Announcing CSE Linux Fedora Core 4

University of Washington Computer Science & Engineering

Announcing CSE Fedora Core 4

CSE Home

FC4 Rollout Timeline

Beta Test: July 25 – Aug 7, 2005

Rollout to Lab-
managed machines: Aug 8 – Sep 28, 2005

End of support for
previous CSE Linux (FC2): Sep 30, 2005

The new CSE Linux distribution, for 2004-2005 will be installed on Lab supported Linux machines during August and September, 2005.

Schedule of RESEARCH machine upgrades

The new CSE Linux distribution, for 2005-2006, is based on Fedora Core 4 (FC4), with our usual local customizing.

Specific Changes:

Here are some of the highlights, and things to watch for, with the new CSE Linux Fedora Core 4 distribution:

GCC:

The new compiler is gcc version 4. This is a big change from gcc3.3, so don't assume your existing code will compile or run without changes. Take advantage of the beta to try recompiling your old code and make any necessary modifications. Don't wait until all the systems have upgraded to find you can't rebuild your applications. See Appendix A for further specific details regarding compiler differences.

Printing:

Fedora Core 4 systems use CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System), rather than LPRng for printing. Some of the command line options to lpr are different. See Appendix B for further specific details regarding differences in printing.

Web Browser:

Firefox is the default browser. Mozilla has been dropped from our distribution. If you previously used mozilla for web browsing, you will need to use firefox instead. In general, your current mozilla settings (e.g., bookmarks) will transparently be incorporated into firefox.

Mail Clients:

Thunderbird is now a supported mail client. If you use mozilla for reading mail, please try thunderbird. Other supported mail clients include pine and exmh.

Pine has mouse-in-xterm enabled by default. The change makes it necessary to press a shift key when performing cut and paste in pine under xterm.

PostScript/PDF viewers:

evince is Fedora's new PostScript/PDF viewer. The gv frontend to ghostscript has been dropped. Ghostscript, of course, still remains. xpdf (PDF only) is still available, but may not be in a future release. We also continue to install Adobe's acroread (PDF only).

CD Player:

For Fedora desktop users, apolos is the new CD player. No more cdp!

Window Manager:

As previously promised, fvwm2 has been dropped from our Fedora distribution. The default desktop window environment remains xfce4, but it is a newer version than the xfce4 on FC2 systems.

XFCE4:

The xfce4 panel has new default settings for FC4. Under default circumstances your old panel contents will be auto converted from ${HOME}/.xfce4/xfce4rc to ${HOME}/.config/xfce4/panel/contents.xml If this happens, you won't pick up the new panel configuration.

The system default panel settings for FC4 can be found in /etc/xdg/xfce4/panel/contents.xml. You can copy this file to ${HOME}/.config/xfce4/panel/contents.xml if you want the new settings, but you would need to do this while xfce is not running. Otherwise your changes will likely be overwritten.

You can also make changes to your panel configuration by right-clicking on a panel icon and choosing "properties". At a minumum you'll likely want to change the web browser from mozilla to firefox, as mozilla is no longer available.

If you had not previously run xfce under FC2 there will be no autoconversion and you will get the standard FC4 xfce setup.

Xfce4 now includes a session manager.

Mail notification:

Comsat (biff) and xbiff have been dropped by Fedora.

Threads:

Fedora Core 4 uses the NPTL (Native POSIX Thread Library for Linux) as the standard threads implementation. Any pre-existing program that absolutely requires the old LinuxThreads libraries must use

                  LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/lib/obsolete/linuxthreads

to point to the old libraries. FC4 is the last Fedora release that will include these old libraries. Fedora promises they will be not be available on FC5 and later Fedora systems.

Desktop systems:

Better support for mounting USB storage devices is available for Fedora desktop users.

Debugging:

The valgrind package for profiling and tracking program memory allocation has been added.

Packages:

As with all Linux upgrades, many packages have newer versions. Here are a few examples:

Package Initial-FC4-ver Current-FC2-ver

emacs 21.4 (21.3)

gcc 4.0.1 (3.3.3)

gdb 6.3.0 (6.0post)

glibc 2.3.5 (2.3.3)

perl 5.8.6 (5.8.3)

tetex 3.0 (2.0.2)

xfce4 4.2.2 (4.0.5)

xorg-x11 6.8.2 (6.7.0)

Package	Initial-FC4-ver	Current-FC2-ver
emacs	21.4	(21.3)
gcc	4.0.1	(3.3.3)
gdb	6.3.0	(6.0post)
glibc	2.3.5	(2.3.3)
perl	5.8.6	(5.8.3)
tetex	3.0	(2.0.2)
xfce4	4.2.2	(4.0.5)
xorg-x11	6.8.2	(6.7.0)

Note that the Lab does not have the resources available to help you port your code, if changes are needed. Please start this process early.

Appendix A: GCC

Don't assume your applications still compile/link with gcc4. Try rebuilding now and make any necessary code changes. Don't wait until all the FC2 systems are gone.

The Fedora Core 4 release notes mention the following about gcc4:

Caveats

GDB 6.1 or newer is needed to debug binaries unless compiled using the -fno-var-tracking compilation option.
The -fwritable-strings option is no longer accepted.

Language Extentions

A sentinel attribute has been added so that the compiler will now issue a warning if a function such as execl(char *path, const char *arg, ...), which requires a NULL list terminator is missing the NULL.
The cast-as-lvalue, conditional-expression-as-lvalue, and compund-expression-as-lvalue extentions have been removed.
The #pragma pack() semantics have been brought closer to those used by other compilers.
Taking the address of a variable declared with the register modifier now generates an error instead of a warning.
Arrays of incomplete element types now generate an error. This implies no forward reference to structure definitions.

Appendix B: Printing with CUPS

CUPS (Common Unix Printing System) is now the CSE standard on FC4.

CUPS uses the standard IPP (Internet Printing Protocol; RFC2567, RFC2568, RFC2569, RFC2910, RFC2911, RFC3380) to print. IPP uses port 631 rather than 515 for spooling jobs. An application that understands IPP or CUPS may be able to interface and print directly to the printing system.

CUPS also provides commands: lpr, lpq and lprm, to be compatible with the Berkeley LPR commands. The meaning of most options such as '-P' or '-h' are still the same. However, printer options are different. The '-o' flag is used rather than '-Z'. Here are some examples:

    Old:  lpr -Pps241 -Zduplex 
    New:  lpr -Pps241 -oDuplex=DuplexNoTumble

    Old:  lpr -Pps281 -Zpaper,duplex
    New:  lpr -Pps281 -oMediaType=PLAIN -oDuplex=DuplexNoTumble 

    Old:  lpr -Ppsc281 -Zslide 
    New:  lpr -Ppsc281 -oMediaType=Transparency

    Old:  lpr -Ppsc281 -Zpaper 
    New:  lpr -Ppsc281 -oMediaType=Paper

The selectable options for the '-o' flag of a printer can be found by using the 'lpoptions' command. For example, selectable and installed options of ps281 can be found with 'lpoptions -pps281 -l' as follows:

  HPOrientRotate180/Orientation Rotated 180 Degrees: *False True
  TextAsBlack/Print All Text as Black: *False True
  HPBacksidePrinting/Print On Backside: *False True
  Collate/Collate: *False True
  Duplex/Duplex: *None DuplexNoTumble DuplexTumble
  DuplexUnit/Duplex Unit (for 2-Sided Printing): NotInstalled *Installed
  EnvFeeder/Envelope Feeder: *NotInstalled Installed
  PageSize/Media Size: *Letter Executive Legal A4 A5 B5 EXECUTIVE_JIS \
      16K Env10 EnvMonarch EnvDL EnvC5 EnvISOB5 A3 8K 11x17 B4 \
      DoublePostcard ISOB5 Custom
  InputSlot/Media Source: Tray1 *Tray2 ManualFeed EnvFeed Auto
  MediaType/Media Type: Auto *PLAIN PREPRINTED LETTERHEAD TRANSPARENCY \
      PREPUNCHED LABELS BOND RECYCLED COLOR CARDSTOCK ROUGH ENVELOPE
  PageRegion/PageRegion: Letter Executive Legal A4 A5 B5 EXECUTIVE_JIS \
      16K Env10 EnvMonarch EnvDL EnvC5 EnvISOB5 A3 8K 11x17 B4 \
      DoublePostcard ISOB5
  PrinterHardDisk/Printer Hard Disk: *NotInstalled Installed
  InstalledMemory/Printer Memory: 48-63MB *64-79MB 80-95MB 96-127MB \
      128-159MB 160-191MB 192-223MB 224-255MB 256-287MB 288-319MB \
      320-351MB 352-383MB 384-416MB
  PrintQualityGroup/PrintQualityGroup: PQGroup_1 *PQGroup_2 PQGroup_3

In addition to the lpr command suite, a GUI X Printing Panel (xpp) is available on CSE FC4. The command, xpp, takes basic flags just as the CUPS lpr command, but the printer options are set in its GUI.

A few words about job control: As mentioned above, the lpr, lpq and lprm commands provided by CUPS are basically for compatibility with the traditional BSD-based print command suite. They are not (at the present time) as full-featured as the real BSD commands. Therefore when trying to determine job status, it is wiser to use the SysV-style commands lpstat and cancel.

For example, the see the active jobs in a printer queue use the command:

lpstat -o printer-name

To see jobs that have completed processing use:

lpstat -W completed -o printer-name

To cancel an active job use:

cancel job-id

where job-id is the identifier in the first column of the output produced by the "lpstat -o ..." command, e.g., psc281-214.

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