I took the plunge and upgraded from RH7.3 to FC3 last week, and I have to say it's been a bit of a mixed bag. So far, there remain 3 issues which I cannot resolve satisfactorily.
I've been using RH since 4.2, and this is the first time that I have been left with an operating environment that is unable to do all of the things I normally expect of it. I have FC2 on my laptop and it's working great, but this FC3 installation has left me feeling uncomfortable. Not even the Tao of Yum can restore absolute calm.
To clarify the platform a little, I chose a fresh installation of FC3 on a brand new [Seagate] HDD. My computer is a generic P3 Tualitin based system with an Asus motherboard. Very standard stuff and has worked very well under RH7.3. The only non-standard component is the keyboard, which is a UK Macintosh USB keyboard.
Issue 1: The first problem I encountered is that under KDE, and only under KDE, I cannot access the CDROM device. A dialogue box labeled "Error - kio_devices_mounthelper" returns the following:
mount: /dev/hdc already mounted or /media/cdrecorder busy Please check that the disk is entered correctly.
From within the KDE session, opening a terminal and mounting the device manually returns the same error. But log out, and log back in using GNOME and all is well. Similarly, logging out of KDE and choosing a command line login from which to issue the mount command also works.
So now we don't use KDE. I'm not heartbroken, but it is annoying and unnecessary.
Issue 2: Xmodmap doesn't work reliably. As stated earlier, I use a UK Macintosh keyboard. Yes, on my x86 computer. Under RH, to get this to work properly required some entries in /etc/X11/Xmodmap. Specifically, my Xmodmap file contains:
! Euro sign support keycode 26 = e E currency keycode 54 = c C cent keycode 113 = Mode_switch Mode_switch Multi_key keycode 11 = 2 at EuroSign
! Hash (#) symbol for Mac UK Keyboard keycode 12 = 3 sterling numbersign
! Mac Extended Keyboard Keys keycode 165 = XF86AudioLowerVolume keycode 158 = XF86AudioRaiseVolume keycode 166 = XF86AudioMute keycode 93 = XF86Launch0 keycode 123 = XF86Launch1 keycode 127 = XF86Launch2 keycode 128 = XF86Launch3 keycode 116 = XF86Eject
This allows the use of all of the extra keys on the keyboard. The UK keyboard is quite idiosyncratic; for example it does not have a "#" symbol (the convention is to assign alt-3 to #). X11 xkb support for the UK (gb) keyboard is inadequate, but I am quite content to hack around with the keymaps to get the result I want. But this does not work under FC3. If I log in, bring up a terminal and run xmodmap /etc/X11/Xmodmap, sometimes it will work, sometimes it will segfault. Sometimes it will return the following:
*** glibc detected *** double free or corruption: 0x09790868 *** Aborted
Under no circumstances that I can induce will xmodmap successfully load the key mappings when invoked as part of Xsession. I have tried using Option "XkbDisable" as well as manually inserting the xmodmap command into the Xsession script, with no success.
This is a real shame, since xmodmap is widely used, easy to understand and permits experimentation and hacking. Plus it's been around for a while. That said, I have tried to hack together an xkb configuration for the macintosh gb keyboard. What a horrid system of files. So far, I've got the following for /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb/symbols/macintosh/gb:
// $XConsortium: gb /main/3 1996/08/31 12:19:51 kaleb $
// $XFree86: xc/programs/xkbcomp/symbols/gb,v 3.3 1996/12/23 07:13:25 dawes Exp $
partial default alphanumeric_keys
xkb_symbols "basic" {
// Describes the differences between a very simple en_US
// keyboard and a very simple U.K. keyboard layout
name[Group1]= "Great Britain";
key <AE02> { [ 2, at ],
[ EuroSign ] };
key <AE03> { [ 3, sterling ],
[ numbersign ] };
key <LSGT> { [ quoteleft, asciitilde ] }; key <KPEQ> { [ KP_Equal ] };
// key <KPEQ> { [ equal ] };// End alphanumeric section
key <RALT> { [ Mode_switch, Multi_key ] };
modifier_map Mod3 { Mode_switch };include "apple(extended)"
};
I can't get everything to work yet. The multimedia keys are not included, and nothing I've tried will induce the keypad equals key to work (although xev does find it). More importantly, control-alt-F1 does not elicit a virtual console (although control-alt-del does bring up the logout dialogue, and control-alt-backspace kills the server). ctl-alt-+ does nothing. Also, I've noticed that combinations such as ctl-shift-A does not work (I use this in thunderbird as a matter of routine, so this is vexing).
Issue 3: pilot-xfer doesn't work. I have read that this may be due to a problem with kernel 2.6.9-1.681_FC3, but what a pain. The program just hangs after 2 or 3 seconds and the handheld hotsync software times out.
