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Red Hat Software Businesses Software Linux

Fedora Core 2 Test 2 Released 264

Posted by simoniker from the e2e4 dept.
Kalak writes "Fedora Core 2 Test 2, part of the project's goal to 'work with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from open source software', has just been released - this test release 'is specifically designed for SELinux testing, as well as testing the 2.6 kernel, GNOME 2.5, and KDE 3.2.1.' Get a copy from one of the mirrors or grab a copy via BitTorrent. You probably want the binary only Torrent."
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Fedora Core 2 Test 2 Released More

Fedora Core 2 Test 2 Released

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  • Careful - lots of experimental stuff (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Not for production use. SELinux should create some fun errors.
    • SELinux should create some fun errors.

      No joke. I tried Fedora the other day with SElinux turned on. Some stuff worked (like the machine booted) but tons of stuff was broken.

      Even with SElinux turned off I didn't care for Fedora too much. It takes forever to startup and shutdown. It also seemed a bit wonky... after the install some stuff just didn't work and often the machine wouldn't even boot up. I tried it on two different machines with the same results.

      I'll stick with Debian or Arch Linux for now
      • Even with SElinux turned off I didn't care for Fedora too much. It takes forever to startup and shutdown. It also seemed a bit wonky... after the install some stuff just didn't work and often the machine wouldn't even boot up.

        Yeah, it pretty much stinks that I no longer fit within RedHat's business model. I was content paying a small fee every couple years for a system that worked out of the box, even though support was limited. But I'm not going to help beta test Fedora, sorry. I'm in the process of m

    • I think that's why they call it 'Fedora Core 2 TEST 2'.

  • Yipee (Score:5, Interesting)

    by altaic ( 559466 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @02:07PM (#8706110)
    Now we can use the lk 2.6 without having to add homebrew packages (yeah, I know there's some guy who provides a yum-able package tree). Anyway, this release should be an excellent updgrade. I'd be very interested to hear of the pre-release stability. Anyone care to comment?
    • I installed FC2 test1 and it worked for the most part... Obviously being a beta, there were bugs with some applications, but overall it was quite stable. However, I didn't keep my system bleeding-edge (up2date every day), one of my friends did though. I remember he encountered a bug with a new package that prevented him from logging in as anyone but root... lol. Can't recall the reason but it was fixed not too long later. Overall I've been pretty happy considering its a test release. I'm even running

    • Re:Yipee (Score:3, Interesting)

      by div_2n ( 525075 )
      I've been using FC2 T1 since it came out. Here are some points on the past test. Haven't checked out the latest:

      -Sound hasn't worked ever. It used to not even detect my soundcard but now does (still no sound).

      -X refused to start on kernel upgrades until I modified some settings to configuration files. That was just plain rediculous to have to do that.

      -Double-clicking on PDF's has never worked. I have discovered that Gnome PDF Viewer doesn't work period. XPDF works great though.

      -Occasionally Update

  • Bueno (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WTFmonkey ( 652603 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @02:08PM (#8706118)
    I'd heard great things, but then I wasted one hard drive trying to make kernel 2.6 work with Fedora 1. I mean, it worked, but only by stretching definitions.

    I'm not horribly ign'nt, but I'm obviously no genious either. Somewhere along the line /dev got all dicked up and stuff stopped working. So to stop the bitching, it's great to see a faster-than-average turnaround by the Fedora guys. Will be installing this (and checking config files to see where I went wrong-- LEARN from your mistakes, people) tonight.

    • YMMV (Score:3, Interesting)

      by captain_craptacular ( 580116 )
      I got 2.6 working with Fedora 1 in about 45 minutes a couple weeks after it (lk 2.6) came out. I had no problems whatsoever, so I'm not sure what your problem was... I ran it that way for about 3 weeks with no hiccups and then switched back to the regular 2.4.x kernel so I could get hassle free updates...

      • Re:YMMV (Score:5, Funny)

        by SuiteSisterMary ( 123932 ) <slebrun@ g m ail.com> on Monday March 29, 2004 @02:32PM (#8706452) Journal
        and then switched back to the regular 2.4.x kernel so I could get hassle free updates...

        Might have answered, in part, at least, your own question there, boyo.

    • Re:Bueno (Score:3, Informative)

      by Spoing ( 152917 )
      My custom 2.6.x kernels work well with Fedora test 1. The only thing I really did was;
      1. Update all the user space packages as decribed in the kernel README.
      2. Grab the .config file for one of the Fedora binary 2.6.x kernels (in /boot if it is installed, the RPM if not).
      3. Copy it to the 2.6.x kernel source directory -- where ever you put it -- and run "make oldconfig".

      Tweak and modify the kernel as you see fit. Otherwise, compile as-is.

      That said, there are customized parts of the official Fedora Linux k

    • I've been on Kernel 2.6 for several months now, and am currently running Kernel 2.6 + udev 023 + hotplug . You really ought to try Gentoo.

  • ACPI and kernel (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 29, 2004 @02:08PM (#8706119)
    I hope their gonna switch to 2.6.4 cuz last time I checked, they were using 2.6.1 and acpi for that is still broken. For some reason, the acpi people don't even support 2.6.3 any more...
    • One of the RPM's I find in the release:
      kernel-2.6.3-2.1.253.2.1.i686.rpm

      Well, there's a good chance it might be patched with newer ACPI, but I haven't had trouble with it on an nforce2 system. If there are problems, I'm sure it'll be fixed pretty quickly.

    • Re:ACPI and kernel (Score:4, Informative)

      by prockcore ( 543967 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @02:28PM (#8706395)
      I hope their gonna switch to 2.6.4 cuz last time I checked, they were using 2.6.1 and acpi for that is still broken. For some reason, the acpi people don't even support 2.6.3 any more...

      When was the last time you checked? FCtest has been using 2.6.4 for a few months now.

    • Re:ACPI and kernel (Score:5, Informative)

      by ajs ( 35943 ) <ajs@a[ ]com ['js.' in gap]> on Monday March 29, 2004 @03:32PM (#8707116) Homepage Journal
      This is still pre-release so your comments aren't too unreasonable, but just so that people understand that this isn't always the right way to look at the problem:

      The way version numbering works in Red Hat (and by extension, Fedora), is that the package version number is the version of the software that the package STARTED from, but it may have little to do with the state of the software as installed.

      For example, you might have openssh version 3.1 on a box, but if you look at the SRPM for that package, you will find security bug-fixes applied from all of the openssh versions between 3.1 and the current day.

      The SRPM is essentially three things: A tar-ball(s) of the original source as shipped by the developers; a set of patches or add-ons that the vendor has decided to include and a Makefile-like thing that RPM knows how to read called a spec file.

      Thus, FC2 might ship with Linux 2.6.4, but that doesn't mean it lacks a feature or bug-fix from 2.6.5... you have to check the patch-set in the SRPM to know that.

      Every time the contents of that SRPM are updated, the RPM version changes, so you'll see something like "foo-1.2-2", where 1.2 is the version of foo that the SRPM was based on, and this is the second build from Fedora.

  • Exciting stuff going on at Fedora (Score:5, Insightful)

    by capz loc ( 752940 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [colzpac]> on Monday March 29, 2004 @02:11PM (#8706181)
    I installed Fedora Core 1 when it first came out and I was very impressed. It included some stuff that wasn't in RH9, including a very pretty graphical boot. If Fedora continues on the path that it is on now, it could become a worthy competitor with SuSE and Mandrake on the home user front.

    The community projects like Fedora and Debian tend to innovate more than distros that are managed by companies because they can get away with the "if it breaks, you keep both pieces" warantee. Distros used in enterprise scenarios (generally) offer a more stable product, at the cost of innovation.

    • Re:Exciting stuff going on at Fedora (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 29, 2004 @03:14PM (#8706926)
      The community projects like Fedora and Debian tend to innovate more than distros that are managed by companies because they can get away with the "if it breaks, you keep both pieces" warantee. Distros used in enterprise scenarios (generally) offer a more stable product, at the cost of innovation.

      Please show me a company managed Linux distro that is more stable than Debian Stable. I'll promise to try it.
    • It included some stuff that wasn't in RH9, including a very pretty graphical boot.

      And even better, official yum/apt repos.

      If Fedora continues on the path that it is on now, it could become a worthy competitor with SuSE and Mandrake on the home user front.

      Huh? It already is a worthy competitor for both of those distros. The quality seems to be pretty good, and I have to admit that FC1 was *the* distro that killed most of my dual booting needs.

      The community projects like Fedora and Debian tend to inno

  • MP3 support? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by IO ERROR ( 128968 ) <error@ioerroCOFFEEr.us minus caffeine> on Monday March 29, 2004 @02:13PM (#8706210) Homepage Journal
    Is Fedora Core 2 going to re-enable MP3 support now that it's no longer a "commercial" product?

    • No (Score:5, Informative)

      by Wesley Felter ( 138342 ) <wesley@felter.org> on Monday March 29, 2004 @02:20PM (#8706293) Homepage
      They can't include MP3 support precisely because Fedora is non-commercial. (Who would pay the per-copy license fees?)

    • Re:MP3 support? (Score:5, Informative)

      by rgmoore ( 133276 ) * <glandauer@charter.net> on Monday March 29, 2004 @02:24PM (#8706340) Homepage

      No. Fedora is trying very hard to avoid IP issues, so they've deliberately refrained from including things like mp3 decoders and DVD decoders that might get them into legal trouble. Fortunately, Fedora does have apt and yum available, so it's easy to add external repositories, like FreshRPMS [freshrpms.net] or Livna [livna.org], both of which do include mp3 players and DVD decoders. It's very convenient, and avoids a lot of legal headaches for RedHat.

    • Re:MP3 support? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Kalak ( 260968 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @02:35PM (#8706488) Homepage Journal
      The commercial / non-commercial isn't the reason - it's that mp3 is a proprietary format, and Fedora is still backed by RedHat. Royalty issues for mp3 have been talked [slashdot.org] about [slashdot.org] before [slashdot.org] on [slashdot.org] slashdot [slashdot.org], and I don't see RedHat giving the nod to distributing mp3 decoders in Fedora any more than in the RedHat Enterprise distributions. It's the same as distributing the NTFS modules. New Fedora releases shouldn't effect this decision.

      Just grab XMMS RPMS for Fedora from their home page [xmms.org] and let RedHat worry about what they distribute. NTFS module RPMS [sourceforge.net] are available as well.

      • re: NTFS (Score:5, Interesting)

        by bani ( 467531 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @02:49PM (#8706640)
        and what exactly is preventing redhat from distributing NTFS like everyone else, commercial or not?

        i've asked redhat repeatedly to explain, and they have refused to give a straight answer. first they claimed it was "stability issues", claiming NTFS would "corrupt memory", but wouldnt give any examples and clammed up when i asked for clarifications. then they suddenly changed their story to "legal issues", but again clammed up when asked to explain. patents? copyrights? trade secrets? no answer.

        it ain't legal issues -- unless you can point to NTFS patents. and it ain't copyright issues either -- because the code was written from scratch. the codebase for NTFS was developed much the same way as the codebase for SAMBA -- from publically available documentation and reverse engineering. if redhat has a legal problem with NTFS then they shouldnt be distributing SAMBA either.

        it also strikes me very odd that they would include FAT filesystems which DO have patent issues, but exclude NTFS which does NOT.

        • Re: NTFS (Score:3, Insightful)

          by ChrisJones ( 23624 )
          Maybe they just don't want to pay to do all the due diligance required to make sure they are legally covered from Microsoft turning round and sueing.

          The stability problems related mostly to write support, you could read NTFS partitions ok, but the writing code was unusable for a long time. This isn't some secret conspiracy nobody will tell you about, it's just bloody complicated filesystem code, it's not easy at the best of times, and when you're reverse engineering something it's a whole bunch harder. Cut

        • Re: NTFS (Score:5, Informative)

          by Burdell ( 228580 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @03:57PM (#8707426)
          There apparently are patent issues with NTFS, and people from Red Hat have said that multiple times (here [redhat.com] for example).

          As for FAT, from what I've read the patent (patents?) doesn't cover the way Linux uses a FAT filesystem.

        • The lack of NTFS included in Fedora Core 2 Test 1 was a bit annoying. But, as a parent poster pointed out, there are RPM's available, or you can just build the NTFS module:
          1. cd /usr/src/linux-2.6
          2. make menuconfig
          3. Find NTFS, and build it as a module ("M")
          4. Save configuration
          5. make modules;make modules_install

          Worked for me.

          I was using Fedora Core 2 Test 1, but there was lots of things wrong with it. The installer wouldn't work with my PATA to SATA converter on a Silicon Image 3112A chipset (I logged
        • Most other distros are based outside the USA, where the patents often does not apply.
          Nevertheless, if other distros ship it , does that automatically make it
          legal ?
          Or is the patent owners doesn't excersice their patent rights, is it still legal ?

    • Re:MP3 support? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Trogre ( 513942 )
      The question is, with superior free [xiph.org] codecs [sourceforge.net] out there, would you really want to go back to mp3?

  • Fedora News (Score:5, Informative)

    by hey ( 83763 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @02:16PM (#8706236) Journal
    Maybe this is obvious -- I donno.
    If you are interested Fedora, check out:
    Fedora News [fedoranews.org]
    (unofficial site).
    Lots of good stuff there.

  • Goddamnit. (Score:4, Funny)

    by el-spectre ( 668104 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @02:16PM (#8706237) Journal
    As I type, one of my machines at home is downloading FC2 test 1. Guess I'd better check the timeline next time...
    • It's a good thing you posted that.. I was grabbing the first two CD's of test 2 off one mirror and the second 2 CD's of test 1 off another.. I only double checked because of what you said.

    • As I type, one of my machines at home is downloading FC2 test 1. Guess I'd better check the timeline next time...

      So? Install FC2 test 1, and then type "yum update" and it'll update you to FC2 test 2.

  • Gnome 2.5 (Score:2, Informative)

    by nycsubway ( 79012 )
    I notice they're still using gnome 2.5, not 2.6. I hope they get gnome 2.6 in by the test3 release.

  • The email announcement (Score:5, Funny)

    by afd8856 ( 700296 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @02:25PM (#8706356) Homepage
    Anybody else thought their email announcement is extremly hilarious? :)

    One bug, two bugs, tar bugs, su bugs,
    grep bugs, mew bugs, old bugs, new bugs.

    This bug has a little hack,
    This bug has a broken stack.
    Say! What a lot of bugs to track.

    Yes, some are in tar, and some in su.
    Some are old. And some are new.

    Some in sed, and some in jed.
    And some are even in parted.
    Why are they in parted, jed and sed?
    I do not know. Bugs should be dead!

    Some in jpeg, and some in TIFF
    This TIFF one has an attached diff.

    >From there to here, from here to there
    Test release bugs are everywhere.

    Fedora Core test 2 is available for
    x86 and x86-64
    It should not be installed where production is hot;
    use it only for test, as we say quite a lot.

    If you install with the default
    SELinux will be the result
    SELinux is a form of MAC
    For more answers, check the FAQ [*]
    By explicitly stating what apps can use
    Unwanted accesses it will refuse

    [*] http://people.redhat.com/kwade/fedora-docs/selinux -faq-en/

    So please test test2 in this mode;
    and please test it with your code.
    Plus it comes with a new GNOME;
    can you test that in your home?
    Also X.org is new,
    replacing XFree, test it too.
    And 3.2.1 of KDE
    We need to test, test, test, you see!
    So we will test it on our box.
    And we will even test out sox.
    And we will test it in our house.
    And we will test it with our mouse.
    And we will test it here and there.
    Say! We will test it ANYWHERE!

  • "You probably want the binary only Torrent." (Score:5, Funny)

    by syntap ( 242090 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @02:27PM (#8706391)
    You insensitive clod.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @02:40PM (#8706544)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • don't worry about it - i installed the test 2 of fedora core 1 and it didn't even come close to being functional. pretty much everything i did resulted in my machine going slightly crazy. i was quite alarmed that fedora was gonna suck and never be much good, but by the time the final release of fedora core 1 came out, it installed perfectly and ran wonderfully on my laptop. so, hey, submit your bugs (or, if you're a better person than myself, fixes) and then wait for the final to come out and blow you a

  • I hope its better than Test 1 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MajorDick ( 735308 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @02:43PM (#8706567)
    I was horribly disapointed with test 1, WOW , I mean I install it on release day and there are already like 500 megs of updates ?!?! , Not to mention all the menu issues and other buggies, I know its a "test" but wow RH betas were never in such disarray in my experience. On the other hand I was Thrilled with FC1 for my laptop, everything just Worked like it was supposed to I hope FC2 release is as good.

    • While I agree that Fedora 1 installed flawlessly (even on my funky hardware), I was more than a little disappointed with its overall speed. RH9 took about a minute and a half to get from power-on to desktop, but Fedora 1 took closer to three minutes on the same box, with the same basic apps. Has anyone else noticed speed decreases from release to release?

      • Heh , Well I must say I use RHEL , and I installed it on my laptop for parity in development, Until I needed to test some compat issues with a package so I installed FC1 on my laptop. WOW SuperFast , compared to RHEL 3 (AS and ES) I guess its all relative I was thrilled with FC1 speed BUT that was in relation to RHEL 3
    • I was upset that the system pointed to download.redhat.com for updates, which is constantly being hammered. I would get 9k/sec if I was lucky, and the download was constantly freezing.

      However, in looking through the messages, I found that there is a document on how to use mirror servers as a source for updates [fedoranews.org]. I'm surprised that Fedora doesn't have a system for balancing clients to different mirror servers, a la Gentoo, but now that I've picked a few mirrors, things have been a lot smoother.

      • test1 had up2date configured with two sources: download.fedora.redhat.com and a mirror list. I think what it would do is check download.fedora.redhat.com to see if there were updates, and then use the mirror list to actually get them. So they took the mirror list out for test2? Could be because the mirror sites don't instantaneously get updates, and you end up with errors where it tries to grab an update listed on download.fedora.redhat.com from mirrors.kernel.org which isn't there. It got to the point wher
    • The -test series do not have official update sites. The updates that you're seeing actually point you to the development repository. Test1 was cut from a couple of older packages. Not all the upgrades in the development (aka rawhide) subdirectory are crucial.

      To balance off statements like yours, I must say that fedora core2 test1 worked very well on 4 DIFFERENT systems that I tried it on (1 dual-SMP, 1 uni server, 1 uni workstation and 1 laptop). Some with a little tweaking.

  • How to get my favorite package in Fedora? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ajiva ( 156759 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @02:47PM (#8706609)
    How do I get my favorite package to be in the Fedora install? Personally I'd love to see better wireless support, maybe WLAN or HostAP.
    • The answer depends on if you want it included in the Fedora Extras repository or on the distribution disks. You might want to visit http://fedora.us and http://fedora.redhat.com (under participate).

      Here is an extended discussion from the devel mailing list. The link is to the question; just follow the links within to read the discussion. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2 004-March/msg00539.html

      -Norm

  • How about giving Fedora its own topic/icon ? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by phoxix ( 161744 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @02:52PM (#8706677)
    Because Redhat != Fedora.

    Sunny Dubey
    • Well, there's no real icon for Fedora (yet). And in fc1's Gnome (haven't checked KDE) there's still that peculiar little red hat visible on the panel. It's an fedora[1] hat in fact.

      [1] Taken from a glossary about hats: [villagehatshop.com]

      FEDORA ( fe doe ra ) Men's soft felt hat with brim and lengthwise crease in crown , adopted by women. The name Fedora was after the heroine of Victorian Sardou's drama presented in Paris in 1882. Also TYROLEAN HAT, ALPINE HAT, HOMBURG.
      So as long as there isn't a new logo within the dist

  • Live support URLs (Score:5, Informative)

    by jroysdon ( 201893 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @02:53PM (#8706688)
    fedoraforum.org [fedoraforum.org] has a wealth of info in the FAQs and Forums.

    For the newest issues, jump on IRC: irc.freenode.net #fedora [irc]
  • Hopefully this RC2 will be an improvement.. as would be the plan..

    It shows promise, but still that damned 'RPM hell' sux...

  • It's in this new Fedora release, it's also in the Mandrake 10 "community" release (I just got my DVD last week) and it's in the upcoming Mandrake 9.1 [amazon.com] release, which you can pre-order from Amazon even though you can't actually find it by searching in Amazon. Too many choices! Oh and OpenBSD 3.5 is coming, too.
  • Fedora Core 2 Test 1 was specifically mentioned on the fedora mailing list to NOT be forward-compatible to Final.

    Meaning, you could not upgrade (apt/yum/etc) directly from Test 1 to Core 2 Final.

    Does anyone know if forward-upgradability is supported/endorsed for Test 2?

    • Meaning, you could not upgrade (apt/yum/etc) directly from Test 1 to Core 2 Final.

      I don't see why not. In the past week yum has updated my kernel, glibc, and switched from XFree86 to x.org What could possibly prevent test1 from upgrading all the way to final?
  • So, have they fixed bug 29555 [redhat.com], which has been around since RedHat 7.1? You get part way into the installation, and it hangs on loading the aic7xxx SCSI driver.

    I don't mean to be picky, but this seems pretty basic. It worked in 6.x, and stopped working in 7.1 (or maybe 7.0). It was still broken in Fedora Core 1.

    Now, if you read the bug report, you'll see they blame all sorts of things, and have all sorts of workarounds that don't seem to actually work. The very same machine has had Windows NT, FreeBSD

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