Fedora 11 (Leonidas) 64-bit - Rawhide - on Macbook Pro 4,1

Fedora 11 is not out yet, its just in the rawhide repository. In order to upgrade from Fedora 10 to Fedora 11, you need to do it via yum.

Pre Upgrade Steps

1. Enable the rawhide repository

cat /etc/yum.repos.d/rawhide.repo

[rawhide]
name=Fedora - Rawhide - Developmental packages for the next Fedora release
failovermethod=priority
#baseurl=http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/development/$basearch/os/
mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=rawhide&arch=$basearch
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora-test-$basearch file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora-$basearch

2. Remove the python-2.5 packages as it will conflict with the python-2.6 on rawhide

/bin/rpm -e fusion-icon-gtk compiz-gnome ccsm ekiga setroubleshoot setroubleshoot-server compizconfig-python fusion-desktop-effects fusion-icon fusion-icon setroubleshoot-plugins

(Skip the missing ones, i had installed extra packages, so above command worked for me)

3. Now do a yum update

sudo yum update -y

Post upgrade steps

After the installation is complete, you need to edit the following configuration files

1. Update /boot/grub/grub.conf to allow the nvidia driver to be loaded on 2.6.29 kernel

title Fedora (2.6.29-0.28.rc1.fc11.x86_64)
 root (hd0,2)
 kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.29-0.28.rc1.fc11.x86_64 ro root=UUID=25d9d23a-5a17-4ffe-831f-556213caaa16 rhgb quiet nopat
 initrd /initrd-2.6.29-0.28.rc1.fc11.x86_64.img

nopat is the option which you should add.

2. Current nvidia driver 180.22, doesn't work with the latest xorg that is being shipped with the Fedora 11.

You will see an error in /var/log/Xorg.0.log if you fail to do this step

112 ================ WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING ================
113 This server has a video driver ABI version of 5.0 that this
114 driver does not officially support.  Please check
115 http://www.nvidia.com/ for driver updates or downgrade to an X
116 server with a supported driver ABI.
117 =================================================================
118 (EE) NVIDIA: Use the -ignoreABI option to override this check.
119 (II) UnloadModule: "nvidia"
120 (II) Unloading /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/drivers//nvidia_drv.so
121 (EE) Failed to load module "nvidia" (module requirement mismatch, 0)
122 (II) LoadModule: "synaptics"
123 (II) Reloading /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/input//synaptics_drv.so
124 (EE) No drivers available.
125 
126 Fatal server error:
127 no screens found

The fix is simple (which i had mentioned earlier for the older nvidia driver)

a. Rename your current Xorg binary

mv /usr/bin/Xorg /usr/bin/Xorg.0

b. Create a blank Xorg file, make it executable

touch /usr/bin/Xorg
chmod +x /usr/bin/Xorg 

c. Add the following lines

vi /usr/bin/Xorg

#!/bin/bash
exec /usr/bin/Xorg.0 -ignoreABI "$@"

3. Thats it, now restart your macbook, and boot into the newly installed Fedora 11 Rawhide (9.10)

nareshv /etc/yum.repos.d $ cat /etc/issue
Fedora release 10.90 (Rawhide)
Kernel \r on an \m (\l)

I have just installed Fedora 11, so far seems promising, no crashes yet.

Few notes

Firefox version is bumped up to 3.1 by default

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Fedora 10 64-bit on Nvidia 180.16 running 2.6.29 kernel

Fedora 10 64-bit on 2.6.29 kernel with Nvidia 180.16

2.6.29 is not yet in the stable branch. Be warned

Koji has the latest 2.6.29 kernel release. In order to try that, just download the latest kernel and install them

nareshv@@ /home/nareshv/Download $ ls -l kernel*
-rw-rw-r-- 1 nareshv nareshv 23262282 2009-01-05 17:01 kernel-2.6.29-0.9.rc0.git4.fc11.x86_64.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 nareshv nareshv  6121797 2009-01-05 16:59 kernel-devel-2.6.29-0.9.rc0.git4.fc11.x86_64.rpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 nareshv nareshv   388583 2009-01-05 16:59 kernel-firmware-2.6.29-0.9.rc0.git4.fc11.noarch.rpm

Also, Trying out the Latest Nvidia Drivers on 2.6.28 is easy too. You can download the Nvidia drivers from here

First time if you boot the kernel, you will see error something like this in the xorg.log

195 (II) resource ranges after preInit:
196 >___[0] -1>_0>__0xffffffff - 0xffffffff (0x1) MX[B]
197 >___[1] -1>_0>__0x000f0000 - 0x000fffff (0x10000) MX[B]
198 >___[2] -1>_0>__0x000c0000 - 0x000effff (0x30000) MX[B]
199 >___[3] -1>_0>__0x00000000 - 0x0009ffff (0xa0000) MX[B]
200 >___[4] -1>_0>__0x0000ffff - 0x0000ffff (0x1) IX[B]
201 >___[5] -1>_0>__0x00000000 - 0x00000000 (0x1) IX[B]
202 (II) NVIDIA(0): Initialized GPU GART.
203 (II) NVIDIA(0): ACPI display change hotkey events enabled: the X server is new
204 (II) NVIDIA(0):     enough to receive ACPI display change hotkey events.
205 (II) NVIDIA(0): Setting mode "nvidia-auto-select"
206 (EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to allocate video memory
207 (EE) NVIDIA(0):  *** Aborting ***
208 
209 Fatal server error:
210 AddScreen/ScreenInit failed for driver 0

In order to workaround this error, you need to add the following option to the grub.conf

14 title Fedora (2.6.29-0.9.rc0.git4.fc11.x86_64)
 15 >___root (hd0,2)
 16 >___kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.29-0.9.rc0.git4.fc11.x86_64 ro root=UUID=25d9d23a-5a17-4ffe-831f-556213caaa16 rhgb quiet nopat
 17 >___initrd /initrd-2.6.29-0.9.rc0.git4.fc11.x86_64.img

nopat is our friend here.

Enjoy your 2.6.29 kernel running latest nvidia driver on Fedora 10.

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