From Mandriva Community Wiki

Contents 1 Introduction 2 Errata for earlier Mandriva Linux releases 3 Testing Candidate Updates 4 Installing Updates 5 Resolved Issues 5.1 Running KDE Control Center Screen applet causes system to hang 5.2 No sound in KDE after a migration from previous releases of Mandriva 6 Installation issues 6.1 Upgrade from previous release fails with Undefined subroutine &MDK::Common::System::uniq called 6.2 Problem booting system after installation with software RAID 6.3 Boot fails with Could not find filesystem /dev/root after Upgrade from previous release 7 Kernel issues 7.1 One detects only up to 880MB of RAM 8 Hardware issues 8.1 Problems with Intel 3945ABG or 4965AGN wireless network hardware 8.1.1 Alternative drivers 8.2 Slow internet response (particularly web browsing) 8.3 Mouse thumb buttons (back and forward buttons) not working 9 Software issues 9.1 rpmdrake offers to set up repositories even when it has already been done 9.2 Volume on-screen display stuck on and volume stuck at 0% in KDE 9.3 Firefox Flash plugin fails to work on x86-64 architecture 9.4 Firefox crashes on sites containing Flash 9.5 k3b verification of burned disc fails 9.6 Eastern Arabic numerals used in Hebrew documents in OpenOffice.org 9.7 No sound in Skype 9.8 VMware configuration script fails to run 10 3D-accelerated desktop 10.1 3D-accelerated desktop and video playback

[edit] Introduction

This page contains the Errata for Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring. This means it contains information on known problems with Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring and, where available, how to fix, avoid or work around them. You should also see the Release Notes, which contain more general information on the Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring release.

[edit] Errata for earlier Mandriva Linux releases

Other errata pages are also available for older versions:

• Releases/Mandriva/2008.0/Errata
• Releases/Mandriva/2007.1/Errata
• Releases/Mandriva/2007/Errata
• Releases/Mandriva/2006/Errata

[edit] Testing Candidate Updates

When an issue in Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring is identified, the maintainer of the package concerned may build a package he believes will fix the bug, and upload it to a certain Mandriva software repository named /main/testing which is dedicated to testing potential fixes for such issues. This package can then be tested by users affected by the issue and by the Mandriva quality assurance team. If this testing determines that the package resolves the issue and does not cause any new ones, the package will be issued as an official update which will be provided to all Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring users via MandrivaUpdate.

If you are affected by an issue for which a candidate update package is available and you would like to help test the candidate package, you may configure your system so the Mandriva package management tools will recognize the /main/testing repository as a source of installable packages. For instructions on how to do this, please see installing and removing software (advanced use: backports and candidate updates).

There is also a /contrib/testing repository which performs the same function for packages in the /contrib section (although please note that we do not guarantee issues with /contrib packages will be fixed, the maintainers of each package may choose whether to issue updates at their own discretion). Configuring this repository is covered on the same page.

[edit] Installing Updates

Updates for packages in the /main, /non-free and /contrib sections of Mandriva Linux can be installed using Mandriva Update. You can run Mandriva Update from the Mandriva Control Center by navigating to the Software Management tab and clicking on the link labelled "Update your system". Unless you disable it, you will also be notified of updates by the Mandriva Online update notification system, which displays an icon in the system tray to notify you when updates are available.

[edit] Resolved Issues

This section contains issues that have been resolved by official updates.

[edit] Running KDE Control Center Screen applet causes system to hang

See also Bug #40005 and update advisory MDVA-2008:076. Several users have experienced a system hang when attempting to open the Screen applet in the KDE Control Center (or invoking krandr in any other way). In some cases control of the system can be recovered by restarting X with ctrl-alt-backspace, in other cases it cannot. An updated krandr package, krandr-0.5.2.1-13.1mdv2008.1, was released through the official update channels on May 29th, 2008 that resolves this issue. Use MandrivaUpdate to fetch and install this update.

[edit] No sound in KDE after a migration from previous releases of Mandriva

Due to the PulseAudio swith in 2008 Spring, some users migrating from previous releases (2008, 2007.1, ...) may encounter a high CPU utilization by artsd while playing a sound. In order to correct this problem, please remove the file:

rm -f .kde/share/config/kcmartsrc

The sound should play fine after this.

[edit] Installation issues

[edit] Upgrade from previous release fails with Undefined subroutine &MDK::Common::System::uniq called

See also Bug #39925. Several users have reported a serious bug with upgrading from a previous version of Mandriva Linux using the installer in Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring Free or Powerpack. The process fails, most of the way through, with this error message:

Undefined subroutine &MDK::Common::System::uniq called

You can attempt to retry, but the same error message is always displayed.

It is possible to recover from this situation. At this point, the upgrade is in fact almost fully completed; however, the updated kernel is not correctly installed, and an old KDE configuration package will still be installed, if you have KDE on your system.

You should be able to boot into the updated system using the kernel from the version from which you are upgrading. If the graphical interface starts up, hold down ctrl-alt-F1, and you will get to a text mode login prompt. Log in as root, with your root password.

Now you need to re-install the new kernel package. You may be using kernel-desktop, kernel-laptop, kernel-desktop586, or kernel-server. If you are not sure which you are running, the command:

uname -r

will tell you. Now, re-install the new kernel package, run this command as root in terminal:

urpmi --replacepkgs kernel-desktop-2.6.24.4-1mnb-1-1mnb1

change the kernel-desktop part of the command if that is not the kernel you are using.

If you run KDE, you will also need to update your KDE configuration package. If you are using Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring Free, run this command as root in terminal:

urpmi mandriva-kde-config-common-2008.1-27mdv2008.1 free-kde-config-2008.1-27mdv2008.1

If you are using Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring Powerpack, run this command as root in terminal:

urpmi mandriva-kde-config-common-2008.1-27mdv2008.1 powerpack-kde-config-2008.1-27mdv2008.1

You should now be able to restart your system and find that everything works as expected.

[edit] Problem booting system after installation with software RAID

See also Bug #39878. Some users have reported that after installing Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring using software RAID set up via the installer, with /boot on the RAID array, the installed system fails to boot. This seems to be caused by the installer installing the grub bootloader when it should use lilo. The easiest way to resolve this is probably to re-install and manually select lilo rather than grub at the bootloader installation stage. You can also boot the installed system in rescue mode and manually set up either grub or lilo.

Try reinstalling the boot loader using rescue from the 2008.0 DVD directly from the menu. This will give the correct drive assignments and allow booting from software RAID 0. Only proven with x86_64. If the RAID device is not detected you will get errors after completing

If you still have failures using the 2008.0 media upgrade 2008.1 to 2008.0, this will install the boot loader and the older kernel. Booting should now be possible with the 2.6.22 kernel and the 2008.1 installation. If you upgrade the kernel to 2.6.24.4 you will have to repeat the process and your installation media will be reset.

[edit] Boot fails with Could not find filesystem /dev/root after Upgrade from previous release

This problem can be fixed by recreating the initrd. Boot to rescue mode, mount your partitions under /mnt with the menu and go to console.

mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys
chroot /mnt
mkinitrd -f --with=libata --with=ata_generic /boot/initrd-2.6.24.4-desktop-3mnb.img 2.6.24.4-desktop-3mnb

Make sure to specify the right initrd file and the kernel version, because your main kernel most likely differs from your running kernel in rescue mode.

[edit] Kernel issues

[edit] One detects only up to 880MB of RAM

The One edition of Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring uses a kernel build designed for compatibility with the widest possible range of systems, the kernel-desktop586 build. If you install One on a system with more than 880MB of RAM, not all of the RAM on the system will be detected and used.

If you have only 1GB of RAM, there is nothing to be gained by switching kernels. Supporting more than 880MB of RAM inherently slows down the kernel slightly. The advantage you would gain by having the last 120MB of RAM detected is negated by the speed you lose by using a kernel with support for over 880MB of RAM.

If you have more than 1GB of RAM, you will be able to gain the benefit of your extra memory by switching to the kernel-desktop kernel build. Unfortunately, this is made slightly complex if your system needs to use any drivers external to the kernel package, such as the NVIDIA or ATI proprietary graphics card drivers. A (nearly) full list of affected drivers follows:

• nvidia71xx: Riva TNT through to GeForce 2 (high end, not 2MX)
• nvidia96xx: GeForce 2MX, GeForce 3 and GeForce 4 cards
• nvidia-current: later NVIDIA cards (GeForce FX and later)
• fglrx: all ATI cards between Radeon 9500 and Radeon X1950
• fglrx-hd2000: ATI Radeon HD2xxx cards
• madwifi: Atheros wireless chipsets
• vboxvfs
• vboxadd
• unicorn
• hsfmodem
• hcfpcimodem
• slmodem
• virtualbox

To switch from the kernel-desktop586 build to the kernel-desktop build, use the following procedure. First set up the official online software repositories, following the instructions here. Install the package kernel-desktop-latest. Then install all packages of the form (driver)-kernel-desktop-latest, where (driver) is one of the drivers in the list above that you believe is installed on your system. For instance, if your system has a GeForce 6600 graphics card, you would install the kernel-desktop-latest and nvidia-current-kernel-desktop-latest packages. If your system has a Radeon X850 graphics card and an Atheros wireless chipset, you would install the kernel-desktop-latest, fglrx-kernel-desktop-latest and madwifi-kernel-desktop-latest packages.

You can see a list of currently installed packages by using this command:

rpm -qa | grep kernel-desktop586-latest

If you are unsure which, if any, of these drivers are needed on your system, you can simply install all of them in order to be safe. If you are not sure how to install packages, see this page.

Once you have installed the necessary packages, you can simply restart your system. The new kernel build should be the default, and you should notice that this one recognizes all the memory your system contains.

[edit] Hardware issues

[edit] Problems with Intel 3945ABG or 4965AGN wireless network hardware

See also Bug #38645. Some users have reported various problems with Intel 3945ABG and 4965AGN wireless interfaces in Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring. The default drivers used for these devices are, respectively, iwl3945 and iwl4965, but alternatives are available: see the section Alternative drivers. There are also other tweaks you can try.

If you can associate but don't get an IP address or have a very slow connection with data loss, try editing the file /etc/modprobe.conf - see Docs/Basic_tasks/Editing_configuration_files for instructions - and adding this line:

options iwl3945 disable_hw_scan=1

If you have the 4965AGN chipset, change iwl3945 to iwl4965.

If you get an error from the Mandriva tools stating that no interface was found, try switching the wireless switch of your laptop between 'off' and 'on' several times. This particular issue will be addressed in a future update.

[edit] Alternative drivers

If you continue to have problems with a 3945ABG or 4965AGN chipset after trying the above tweaks, you can try to use one of the several available alternative drivers. For the 3945ABG chipset you can try using the dkms-ipw3945, dkms-iwlwifi or ndiswrapper drivers. For the 4965AGN chipset you can try using the dkms-iwlwifi or ndiswrapper drivers. For the DKMS-based drivers, first install the kernel-devel package appropriate to the kernel you are running. The Mandriva kernel is available in various 'flavors': desktop, desktop586, laptop and server. You can find out which one you are running with the uname -r command. You should install the package kernel-flavor-devel-latest, where flavor is the kernel flavor you are using. Then install the DKMS package. For ndiswrapper, run the Mandriva tool for configuring a new network interface, choose to configure a wireless interface, and when presented with the choice between configuring the interface or using a Windows driver via ndiswrapper, choose to use a Windows driver via ndiswrapper. Note that once you switch to ndiswrapper, you cannot switch back to the native driver using the graphical tools. To revert to the native driver, edit the file /etc/modprobe.conf, and remove any 'blacklist [driver name]' lines or anything like that, and change the explicit 'alias foo ndiswrapper' lines to 'alias foo [driver name]' e.g. 'alias wlan0 ndiswrapper' to alias wlan0 [driver name]'.

[edit] Slow internet response (particularly web browsing)

See also Bug #27070. There is a known problem with all Linux distributions that enable IPv6 networking (the new standard for network addresses which uses a longer, hexadecimal address format to provide a much larger number of possible addresses. The old standard is IPv4, which gives the four-groups-of-three-digits decimal address format most people are familiar with, e.g. 216.105.167.65). Some systems and networks do not cope well if your system has IPv6 networking enabled. If you experience sluggish response on the Internet - especially when browsing web sites - and cannot find the cause, you should try disabling IPv6. To do this, edit the file /etc/modprobe.conf, add the following line, and reboot:

install ipv6 /bin/true

See also Bug #27073. If this does not resolve the problem, there is another possibility. Most Linux distributions, including Mandriva, enable a kernel feature called TCP window scaling. This is useful for increasing the speed of transfers over very high bandwidth connections. However, a change was made in the default values for TCP window scaling in kernel 2.6.17, which seems to cause very slow network performance for some users with some internet sites. To see if TCP window scaling is the problem, you can disable it with this command:

sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling=0

If this resolves the problem, you can make the change permanent by adding this line to the file /etc/sysctl.conf:

net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling=0

This will disable TCP window scaling at every boot. If you do use a very high bandwidth network connection - for instance, you regularly transfer large files over a local 100Mbit or 1Gbit network - you may notice that disabling TCP window scaling results in slower performance over this connection. In this case, you could try restoring the pre-2.6.17 default settings rather than disabling TCP window scaling entirely. To do this, add the following line to /etc/sysctl.conf, instead of (not in addition to) the previously suggested one:

net.ipv4.tcp_rmem=4096 87380 174760

This will change the default window scaling settings at every boot.

[edit] Mouse thumb buttons (back and forward buttons) not working

Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring includes support for the 'back' and 'forward' thumb buttons on several mouse models.

If your mouse has back and forward buttons, but they do not seem to be working with Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring, it is likely Mandriva does not have configuration information for your mouse model. It may be possible to configure imwheel manually to make it work with your mouse. Please post on the Mandriva forums for help with this.

[edit] Software issues

[edit] rpmdrake offers to set up repositories even when it has already been done

See also Bug #39900. In Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring, the default set of repositories will often be set up during installation. However, even when this has been done, the first time rpmdrake or MandrivaUpdate are run, they will offer to set up repositories. If you agree, you will end up with two sets of repositories configured. This should not have any particular negative consequences, but it will be unpredictable which of the two sets of configured repositories will be used when you try to install packages. If you wish, one of the duplicate sets can be removed without any problems.

[edit] Volume on-screen display stuck on and volume stuck at 0% in KDE

See also Bug #34747. A bug in multimedia key handling in KDE in Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring means that, in some cases, an on-screen display showing Volume at 0% is stuck permanently on the screen, and if you increase the volume with another application, it is immediately reduced back to 0%.

The easiest way to work around this issue is to remove the package kdeutils-kmilo. See this page for instructions on removing packages. It may also be resolved by killing and restarting kded:

killall kded
kded &

or by running this command:

dcop kded kmilod disable

This issue will be addressed in a future update.

[edit] Firefox Flash plugin fails to work on x86-64 architecture

Some users have reported that the Flash plugin that is installed with Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring One and Powerpack fails to work on the x86-64 versions of these editions. This is because the nspluginwrapper wrapper program, which allows the 32-bit plugin to work with the 64-bit browser, is looking in the wrong place to find the plugin. To work around this problem, run the following command as root in terminal:

nspluginwrapper -i /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so

to confirm that it worked, you can run:

nspluginwrapper -l

and you should see the libflashplayer.so file in the resulting list. Now re-start Firefox, and the Flash plugin should work.

[edit] Firefox crashes on sites containing Flash

See also Bug #39264. Due to some problems in the way Adobe Flash uses ALSA, it is possible that some Flash applications that use sound can cause Firefox to crash when using Flash with PulseAudio via libflashsupport (which is the default configuration on Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring). It is very difficult to address this problem in PulseAudio or libflashsupport. If you encounter this problem with a site you commonly use, there are several possible workarounds.

You can use an alternative Flash plugin. Two open source Flash players, Gnash and Swfdec, are included in Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring. To install Gnash, install the gnash-firefox-plugin package (for Firefox and Firefox-based browsers), or the gnash-konqueror-plugin package (for Konqueror). To install Swfdec, install the swfdec-mozilla package (for Firefox and Firefox-based browsers). You should also remove the package for the official Adobe Flash plugin. Then restart Firefox. These alternative plugins do not have the same bug as the official plugin, so if they work correctly with the sites you need to use, they will avoid the problem.

You can also disable PulseAudio, which will avoid the problem, but will of course result in you losing all the PulseAudio functionality. You can disable PulseAudio from the Mandriva sound configuration utility, draksound, which can be run directly or found in the Mandriva Control Center.

[edit] k3b verification of burned disc fails

See also Bug #38578. In its default configuration, on some machines, k3b's disc integrity verification check following a burn will always fail (even if the disc was in fact written correctly). You can work around this bug by disabling the eject medium after write process option: Go to Settings, then Configure k3b, then Advanced, then check Do not eject medium after write process.

[edit] Eastern Arabic numerals used in Hebrew documents in OpenOffice.org

See also Bug #38874 and upstream bug 86811. In many Hebrew documents, numbers are incorrectly rendered using Eastern Arabic (Arabic-Indic) numerals, rather than using Western Arabic numerals as they should be. This issue will be resolved with a future update.

[edit] No sound in Skype

See also Bug #37672. When using Skype with Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring, sound most likely will not work. This is due to a known incompatibility between PulseAudio and Skype. To work around this issue, you must run Skype via pasuspender:

pasuspender skype

Note that this temporarily disables PulseAudio, so other applications will not be able to play sound as long as Skype is running.

This bug was reported to Skype team. Feel free to vote here

[edit] VMware configuration script fails to run

All VMware products come with a pre-configuration script which must be run before they can be used. First of all, this script will not work correctly without some packages installed. Run this command (with the official repositories configured) as root to install all necessary dependencies:

urpmi gcc-c++ kernel-`uname -r |cut -d- -f2`-devel-latest kernel-`uname -r | cut -d- -f2`-devel-`uname -r | cut -d- -f1` xinetd

The version of this script included with some VMware products is too old to work with the kernel in Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring. This issue can be resolved using the any-any patches for VMware, which are available here. Download the file named vmware-any-any-update-XXX.tgz, where XXX is a number: pick the highest number available. Extract this archive somewhere in your /home directory, and then run the runme.pl script it contains, instead of running the VMware configuration script directly.

After doing this, you may still have problems running the configuration process, or VMware itself. If you see errors like this:

/usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware: /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_3.4' not found (required by /usr/lib/libcairo.so.2)
/usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware: /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_4.2.0' not found (required by /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6)
/usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware: /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_3.4' not found (required by /usr/lib/libcairo.so.2)
/usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware: /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_4.2.0' not found (required by /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6)
/usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware: /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_3.4' not found (required by /usr/lib/libcairo.so.2)
/usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware: /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_4.2.0' not found (required by /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6)

Try following these steps as root in terminal:

mv /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1 /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1.old
mv /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libpng12.so.0/libpng12.so.0 /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libpng12.so.0/libpng12.so.0.old
cp /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/
cp /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0 /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libpng12.so.0/

This should resolve the problem.

[edit] 3D-accelerated desktop

[edit] 3D-accelerated desktop and video playback

See also Bug #27036. If you use the 3D accelerated desktop technologies included in Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring (AIGLX or Xgl), you may notice that video playback does not work very well - moving, resizing, maximizing the video window will cause problems, or you may see strange artifacts in or through the video. You may also notice that, if you use the 'cube' feature of compiz, the video does not play while you rotate the cube. There are two ways to avoid this problem.

If you have an Intel graphics adapter, you can try using the Compiz Video Playback plugin. Using the ccsm configuration tool for Compiz, scroll down to the Utility section and you should see a plugin labelled Video Playback. Enable this plugin. This should allow video playback to work in several applications.

If you have a different video adapter, or you still experience problems with the Video Playback plugin enabled, you should set your video player to use an output driver which does not use video overlay. If you use AIGLX, you should use the x11 / xshm output driver. If you use Xgl, you can use the x11 / xshm driver or the OpenGL output driver (which may be smoother and offer more features, such as brightness / contrast control, than the x11 / xshm driver). The way to do this is different for different video players.

• For players that use gstreamer (for e.g. totem-gstreamer), run gstreamer-properties, go to the "Video" tab, and set the video output to "X Window System (No Xv)".
• For mplayer, for x11 / xshm output, add this line to ~/.mplayer/config (and also to ~/.mplayer/mplayerplug-in.conf if you use the mplayerplugin browser plugin):

vo=x11

For OpenGL output, add the following line instead:

vo=gl2

• For xine, go to the settings menu, set your configuration experience level to "Advanced", then go to the video tab and change "video driver to use" to "xshm" for x11 / xshm output or "openGL" for OpenGL output. Alternatively, you can use these console commands. For x11 / xshm output:

perl -pi -e 's|#video.driver:auto|video.driver:xshm|' ~/.xine/config

For OpenGL output:

perl -pi -e 's|#video.driver:auto|video.driver:openGL|' ~/.xine/config

• For Kaffeine, go to the settings menu, select "Xine backend configuration" and in the video tab change the driver to "xshm" for x11 / xshm output or "openGL" for OpenGL output.

• For Totem in Xine mode, run this command for x11 / xshm output:

perl -pi -e 's|#video.driver:auto|video.driver:xshm|' ~/.config/totem/xine_config

Or this command for OpenGL output:

perl -pi -e 's|#video.driver:auto|video.driver:openGL|' ~/.config/totem/xine_config

• For x11 / xshm output in KMplayer, go to Settings -> Configure KMplayer. Then in the "General Options" section go to the Output tab. In this section change Video Driver to "X11Shm".