Fedora Core 9 Parallels Tools Install Failure

Nix that. I "had" a functioning FC 8 install, but once I "upgraded" to FC 9, xorg puked again.

WHen will FC 9 be supported?
 
for Parallels Tools I already described
For Fedora9 without tools,
working xorg.conf is bellow

==========
# Xorg configuration created by pyxf86config

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
# keyboard added by rhpxl
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "vesa"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
DefaultDepth 16
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 16
EndSubSection
EndSection
 
Fedora 9 Xorg/Drivers broken

Just out of curiosity, is the delay in the release of the Parallels Tools for Fedora 9 due to the botched Xorg / Driver mismatch in this release? Getting X working in F9 requires jumping thru various hoops (use vesa driver, downgrade to F8 video, recompile drivers, fiddle with xorg.conf, etc.). I have had trouble with the nvidia driver (nv) the matrox driver (mga) and even the vesa driver on various hardware. The only F9 install that worked out-of-the-box was on an old machine with an ATI Rage 128 pro card (r128). These problems also break the live cd images and make them unusable. I haven't figured out exactly what the problem is or how to fix it but F9 has been a real pain. I would like to see a respin of F9 (Fedora 9.1) or a release of F10 real soon (or something) to fix this mess.
 
DrWhy5 said:
Just out of curiosity, is the delay in the release of the Parallels Tools for Fedora 9 due to the botched Xorg / Driver mismatch in this release? Getting X working in F9 requires jumping thru various hoops (use vesa driver, downgrade to F8 video, recompile drivers, fiddle with xorg.conf, etc.). I have had trouble with the nvidia driver (nv) the matrox driver (mga) and even the vesa driver on various hardware. The only F9 install that worked out-of-the-box was on an old machine with an ATI Rage 128 pro card (r128). These problems also break the live cd images and make them unusable. I haven't figured out exactly what the problem is or how to fix it but F9 has been a real pain. I would like to see a respin of F9 (Fedora 9.1) or a release of F10 real soon (or something) to fix this mess.
Click to expand...

Live CD might be a problem if you can't change the xorg.conf, but I got X working pretty trivially. Just changed the depth to 16, and set my desired resolution. This is without Tools.
 
Yes, you can make F9 X work under Parallels but it falls under the "fiddle with xorg.conf" type workaround. A clunky install and a 16 bit fixed resolution display without the Tools is not what I would call "working". The Fedora Project should have delayed the F9 release until this was fixed. F9 video is broken. F9 is a "Dead Parrot". IMHO.

Do a google search on

"Fedora 9" nvidia
or
"Fedora 9" matrox

for some other views of this issue.
 
Sure, saying it works, I mean without Parallels Tools,, but we tested this, as many customers planned to upgrade their CentOS, to the latest kernel, so Fedora 9, also was tested
 
DrWhy5 said:
Yes, you can make F9 X work under Parallels but it falls under the "fiddle with xorg.conf" type workaround. A clunky install and a 16 bit fixed resolution display without the Tools is not what I would call "working". The Fedora Project should have delayed the F9 release until this was fixed. F9 video is broken. F9 is a "Dead Parrot". IMHO.
Click to expand...

i'd say you must not have much linux experience if you think it "just works" even on native hardware. linux is the poster child for frustration. (and i am a linux EXPERT -- i have significant experience installing/developing/maintaining very large environments (TENS of THOUSANDS of machines) and also have contributed significant kernel code. so when i say linux sucks, believe it.) it's not that it's bad, it just hasn't "arrived" yet. linux does give you significant power and advantages, but trouble-free installation and operation is decidedly not one of them.

i'm being 100% serious here, if a one line change to xorg.conf is your idea of non-working and worthy of your disdain then you really don't want to run linux at all, period.

for perspective, the lack of correct clock sync is a much much more serious problem.
 
user29,
Actually this Parallels Desktop is end user product, and please be patient to listen to them, and do not be angry
Users need product working just out of the box,
I can say, that was being primarily Windows product based admin , I always worked (Mac OS now as I need it now, and using Fink to go to "nature" :) ) on Unix (Solaris) or Linux (RedHat since 5.2 and SUSE) machines, finding it more flexible and power to perform routine AD management tasks
But please remember , not everyone has and needs such skills.
 
Fedora 9 Xorg/Drivers broken

Grrr, I didn't intend for this to become an iPissingContest. I first installed Linux in 1993 when the whole damn thing would fit on part of a CD. When there were no silly "wizards" and no autoconfigure hardware and hackers were hackers and sheep were nervous, yada, yada, yada, etc. So when I say that F9 seems to be FUBAR there may be some element of truth to that. I am a professional software developer and know all about creating bugs. That a major release of my favorite distribution of my favorite OS doesn't "just work" when it has "just worked" in the past I am annoyed. (And yes I do expect it to "just work"). This "tweaking" was fun and fulfilling 10 years ago but someone seems to have ham-handed the F9 release. When F9 won't install on machines that have been working ok for years and the same symptoms appear under Parallels I wondered if the problems are related.

All this is irrelevant to my original question which no one seems to have read, let alone answered.

Again:

>Are the problems installing F9 and the delay in the release of The Tools related to the video problems described in the links in my previous post?

Any "EXPERTS" care to weigh in?
 
Are the problems installing F9 and the delay in the release of The Tools related to the video problems described in the links in my previous post?

Not only to video
 
DrWhy5 said:
That a major release of my favorite distribution of my favorite OS doesn't "just work" when it has "just worked" in the past I am annoyed. (And yes I do expect it to "just work"). This "tweaking" was fun and fulfilling 10 years ago but someone seems to have ham-handed the F9 release. When F9 won't install on machines that have been working ok for years and the same symptoms appear under Parallels I wondered if the problems are related.
Click to expand...

i guess i have a different experience than you. i've never had a smooth install of linux on parallels and i've tried many versions.

i agree about the tweaking. i used to live for it. now i like using the mac.

well, not to further take away from your main point, but it doesn't seem to me that it's F9 that's busted (and anyway it would be x.org in F9, not F9 itself), it's the vesa support in Parallels. i could be mistaken, but it's just based on my experience of never having this stuff work out of the box.

also, in the grand scheme of things, the 1 line change to xorg.conf does "suck", but nothing like a broken clock ... which can't be fixed by us end-users.

i just think all the blame has to go to Parallels, not Fedora.
 
John@Parallels said:
user29,
Actually this Parallels Desktop is end user product, and please be patient to listen to them, and do not be angry
Users need product working just out of the box,
Click to expand...

absolutely. i was just reacting to the "Dead Parrot" hyperbole. having to make a trivlal change to xorg.conf is not a showstopper.

DrWhy5, sorry if i got you riled up! i hope you can see where i'm coming from.
 
Any news from the developers?
Using FC9 without Parallel Tools is quite annoying... Even exchanging a file between Mac and Linux is a problem!


Francesco
 
build is in testing, for now I cannot say exactly when it goes to QA,
For file exchanging, you can use Samba, SCp,NFS, and mount them on boot
 
Thanks for the quick reply!
For exchanging file scp works fine, thanks for the suggestion.

I'm looking forward to try Parallel Tools as well!

Francesco
 
Fedora 9 downgrade to F8 xorg allows install of Parallels Tools

Sorry about the "Dead Parrot" crack. It was a bit harsh as well as inaccurate.
F9 is a perhaps a "Woozy Parrot" rather than a dead one.

The discussion about this problem has some finger pointing. The manufacturers say it's the Linux people's fault because they can't develop their drivers against a moving / buggy / alpha-beta level API. The Linux folk say they can't be held back by companies that produce closed proprietary drivers that violate the spirit if not the letter of the OSI and besides they are wimps if they can't keep up.

What the nvidia users were doing was to downgrade their xorg video to that of the F8 release to get a display. nvidia has since come out with excellent but closed drivers that work.

Anyway, I decided to try that with F9 under Parallels and see if the Tools install and work. This experiment appears to be successful.


The steps are:

1. Read some of the forums that discuss this. The steps here I got from the link at
http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?p=1003106#post1003106

2. Install F9 in the usual way. When done do the fixes discussed earlier to get a working X display.

3. Take a Snapshot. In fact take a Snapshot at all good save points.

4. Make a work directory - I called it ParallelsF9/

cd to this

5. Get the F8 rpms from somewhere. I got them off the F8 DVD iso (mounted at /media/f8) using:
cp -p /media/f8/Packages/mesa-libGL-7.0.1-7.fc8.i386.rpm .
cp -p /media/f8/Packages/synaptics-0.14.4-11.fc8.i386.rpm .
cp -p /media/f8/Packages/xorg-x11-drv-evdev-1.1.2-5.fc8.i386.rpm .
cp -p /media/f8/Packages/xorg-x11-drv-keyboard-1.2.2-2.fc8.i386.rpm .
cp -p /media/f8/Packages/xorg-x11-drv-mouse-1.2.3-1.fc8.i386.rpm .
cp -p /media/f8/Packages/xorg-x11-drv-vesa-1.3.0-10.fc8.i386.rpm .
cp -p /media/f8/Packages/xorg-x11-drv-void-1.1.1-6.fc8.i386.rpm .
cp -p /media/f8/Packages/xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.3.0.0-33.fc8.i386.rpm .

You can also use wget etc. and get later versions.

Take a Snapshot.

6. Remove the old packages (one command):

yum remove mesa-libGL synaptics xorg-x11-drv-evdev xorg-x11-drv-keyboard xorg-x11-drv-mouse xorg-x11-drv-vesa xorg-x11-drv-void

yum remove xorg-x11-server-common

7. Install F8 packages (one command):

rpm -U --oldpackage mesa-libGL-7.0.1-7.fc8.i386.rpm synaptics-0.14.4-11.fc8.i386.rpm xorg-x11-drv-evdev-1.1.2-5.fc8.i386.rpm xorg-x11-drv-keyboard-1.2.2-2.fc8.i386.rpm xorg-x11-drv-mouse-1.2.3-1.fc8.i386.rpm xorg-x11-drv-vesa-1.3.0-10.fc8.i386.rpm xorg-x11-drv-void-1.1.1-6.fc8.i386.rpm xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.3.0.0-33.fc8.i386.rpm

Reboot.

8. Install Parallels Tools.
I had to remove a Modes line from the generated xorg.conf.

9. Reboot. Tweak. Run the resolution wizard. Fiddle.

Somehow it all started working, at least the parts that I was interested in: the nice dynamic resolution action and proper handling of the keyboard and mouse. Works for me.

This is a good experiment until an official fix comes out. If you are careful and keep good notes you might even be able to restore your F9 install to up-to-date status at that time.

P.S. Don't do a software update or you will lose all your work. There is a command to prevent yum from updating xorg but I don't know what it is.
 
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