The not-so-smooth update to Fedora 11

There was a fix candidate to intel graphics driver, but the git version of the driver requires 1.6 series XServer and recommends 2.6.30 series kernel so I decided to update the system to Fedora 11 which includes both of these. It also promises faster boot up so it seemed good choice to update anyway.

I followed these instructions and made preupgrade. First problem came after reboot. The installation seemed to stopped to screen with odd red points and white points which were actually mouse pointer. So, a bit of googling and I added 'nomodeset' to kernel options in grub for installation entry in menu.lst.

Now the installation went through, but after boot I got message 'no bootable disk found'. The solution for this was to select shell option from rEFIt menu and run gptsync. New reboot and now I got this 'GRUB _' screen and nothing else. Well, this was already familiar situation and the solution was to boot from installation CD in rescue mode and run 'grub-install /dev/sda3'

So now the Fedora 11 was running, but I found out that running X jammed the system, whether it was xfce4 or just twm. I installed latest intel video drivers, configure xorg.conf and in one phase reinstalled pretty much everything that was related to x11 and finally I got twm running without problems.

Fedora 11 includes also newer gcc so there was problems compling vdr and its plugins. I had to make some patching here and there and I will post the patches later. I also had to rewrite the vdr starting script as I put the vdr start earlier to queue in services starting (/etc/rc.d/rc3.d). Now the vdr startup script tries to start X if it is not running already.

I had to make udev rule for built-in IR-receiver as it seemed to randomly exist as /dev/usb/hiddev0 or hiddev1 and of course lirc won't work if device is wrong.

Now the system is pretty much in the same shape than before the update, except that the boot up time from pressing the power button to live picture to show up takes 55 seconds.

Btw, the fix candidate didn't work so waking up from suspend is still not working properly.

Updates done

I did some updating like planned, but I didn't update any Fedora packages as I'm gonna wait for 2.6.29 series kernel. There was problems with 2.6.28 kernel when I tested it and latest intel video drivers are also based on 2.6.29 kernel so I don't wanna break anything just for fun.

However I updated the system to have following vdr setup:
VDR 1.6.0-2
ttxtsubs-0.0.8
skinenigma-0.1.0
osdteletext-0.8.1
femon-1.6.6
epgsearch-0.9.24
xineliboutput-1.0.4
burn cvs

I also noticed that I had already done the burn script change that I mentioned in the previous post.

I also applied the antenna amplifier and it did help a bit, but there's still some small breaks in audio while watching the live tv. Signal level was around 78-80% so it should be enough. I need to check is there some buffer setting in xineliboutput that could help in this problem.

Upcoming updates

I plan to visit my parents in two weeks, and I'm planning to do some updates during the visit. The suspend bug hasn't been reported to be fixed but there has been quite many changes to the intel driver, so I think I'm gonna give a try for the latest drivers. Also there has been updates to vdr plugins, and one fix to burn-dvd script.

One thing I forgot to update before setting up the final system was cdrecord. It might be that the current cdrecord doesn't handle all the DVD medias as happened with my own system. All the Verbatim DVD-R DL ended up to be coasters. Updating to the latest official cdrecord corrected this problem.

On the hardware side I gonna deploy antenna amplifier. It seems that the signal level is on the edge that it isn't enough. This causes the audio to break in the live watching. Removing the antenna cable divider should help there.

In the burn script there's a bug that causes burning a disc with more than 7 titles to fail. I've fixed that already to my system, but the Mini is missing the fix.

I did last software update and system is now in use

After updating to Fedora 10 I also updated VDR to 1.6.0-2 and some plugins got updates as well. Current set is:

VDR 1.6.0-2

ttxtsubs-0.0.8

skinenigma-0.0.6

osdteletext-0.7.0

femon-1.6.1

epgsearch-0.9.24

xineliboutput-1.0.2

burn cvs

I also updated the intel video driver to git version from week 10 and added tearing free patch for textured video. The patch is now also included into the latest release candidate of intel video drive.

I had to add NoDRI option to xorg.conf to prevent X from crashing. There's something wrong with linking of the intel driver, but I couldn't find the exact problem, so this was the workaround for segfault. Xorg.conf file got also Option "HWCursor" "off" and Option "SWCursor" "off" lines to prevent mouse pointer from display.

I decided not to wait anymore for the suspend patch for the intel video, so I changed the system behaviour so that system does always power off when VDR is shutdown. This means that it takes 1,5 minutes from power button press to the TV picture, and that the system cannot be started with remote control. But anyway the system is now in use and if/when the suspend functionality is fixed I can update the driver and enable the S3 sleep again.

Update to Fedora 10

One thing that I've forgot to write about is the fact that I updated the OS to Fedora 10 in January. It was quite painless operation, but after the first boot the screen were just black with GRUB... text. So clearly there was something wrong in the GRUB.

With these instructions I got the Fedora to boot again. There was/is some packages that are still for Fedora 9, but most of them I updated after the OS update.