth required pam_stack.so service=system-auth auth required pam_nologin.so account required pam_stack.so service=system-auth password required pam_stack.so service=system-auth # pam_selinux.so close should be the first session rule session required pam_selinux.so close session required pam_stack.so service=system-auth session required pam_loginuid.so session optional pam_console.so # pam_selinux.so open should be the last session rule session required pam_selinux.so open
#%PAM-1.0 auth required pam_securetty.so auth include system-auth # no module should remain after 'include' if 'sufficient' might # be used in the included configuration file # pam_nologin moved to account phase - it's more appropriate there # other modules might be moved before the system-auth 'include' account required pam_nologin.so account include system-auth password include system-auth # pam_selinux.so close should be the first session rule session required pam_selinux.so close session include system-auth # the system-auth config doesn't contain sufficient modules # in the session phase session required pam_loginuid.so session optional pam_console.so # pam_selinux.so open should be the last session rule session required pam_selinux.so open
All of the software in Fedora Core and Extras software repository for
this release is compiled using a security feature called a
stack protector. This was using the compiler
option -fstack-protector, which places a canary value on
the stack of functions containing a local character array. Before
returning from a protected function, the canary value is verified. If
there was a buffer overflow, the canary will no longer match the
expected value, aborting the program. The canary value is random each
time the application is started, making remote exploitation very
difficult. The stack protector feature does not protect against
heap-based buffer overflows.
This is a security feature written by Red Hat developers (http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2005-05/msg01193.html), reimplementing the IBM ProPolice/SSP feature. For more information about ProPolice/SSP, refer to http://www.research.ibm.com/trl/projects/security/ssp/. This feature is available as part of the GCC 4.1 compiler used in Fedora Core 5.
The FORTIFY_SOURCE security feature for gcc
and glibc introduced in Fedora Core 4 remains available.
For more information about security features in Fedora, refer to
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Security/Features.
A free and open source Java environment is available within this Fedora
Core release, called java-gcj-compat.
java-gcj-compatincludes a tool suite and execution
environment that is capable of building and running many useful programs
that are written in the Java programming language.
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Fedora Core Does Not Include Java |
|---|---|
Java is a trademark of Sun Microsystems. |
The infrastructure has three key components: a GNU
Java runtime (libgcj), the Eclipse Java compiler (ecj), and
a set of wrappers and links (java-gcj-compat) that present
the runtime and compiler to the user in a manner similar to other Java
environments.
The Java software packages included in this Fedora release use the new,
integrated environment java-gcj-compat. These packages
include OpenOffice.org Base, Eclipse, and Apache
Tomcat.
Refer to the Java FAQ at http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/JavaFAQ
for more information on the java-gcj-compat free Java
environment in Fedora.
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Include location and version information in bug reports |
|---|---|
|
When making a bug report, be sure to include the output from these commands: which java && java -version && which javac && javac -version |
In addition to the java-gcj-compat free software stack,
Fedora Core is designed to let you install multiple Java implementations
and switch between them using the alternatives command line
tool. However, every Java system you install must be packaged using the
JPackage Project packaging guidelines to take advantage of
alternatives .
Once installed properly, the root user should be able to
switch between java and javac implementations
using the alternatives command:
alternatives --config java alternatives --config javac
Fedora Core includes many packages derived from the JPackage Project, which provides a Java software repository. These packages have been modified in Fedora to remove proprietary software dependencies and to make use of GCJ's ahead-of-time compilation feature. Fedora users should use the Fedora repositories for updates to these packages, and may use the JPackage repository for packages not provided by Fedora.
Refer to the JPackage website at http://jpackage.org for more information on the project and the software that it provides.
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Mixing Packages from Fedora and JPackage |
|---|---|
Research package compatibility before you install software from both the Fedora and JPackage repositories on the same system. Incompatible packages may cause complex issues. |
This section contains information related to Samba, the suite of software Fedora uses to interact with Microsoft Windows systems.
Fedora can now browse Windows shares, a feature known as SMB browsing.
In releases prior to Fedora Core 5, the firewall prevented the proper
function of SMB browsing. With the addition of the
ip_conntrack_netbios_ns kernel module to the 2.6.14 kernel,
and corresponding enhancements to system-config-securitylevel, the firewall now
properly handles SMB broadcasts and permits network browsing.
Fedora Core includes applications for assorted multimedia functions, including playback, recording and editing. Additional packages are available through the Fedora Extras repository.
The default installation of Fedora Core includes Rhythmbox, Totem, and Helix
Player for media playback. Many other programs are
available in the Fedora Core and Fedora Extras repositories, including
the popular XMMS package. Both GNOME and KDE have a
selection of players that can be used with a variety of formats.
Additional programs are available from third parties to handle other
formats.
Fedora Core also takes full advantage of the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) sound system. Many programs can play sound simultaneously, which was once difficult on Linux systems. When all multimedia software is configured to use ALSA for sound support, this limitation disappears. For more information about ALSA, visit the project website at http://www.alsa-project.org/.
Fedora includes complete support for the Ogg media container format, and the Vorbis audio, Theora video, Speex audio, and FLAC lossless audio formats. These freely-distributable formats are not encumbered by patent or license restrictions. They provide powerful and flexible alternatives to more popular, restricted formats. The Fedora Project encourages the use of open source formats in place of restricted ones. For more information on these formats and how to use them, refer to the Xiph.Org Foundation's web site at http://www.xiph.org/.
Fedora Core and Fedora Extras cannot include support for MP3 or DVD playback or recording, because the MP3 and MPEG (DVD) formats are patented, and the patent owners have not provided the necessary licenses. Fedora also excludes several multimedia application programs due to patent or license restrictions, such as Flash Player and Real Player. For more on this subject, please refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems.
Fedora Core and Extras include a variety of tools for easily mastering
and burning CDs and DVDs. GNOME users can burn directly from the
Nautilus file manager, or choose the gnomebaker or
graveman packages from Fedora Extras, or the older
xcdroast package from Fedora Core. KDE users can use the
robust k3b package for these tasks. Console tools include
cdrecord, readcd, mkisofs, and
other typical Linux applications.
You can use Fedora to create and play back
screencasts, which are recorded desktop sessions,
using open technologies. Fedora Extras 5 includes istanbul,
which creates screencasts using the Theora video format. These videos
can be played back using one of several players included in Fedora Core.
This is the preferred way to submit screencasts to the Fedora Project
for either developer or end-user use. For a more comprehensive how-to,
refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ScreenCasting.
Most of the media players in Fedora Core and Fedora Extras support the
use of plugins to add support for additional media formats and sound
output systems. Some use powerful backends, like gstreamer,
to handle media format support and sound output. Plugin packages for
these backends and for individual applications are available in Fedora
Core and Fedora Extras, and additional plugins may be available from
third parties to add even greater capabilities.
Fedora Core and Fedora Extras provide a selection of games that
cover a variety of genres. By default, Fedora Core includes a
small package of games for GNOME (called
gnome-games
). To install other games available from Fedora Core and Fedora
Extras, select
Applications>Add/Remove
Software from the main desktop menu.
NetworkManager now has support for
DHCP hostname, NIS, ISDN, WPA, WPA supplicant
(wpa_supplicant), and WPA-Enteprise. It has a new
wireless security layer. The VPN and dial up support has been
enhanced. Applications such as Evolution now integrate with NetworkManager to provide dynamic
networking capabilities. NetworkManager is disabled by default in
Fedora as it is not yet suitable for certain configurations, such as
system-wide static IPs, bonding devices, or starting a wireless
network connection before login.
To enable NetworkManager from the desktop:
Open the Services application from the menu System > Administration Services
From the Edit Runlevel menu, choose Runlevel All
Ensure that the 3 boxes next to the dhcdbd item in left-side list are checked
Select dhcdbd in the list, and click the Start button
Ensure that the 3 boxes next to the named item in left-hand list are checked
Select named in the list, and click the Start button
Ensure that the 3 boxes next to the NetworkManager item in left-side list are checked
Select NetworkManager in the list, and click the Start button
To enable NetworkManager from the command line or terminal:
su -c '/sbin/chkconfig --level 345 dhcdbd on'
su -c '/sbin/service dhcdbd start'
su -c '/sbin/chkconfig --level 345 named on'
su -c '/sbin/service named start'
su -c '/sbin/chkconfig --level 345 NetworkManager on'
su -c '/sbin/service NetworkManager start'
For a list of common wireless cards and drivers that NetworkManager supports, refer to the NetworkManager Hardware page.
The IPv4 address deletion algorithm did not take the prefix length
into account up to kernel version 2.6.12. Since this has changed, the
ip tool from the iproute package now issues
a warning if no prefix length is provided, to warn about possible
unintended deletions:
ip addr list dev eth0 4: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast qlen 1000 inet 10.0.0.3/24 scope global eth0
su -c 'ip addr del 10.0.0.3 dev eth0'
Warning: Executing wildcard deletion to stay compatible with old
scripts. Explicitly specify the prefix length (10.0.0.3/32) to
avoid this warning. This special behaviour is likely to disappear
in further releases, fix your scripts!
The correct method of deleting the address and thus avoiding the warning is:
su -c 'ip addr del 10.0.0.3/24 dev eth0'
Previously, it was not possible to tell if an interface was down
administratively or because no carrier was found, such as if a cable
were unplugged. The new flag NO-CARRIER now appears as a
link flag if the link is administratively up but no carrier can be
found.
The ip command now supports a batch mode via the argument
-batch, which works similar to the tc
command to speed up batches of tasks.
Refer to http://wiki.kernelnewbies.org/LinuxChanges for a list of major changes. Some of them are highlighted below.
Starting with version 2.6.12 of the kernel, a new feature has been
added called named address promotion. This
feature allows secondary IPv4 addresses to be promoted to primary
addresses. Usually when the primary address is deleted, all secondary
addresses are deleted as well. If you enable the new
sysctl key
net.ipv4.conf.all.promote_secondaries, or one of the
interface specific variants, you can change this behavior to promote
one of the secondary addresses to be the new primary address.
By default, when selecting the source address for ICMP error messages,
the kernel uses the address of the interface on which the ICMP error
is going to be sent. Kernel version 2.6.12 introduces the new
sysctl key
net.ipv4.icmp_errors_use_inbound_ifaddr. If you enable
this option the kernel uses the address of the interface that received
the original error-causing packet.
Suppose the kernel receives a packet on interface eth0
which generates an ICMP error, and the routing table causes the error
message to be generated on interface eth1. If the new
sysctl option is enabled, the ICMP error message
indicates the source address as interface eth0, instead
of the default eth1. This feature may ease network
debugging in asynchronous routing setups.
A new routing lookup algorithm called trie has been added. It is intended for large routing tables and shows a clear performance improvement over the original hash implementation, at the cost of increased memory consumption and complexity.
TCP congestion control algorithms are now pluggable and thus modular. The legacy NewReno algorithm remains the default, and acts as the fallback algorithm. The following new congestion control algorithms have been added:
High Speed TCP congestion control
TCP Hybla congestion avoidance
H-TCP congestion control
Scalable TCP congestion control
All existing congestion control modules have been converted to this new infrastructure, and the BIC congestion control has received enhancements from BICTCP 1.1 to handle low latency links.
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Affecting the Congestion Control Algorithm |
|---|---|
The congestion control algorithm is socket specific, and may be
changed via the socket option |
When a network driver notices a carrier loss, such as when the cable is pulled out, the driver stops the queue in front of the driver. In the past, this stoppage caused the packets to be queued at the queueing discipline layer for an unbound period of time causing unexpected effects. In order to prevent this effect, the core networking stack now refuses to queue any packets for a device that is operationally down, that is, has its queue disabled.
Kernel version 2.6.14-rc1 was the first version to receive support for the DCCP protocol. The implementation is still experimental, but is known to work. Developers have begun work to make userspace applications aware of this new protocol.
A new HostAP driver appears in the kernel starting in 2.6.14-rc1, which allows the emulation of a wireless access point through software. Currently this driver only works for Intersil Prism2-based cards (PC Card/PCI/PLX). Support for wireless cards Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2100 and 2200 has been added.
Many TCP Segmentation Offloading (TSO) related fixes are included.
A new textsearch infrastructure has been added, and is usable with corresponding iptables and extended match.
Both the IPv4 and IPv6 multicast joining interface visible by userspace have been reworked and brought up to the latest standards.
The SNMPv2 MIB counter ipInAddrErrors is supported for IPv4.
Various new socket options proposed in Advanced API (RFC3542) have been added.
Virtualization in Fedora Core is based on Xen. Xen 3.0 is integrated within Fedora Core 5 in the installer. Refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Tools/Xen for more information about Xen.
There are several types of virtualization: full virtualization, paravirtualization, and single kernel image virtualization. Under Fedora Core using Xen 3.0, paravirtualization is the most common type. With VM hardware, it is also possible to implement full virtualization.
Allows low overhead virtualization of system resources.
Can provide direct hardware access in special cases (e.g., dedicated NICs for each guest OS).
Allows hypervisor-assisted security mechanisms for guest OS.
A guest OS that has been modified to enabled paravirtualization
Host OS must use GRUB as its bootloader (default with Fedora Core)
Enough hard drive space to hold each guest OS (600MiB-6GiB per OS)
At least 256 MiB of RAM for each guest, plus at least 256 MiB ram for the host; use more RAM for the guest if you get out of memory errors or for troubleshooting failed guest installations
Xen must be installed on the host OS and the host OS must be booted into the Hypervisor Kernel. Fedora Core 5 includes an installation program for the guest OS that will use an existing installation tree of a paravirtualized-enabled OS to access that OS's existing installation program. Currently, Fedora Core 5 is the only available paravirtualized-enabled guest OS. Other OSs can be installed using existing images, but not through the OS's native installation program.
Full instructions can be found here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraXenQuickstartFC5
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No PowerPC Support |
|---|---|
Xen is not supported on the PowerPC architecture in Fedora Core 5. |
This section contains information related to the X Window System implementation provided with Fedora.
X.org X11 is an open source implementation of the X Window System. It provides the basic low-level functionality upon which full-fledged graphical user interfaces (GUIs) such as GNOME and KDE are designed. For more information about X.org, refer to http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/.
You may use System > Administration > Display or
system-config-display to configure
the settings. The configuration file for X.org is located in
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.
X.org X11R7 is the first modular release of X.org, which, among several other benefits, promotes faster updates and helps programmers rapidly develop and release specific components. More information on the current status of the X.org modularization effort in Fedora is available at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Xorg/Modularization.
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Installing Third Party Drivers |
|---|---|
Before you install any third party drivers from any vendor, including ATI or nVidia, please read http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Xorg/3rdPartyVideoDrivers. |
The xorg-x11-server-Xorg package install scripts
automatically remove the RgbPath line from the
xorg.conf file if it is present. You may need to
reconfigure your keyboard differently from what you are used to. You are
encouraged to subscribe to the upstream xorg@freedesktop.org mailing
list if you do need assistance reconfiguring your keyboard.
The following list includes some of the more visible changes for developers in X11R7:
The entire buildsystem has changed from imake to the
GNU autotools collection.
Libraries now install pkgconfig *.pc
files, which should now always be used by software that depends on
these libraries, instead of hard coding paths to them in
/usr/X11R6/lib or elsewhere.
Everything is now installed directly into /usr instead
of /usr/X11R6. All software that hard codes paths to
anything in /usr/X11R6 must now be changed, preferably
to dynamically detect the proper location of the object. Developers
are strongly advised against
hard-coding the new X11R7 default paths.
Every library has its own private source RPM package, which creates
a runtime binary subpackage and a -devel subpackage.
This section includes a summary of issues of note for developers and packagers, and suggestions on how to fix them where possible.
X11R7 files install into /usr directly now, and no longer
use the /usr/X11R6/ hierarchy. Applications that rely on
files being present at fixed paths under /usr/X11R6/,
either at compile time or run time, must be updated. They should now
use the system PATH, or some other mechanism to
dynamically determine where the files reside, or alternatively to hard
code the new locations, possibly with fallbacks.
The imake xutility is no longer used to build the X
Window System, and is now officially deprecated. X11R7 includes
imake, xmkmf, and other build utilities
previously supplied by the X Window System. X.Org highly recommends,
however, that people migrate from imake to use GNU
autotools and pkg-config. Support for
imake may be removed in a future X Window System release,
so developers are strongly
encouraged to transition away from it, and not use it for any new
software projects.
The system app-defaults/ directory for X resources is now
%{_datadir}/X11/app-defaults, which expands to
/usr/share/X11/app-defaults/ on Fedora Core and for
future Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems.
Any software package that previously used Build Requires:
(XFree86-devel|xorg-x11-devel) to satisfy build dependencies
must now individually list each library dependency. The preferred and
recommended method is to use virtual build
dependencies instead of hard coding the library package names of the
xorg implementation. This means you should use
Build Requires: libXft-devel instead of Build
Requires: xorg-x11-Xft-devel. If your software truly does
depend on the X.Org X11 implementation of a specific library, and
there is no other clean or safe way to state the dependency, then use
the xorg-x11-devel form. If you use the virtual
provides/requires mechanism, you will avoid inconvenience if the
libraries move to another location in the future.
Modular X now uses GNU autotools and
pkg-config for its buildsystem configuration and
execution. The xft-config utility has been deprecated for
some time, and pkgconfig *.pc files have
been provided for most of this time. Applications that previously used
xft-config to obtain the Cflags or
libs build options must now be updated to use
pkg-config.
Fedora now provides MySQL 5.0. For a list of the enhancements provided by this version, refer to http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/mysql-5-0-nutshell.html.
For more information on upgrading databases from previous releases of MySQL, refer to the MySQL web site at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/upgrade.html.
This release of Fedora includes PostgreSQL 8.1. For more information on this new version, refer to http://www.postgresql.org/docs/whatsnew.
![]() |
Upgrading Databases |
|---|---|
|
Fedora Core 4 provided version 8.0 of PostgreSQL. If you upgrade an existing Fedora system with a PostgreSQL database, you must upgrade the database to access the data. To upgrade a database from a previous version of PostgreSQL, follow the procedure described at http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/interactive/install-upgrading.html. |
This section includes information related to the support of various languages under Fedora Core.
SCIM (Simple Common Input Method) has replaced IIIMF as the
input method system for Asian and other languages in Fedora Core
in this release. SCIM uses
Ctrl-Space
as the default trigger key to toggle on and off the input
method, though it is easy to change the hotkey or add hotkeys
with the SCIM setup configuration tool. Japanese users can now
use the
Zenkaku_Hankaku
key to toggle between native and ASCII input.
SCIM should be installed and run by default for Asian language
desktops. Otherwise the required packages can be installed
using the language support section of the package manager (
pirut
) or running:
su -c 'yum groupinstall <language>-support'
where <language> is one of assamese ,
bengali, chinese, gujarati ,
hindi, japanese, kannada ,
korean, punjabi, tamil, or
thai.
The list of IMEs included is:
Japanese:
scim-anthy
Korean:
scim-hangul
Simplified Chinese:
scim-pinyin scim-tables-chinese
Traditional Chinese:
scim-chewing scim-tables-chinese
Indian and other languages:
scim-m17n m17n-db-<language>
If your desktop is not running in an Asian locale, to activate it in your user account, run these commands, then logout and login again to your desktop.
mkdir ~/.xinput.d ln -s /etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/scim ~/.xinput.d/default
When SCIM is running, an applet icon appears in the notification area of the desktop panel. The icon is a grey keyboard icon when SCIM is inactive, and an Input Method Engine (IME) icon when it is active. When SCIM is active, by default the SCIM input method toolbar with status information also appears.
Clicking the left mouse button on the applet activates a SCIM language switching menu for changing the current Input Method Engine. The menu only appears when an application using the Input Method has focus. Clicking the right mouse button on the applet or SCIM toolbar activates the setup menu.
You can configure SCIM and IMEs using the setup configuration tool available from the setup menu. In the IME general configuration panel, you can select which languages or IMEs appear on the language switching menu.
Support is now available for synthetic emboldening of fonts that do not have a bold face.
New fonts for Chinese have been added: AR PL ShanHeiSun Uni
(uming.ttf) and AR PL ZenKai Uni (ukai.ttf).
The default font is AR PL ShanHeiSun Uni, which contains embedded
bitmaps. If you prefer outline glyphs you can put the following section
in your ~/.font.conf file:
<fontconfig> <match target="font"> <test name="family" compare="eq"> <string>AR PL ShanHeiSun Uni</string> </test>\n<edit name="embeddedbitmap" mode="assign"> <bool>false</bool> </edit>\n</match> </fontconfig>
The Gtk2 context menu IM submenu no longer appears by default.
You can enable it on the command line with the following
command; the \ is for printing purposes
and this should appear all on one line:
gconftool-2 --type bool --set \ '/desktop/gnome/interface/show_input_method_menu' true
Firefox in Fedora Core is built with Pango, which provides better support for certain scripts, such as Indic and some CJK scripts. Fedora has the permission of the Mozilla Corporation to use the Pango system for text renderering.
To disable the use of Pango, set
MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1
in your environment before launching Firefox.
Fedora Core provides legacy system libraries for compatibility with older software. This software is part of the Legacy Software Development group, which is not installed by default. Users who require this functionality may select this group either during installation, or after the installation process is complete. To install the package group on a Fedora system, use Applications=>Add/Remove Software, Pirut or enter the following command in a terminal window:
su -c 'yum groupinstall "Legacy Software Development"'
Enter the password for the
root
account when prompted.
![]() |
This list is automatically generated |
|---|---|
This list is automatically generated. It is not a good choice for translation. |
This list was made using the treediff utility, ran as
treediff newtree oldtree against the rawhide tree of 28 Feb.
2006.
For a list of which packages were updated since the previous release, refer to this page:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Beats/PackageChanges/UpdatedPackages
You can also find a comparison of major packages between all Fedora versions at http://distrowatch.com/fedora
New package adaptx
AdaptX
New package agg
Anti-Grain Geometry
New package amtu
Abstract Machine Test Utility (AMTU)
New package anthy
Japanese character set input library
New package aspell-ru
Russian dictionaries for Aspell.
New package aspell-sl
Slovenian dictionaries for Aspell.
New package aspell-sr
Serbian dictionaries for Aspell.
New package avahi
Local network service discovery
New package axis
A SOAP implementation in Java
New package beagle
The Beagle Search Infrastructure
New package bsf
Bean Scripting Framework
New package bsh
Lightweight Scripting for Java
New package cairo
A vector graphics library
New package cairo-java
Java bindings for the Cairo library
New package castor
An open source data binding framework for Java
New package concurrent
Utility classes for concurrent Java programming
New package dev86
A real mode 80x86 assembler and linker.
New package dhcdbd
DHCP D-BUS daemon (dhcdbd) controls dhclient sessions with D-BUS, stores
and presents DHCP options.
New package ekiga
A Gnome based SIP/H323 teleconferencing application
New package elilo
ELILO linux boot loader for EFI-based systems
New package evolution-sharp
Evolution Data Server Mono Bindings
New package f-spot
Photo management application
New package frysk
Frysk execution analysis tool
New package gecko-sharp2
Gecko bindings for Mono
New package geronimo-specs
Geronimo J2EE server J2EE specifications
New package giflib
Library for manipulating GIF format image files
New package glib-java
Base Library for the Java-GNOME libraries
New package gmime
Library for creating and parsing MIME messages
New package gnome-applet-vm
Simple virtual domains monitor which embed themselves in the GNOME panel
New package gnome-mount
Mount replacement which uses HAL to do the mounting
New package gnome-power-manager
GNOME Power Manager
New package gnome-python2-desktop
The sources for additional PyGNOME Python extension modules for the
GNOME desktop.
New package gnome-screensaver
GNOME Sreensaver
New package gnome-user-share
Gnome user file sharing
New package gnu-efi
Development Libraries and headers for EFI
New package gpart
A program for recovering corrupt partition tables.
New package gsf-sharp
Mono bindings for libgsf
New package gstreamer-plugins-base
GStreamer streaming media framework base plug-ins
New package gstreamer-plugins-good
GStreamer plug-ins with good code and licensing
New package gtk-sharp
GTK+ and GNOME bindings for Mono
New package gtk-sharp2
GTK+ and GNOME bindings for Mono
New package hplip
HP Linux Imaging and Printing Project
New package hsqldb
Hsqldb Database Engine
New package icon-naming-utils
A script to handle icon names in desktop icon themes
New package icu
International Components for Unicode
New package imake
imake source code configuration and build system
New package iscsi-initiator-utils
iSCSI daemon and utility programs
New package iso-codes
ISO code lists and translations
New package jakarta-commons-codec
Jakarta Commons Codec Package
New package jakarta-commons-daemon
Jakarta Commons Daemon Package
New package jakarta-commons-discovery
Jakarta Commons Discovery
New package jakarta-commons-httpclient
Jakarta Commons HTTPClient Package
New package javacc
A parser/scanner generator for java
New package jdom
Java alternative to DOM and SAX
New package jgroups
Toolkit for reliable multicast communication.
New package jrefactory
JRefactory and Pretty Print
New package kasumi
An anthy dictionary management tool.
New package kexec-tools
The kexec/kdump userspace component.
New package lcms
Color Management System
New package libFS
X.Org X11 libFS runtime library
New package libICE
X.Org X11 libICE runtime library
New package libSM
X.Org X11 libSM runtime library
New package libX11
X.Org X11 libX11 runtime library
New package libXScrnSaver
X.Org X11 libXss runtime library
New package libXTrap
X.Org X11 libXTrap runtime library
New package libXau
X.Org X11 libXau runtime library
New package libXaw
X.Org X11 libXaw runtime library
New package libXcomposite
X.Org X11 libXcomposite runtime library
New package libXcursor
X.Org X11 libXcursor runtime library
New package libXdamage
X.Org X11 libXdamage runtime library
New package libXdmcp
X.Org X11 libXdmcp runtime library
New package libXevie
X.Org X11 libXevie runtime library
New package libXext
X.Org X11 libXext runtime library
New package libXfixes
X.Org X11 libXfixes runtime library
New package libXfont
X.Org X11 libXfont runtime library
New package libXfontcache
X.Org X11 libXfontcache runtime library
New package libXft
X.Org X11 libXft runtime library
New package libXi
X.Org X11 libXi runtime library
New package libXinerama
X.Org X11 libXinerama runtime library
New package libXmu
X.Org X11 libXmu/libXmuu runtime libraries
New package libXp
X.Org X11 libXp runtime library
New package libXpm
X.Org X11 libXpm runtime library
New package libXrandr
X.Org X11 libXrandr runtime library
New package libXrender
X.Org X11 libXrender runtime library
New package libXres
X.Org X11 libXres runtime library
New package libXt
X.Org X11 libXt runtime library
New package libXtst
X.Org X11 libXtst runtime library
New package libXv
X.Org X11 libXv runtime library
New package libXvMC
X.Org X11 libXvMC runtime library
New package libXxf86dga
X.Org X11 libXxf86dga runtime library
New package libXxf86misc
X.Org X11 libXxf86misc runtime library
New package libXxf86vm
X.Org X11 libXxf86vm runtime library
New package libchewing
Intelligent phonetic input method library for Traditional Chinese
New package libdaemon
library for writing UNIX daemons
New package libdmx
X.Org X11 libdmx runtime library
New package libdrm
libdrm Direct Rendering Manager runtime library
New package libevent
Abstract asynchronous event notification library
New package libfontenc
X.Org X11 libfontenc runtime library
New package libgdiplus
libgdiplus: An Open Source implementation of the GDI+ API
New package libgpod
Library to access the contents of an iPod
New package libgssapi
Generic Security Services Application Programming Interface Library
New package libiec61883
Streaming library for IEEE1394
New package liblbxutil
X.Org X11 liblbxutil runtime library
New package libnl
Convenience library for kernel netlink sockets
New package libnotify
libnotify notification library
New package liboil
Library of Optimized Inner Loops, CPU optimized functions
New package liboldX
X.Org X11 liboldX runtime library
New package libpfm
a performance monitoring library for Linux/ia64
New package librtas
Libraries to provide access to RTAS calls and RTAS events.
New package libsemanage
SELinux binary policy manipulation library
New package libsetrans
SELinux Translation library
New package libstdc++so7
libstdc++.so.7 preview
New package libunwind
An unwinding library for ia64.
New package libvirt
Library providing an API to use the Xen virtualization
New package libvte-java
Wrapper library for GNOME VTE
New package libxkbfile
X.Org X11 libxkbfile runtime library
New package libxkbui
X.Org X11 libxkbui runtime library
New package lucene
High-performance, full-featured text search engine
New package m17n-db
Multilingualization datafiles for m17n-lib
New package m17n-lib
Multilingual text library
New package mesa
Mesa graphics libraries
New package mlocate
An utility for finding files by name
New package mockobjects
Java MockObjects package
New package mono
a .NET runtime environment
New package mysql-connector-odbc
ODBC driver for MySQL
New package mysqlclient14
Backlevel MySQL shared libraries.
New package nautilus-sendto
Nautilus context menu for sending files
New package nfs-utils-lib
Network File System Support Library
New package notify-daemon
Notification Daemon
New package nspr
Netscape Portable Runtime
New package opal
Open Phone Abstraction Library
New package openCryptoki
Implementation of Cryptoki v2.11 for IBM Crypto Hardware
New package opensp
SGML and XML parser
New package pcmciautils
PCMCIA utilities and initialization programs
New package perl-Net-IP
Perl module for manipulation of IPv4 and IPv6 addresses
New package perl-String-CRC32
Perl interface for cyclic redundency check generation
New package perl-XML-Simple
Easy API to maintain XML in Perl
New package pfmon
a performance monitoring tool for Linux/ia64
New package php-pear
PHP Extension and Application Repository framework
New package pirut
Package Installation, Removal and Update Tools
New package prctl
Utility to perform process operations
New package pycairo
Python bindings for the cairo library
New package pykickstart
A python library for manipulating kickstart files
New package python-pyblock
Python modules for dealing with block devices
New package rhpxl
Python library for configuring and running X.
New package s390utils
Linux/390 specific utilities.
New package salinfo
SAL info tool.
New package scim
Smart Common Input Method platform
New package scim-anthy
SCIM IMEngine for anthy for Japanese input
New package scim-chewing
Chewing Chinese input method for SCIM
New package scim-hangul
Hangul Input Method Engine for SCIM
New package scim-m17n
SCIM IMEngine for m17n-lib
New package scim-pinyin
Smart Pinyin IMEngine for Smart Common Input Method platform
New package scim-qtimm
SCIM input method module for Qt
New package scim-tables
SCIM Generic Table IMEngine
New package squashfs-tools
squashfs utilities
New package system-config-cluster
system-config-cluster is a utility which allows you to manage cluster
configuration in a graphical setting.
New package systemtap
Instrumentation System
New package tanukiwrapper
Java Service Wrapper
New package tog-pegasus
OpenPegasus WBEM Services for Linux
New package tomboy
Tomboy is a desktop note-taking application for Linux and Unix.
New package velocity
Java-based template engine
New package werken.xpath
XPath implementation using JDOM
New package wpa_supplicant
WPA/WPA2/IEEE 802.1X Supplicant
New package wsdl4j
Web Services Description Language Toolkit for Java
New package xdoclet
XDoclet Attribute Orientated Programming Framework
New package xjavadoc
The XJavaDoc engine
New package xmlrpc
Java XML-RPC implementation
New package xorg-x11-apps
X.Org X11 applications
New package xorg-x11-drivers
X.Org X11 driver installation package
New package xorg-x11-drv-acecad
Xorg X11 acecad input driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-aiptek
Xorg X11 aiptek input driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-apm
Xorg X11 apm video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-ark
Xorg X11 ark video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-ati
Xorg X11 ati video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-calcomp
Xorg X11 calcomp input driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-chips
Xorg X11 chips video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-cirrus
Xorg X11 cirrus video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-citron
Xorg X11 citron input driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-cyrix
Xorg X11 cyrix video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-digitaledge
Xorg X11 digitaledge input driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-dmc
Xorg X11 dmc input driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-dummy
Xorg X11 dummy video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-dynapro
Xorg X11 dynapro input driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-elo2300
Xorg X11 elo2300 input driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-elographics
Xorg X11 elographics input driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-evdev
Xorg X11 evdev input driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-fbdev
Xorg X11 fbdev video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-fpit
Xorg X11 fpit input driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-glint
Xorg X11 glint video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-hyperpen
Xorg X11 hyperpen input driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-i128
Xorg X11 i128 video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-i740
Xorg X11 i740 video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-i810
Xorg X11 i810 video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-jamstudio
Xorg X11 jamstudio input driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-joystick
Xorg X11 joystick input driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-keyboard
Xorg X11 keyboard input driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-magellan
Xorg X11 magellan input driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-magictouch
Xorg X11 magictouch input driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-mga
Xorg X11 mga video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-microtouch
Xorg X11 microtouch input driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-mouse
Xorg X11 mouse input driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-mutouch
Xorg X11 mutouch input driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-neomagic
Xorg X11 neomagic video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-nsc
Xorg X11 nsc video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-nv
Xorg X11 nv video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-palmax
Xorg X11 palmax input driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-penmount
Xorg X11 penmount input driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-rendition
Xorg X11 rendition video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-s3
Xorg X11 s3 video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-s3virge
Xorg X11 s3virge video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-savage
Xorg X11 savage video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-siliconmotion
Xorg X11 siliconmotion video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-sis
Xorg X11 sis video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-sisusb
Xorg X11 sisusb video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-spaceorb
Xorg X11 spaceorb input driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-summa
Xorg X11 summa input driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-tdfx
Xorg X11 tdfx video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-tek4957
Xorg X11 tek4957 input driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-trident
Xorg X11 trident video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-tseng
Xorg X11 tseng video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-ur98
Xorg X11 ur98 input driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-v4l
Xorg X11 v4l video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-vesa
Xorg X11 vesa video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-vga
Xorg X11 vga video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-via
Xorg X11 via video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-vmware
Xorg X11 vmware video driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-void
Xorg X11 void input driver
New package xorg-x11-drv-voodoo
Xorg X11 voodoo video driver
New package xorg-x11-filesystem
X.Org X11 filesystem layout
New package xorg-x11-font-utils
X.Org X11 font utilities
New package xorg-x11-fonts
X.Org X11 fonts
New package xorg-x11-proto-devel
X.Org X11 Protocol headers
New package xorg-x11-resutils
X.Org X11 X resource utilities
New package xorg-x11-server
X.Org X11 X server
New package xorg-x11-server-utils
X.Org X11 X server utilities
New package xorg-x11-twm
X.Org X11 twm window manager
New package xorg-x11-util-macros
X.Org X11 Autotools macros
New package xorg-x11-utils
X.Org X11 X client utilities
New package xorg-x11-xauth
X.Org X11 X authority utilities
New package xorg-x11-xbitmaps
X.Org X11 application bitmaps
New package xorg-x11-xdm
X.Org X11 xdm - X Display Manager
New package xorg-x11-xfs
X.Org X11 xfs font server
New package xorg-x11-xfwp
X.Org X11 X firewall proxy
New package xorg-x11-xinit
X.Org X11 X Window System xinit startup scripts
New package xorg-x11-xkb-utils
X.Org X11 xkb utilities
New package xorg-x11-xkbdata
xkb data files for the X.Org X11 X server
New package xorg-x11-xsm
X.Org X11 X Session Manager
New package xorg-x11-xtrans-devel
X.Org X11 developmental X transport library
Removed package Canna
Removed package 4Suite
Removed package MyODBC
Removed package apel
Removed package VFlib2
Removed package anaconda-help
Removed package aqhbci
Removed package cdicconf
Removed package fonts-xorg
Removed package gimp-gap
Removed package gnome-kerberos
Removed package gnomemeeting
Removed package hotplug
Removed package howl
Removed package hpijs
Removed package hpoj
Removed package iiimf
Removed package iiimf-le-chinput
Removed package iiimf-le-xcin
Removed package libgal2
Removed package libungif
Removed package lvm2-cluster
Removed package mod_jk
Removed package nvi-m17n
Removed package openh323
Removed package openmotif21
Removed package pcmcia-cs
Removed package perl-Filter
Removed package perl-Filter-Simple
Removed package perl-Parse-Yapp
Removed package perl-RPM2
Removed package perl-Time-HiRes
Removed package perl-XML-Encoding
Removed package perl-libxml-enno
Removed package python-twisted
Removed package sash
Removed package schedutils
Removed package selinux-policy-targeted
Removed package selinux-policy-strict
Removed package slocate
Removed package struts11
Removed package system-config-mouse
Removed package system-config-packages
Removed package taipeifonts
Removed package w3c-libwww
Removed package xinitrc
Removed package usbview
Fedora Extras provides a repository of packages that complement Fedora Core. This volunteer-based community effort is part of the larger Fedora Project.
![]() |
Fedora Extras are Available by Default |
|---|---|
Fedora systems automatically use both the Fedora Core and Fedora Extras repositories to install and update software. |
To install software from either the Core or Extras repositories, choose
Applications > Add/Remove Software. Enter the
root password when prompted. Select the software you
require from the list, and choose Apply.
Alternatively, you may install software with the yum
command-line utility. For example, this command automatically installs
the abiword package, and all of the dependencies that are
required:
su -c 'yum install abiword'
Enter the root password when prompted.
As of the release of Fedora Core 5, there are approximately 2,000 packages in Fedora Extras, built from 1,350 source packages. The following list includes some popular and well-known applications that are maintained by community members in Fedora Extras:
abiword
- elegant word-processing application
balsa
- lightweight e-mail reader
bash-completion
- advanced command-line completion for power users
bluefish
- HTML editor
clamav
- open source anti-virus scanner for servers and desktops
fuse
- tool for attaching non-standard devices and network
services as directories
fwbuilder
- graphical utility for building Linux and Cisco firewall
rulesets
gaim-guifications
- enhancements to the Gaim Instant Messenger
gdesklets
- widgets for the GNOME desktop
gnumeric
- powerful spreadsheet application
inkscape
- illustration and vector drawing application
koffice
- complete office suite for the KDE desktop
mail-notification
- alerts you as new mail arrives
mediawiki
- the Wikipedia solution for collaborative websites
nautilus-open-terminal
- extension to the GNOME file manager
pan
- the Usenet news reader
revelation
- password management utility
scribus
- desktop publishing (DTP) application
xfce
- lightweight desktop environment
xmms
- the popular audio player
lots of Perl and Python tools and libraries
...and much more!
Is your favorite open source application missing from Fedora Extras? Package the application as an RPM, and submit it for review to Fedora Extras. After a successful review, import it to Extras and you can maintain it there. If you don't know how to create RPM packages, there are many other ways to get involved in Fedora Extras and help drive it forward.
To learn more about how to use Fedora Extras or how to get involved, refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras.
The Fedora Legacy Project is a community-supported open source project to extend the lifecycle of select "maintenance mode" Red Hat Linux and Fedora Core distributions. The Fedora Legacy Project works with the Linux community to provide security and critical bug fix errata packages. This work extends the effective lifetime of older distributions in environments where frequent upgrades are not possible or desirable. For more information about the Fedora Legacy Project, refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legacy.
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Legacy Repo Included in Fedora Core 5 |
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Fedora Core 5 ships with a software repository configuration for Fedora Legacy. This is a huge step in integrating Fedora Legacy with the Fedora Project at large and Fedora Core specifically. This repository is not enabled by default in this release. |
Currently the Fedora Legacy Project maintains the following distributions and releases in maintenance mode:
Red Hat Linux 7.3 and 9
Fedora Core 1, 2, and 3
The Fedora Legacy Project provides updates for these releases as long as there is community interest. When interest is not sustained further, maintenance mode ends with the second test release for the third subsequent Core release. For example, maintenance mode for Fedora Core 4, if not sustained by the community, ends with the release of Fedora Core 7 test2. This provides an effective supported lifetime (Fedora Core plus Fedora Legacy Support) of about 18 months.
The Fedora Legacy Project always needs volunteers to perform quality assurance testing on packages waiting to be published as updates. Refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legacy/QATesting for more information. Also visit our issues list at http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-legacy-list/2005-August/msg00079.html for further information and pointers to bugs we have in the queue.
If you need help in getting started, visit the project home page on the Wiki at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legacy, or the Mentors page at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mentors. If you are looking for others ways to participate in Fedora, refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/HelpWanted.
The goal of the Fedora Project is to work with the Linux community to build a complete, general-purpose operating system exclusively from open source software. Development is done in a public forum. The project produces time-based releases of Fedora Core approximately 2-3 times a year, with a public release schedule available at http://fedora.redhat.com/About/schedule/. The Red Hat engineering team continues to participate in building Fedora Core and invites and encourages more outside participation than was possible in the past. By using this more open process, we hope to provide an operating system more in line with the ideals of free software and more appealing to the open source community.
For more information, refer to the Fedora Project website:
The Fedora Project is driven by the individuals that contribute to it. As a tester, developer, documenter or translator, you can make a difference. See http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/HelpWanted for details.
This page explains the channels of communication for Fedora users and contributors:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate.
In addition to the website, the following mailing lists are available:
fedora-list@redhat.com — For users of Fedora Core releases
fedora-test-list@redhat.com — For testers of Fedora Core test releases
fedora-devel-list@redhat.com — For developers, developers, developers
fedora-docs-list@redhat.com — For participants of the Documentation Project
To subscribe to any of these lists, send an email with the word "subscribe" in the subject to <listname>-request, where <listname> is one of the above list names.
Alternately, you can subscribe to Fedora mailing lists through the Web interface:
http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/
The Fedora Project also uses several IRC (Internet Relay Chat) channels. IRC is a real-time, text-based form of communication, similar to Instant Messaging. With it, you may have conversations with multiple people in an open channel, or chat with someone privately one-on-one.
To talk with other Fedora Project participants via IRC, access the Freenode IRC network. Refer to the Freenode website (http://www.freenode.net/) for more information.
Fedora Project participants frequent the #fedora channel on
the Freenode network, whilst Fedora Project developers may often be found
on the #fedora-devel channel. Some of the larger projects may
have their own channels as well; this information may be found on the
webpage for the project, and at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate.
In order to talk on the #fedora channel, you will need to
register your nickname, or nick. Instructions are
given when you /join the channel.
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IRC Channels |
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The Fedora Project or Red Hat have no control over the Fedora Project IRC channels or their content. |
As we use the term, a colophon:
recognizes contributors and provides accountability, and
explains tools and production methods.
Andrew Martynov (translator, Russian)
Anthony Green (beat writer)
Bob Jensen (beat writer, editor, co-publisher)
Dave Malcolm (beat writer)
David Woodhouse (beat writer)
Francesco Tombolini (translator, Italian)
Gavin Henry (beat writer)
Hugo Cisneiros (translator, Brazilian Portuguese)
Jens Petersen (beat writer)
Joe Orton (beat writer)
Josh Bressers (beat writer)
Karsten Wade (beat writer, editor, co-publisher)
Luya Tshimbalanga (beat writer)
Patrick Barnes(beat writer, editor)
Paul W. Frields (tools, editor)
Rahul Sundaram (beat writer, editor)
Sekine Tatsuo (translator, Japanese)
Steve Dickson (beat writer)
Stuart Ellis (editor)
Thomas Graf (beat writer)
Tommy Reynolds (tools)
Yoshinari Takaoka (translator, tools)
Yuan Yijun (translator, Simplified Chinese)
Beat writers produce the release notes directly on the Fedora Project Wiki. They collaborate with other subject matter experts during the test release phase of Fedora Core to explain important changes and enhancements. The editorial team ensures consistency and quality of the finished beats, and ports the Wiki material to DocBook XML in a revision control repository. At this point, the team of translators produces other language versions of the release notes, and then they become available to the general public as part of Fedora Core. The publication team also makes them, and subsequent errata, available via the Web.