Christopher Juckins

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virtualbox_notes_for_fedora_17

VirtualBox running Fedora Notes

Fedora 37

Follow this: https://ostechnix.com/upgrade-to-fedora-37-from-fedora-36/

  • MATE seems unavailable
  • Try XFCE instead
  • Proton VPN may not work

Fedora 36

DNS issues: https://askubuntu.com/questions/973017/wrong-nameserver-set-by-resolvconf-and-networkmanager

Upgrading from Fedora 35 to Fedora 36

Bugs with fresh Fedora 33 install:

  • In VirtualBox, disable the USB devices or else you may get a black screen with flashing cursor
  • Enable root account with: sudo passwd root
  • Enable MATE Desktop with: dnf -y group install "MATE Desktop"

Upgrading Fedora 29 to Fedora 29 notes:

Fedora 28 notes: 

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "tap-by-default"
    MatchIsTouchpad "on"
    Option "TapButton1" "1"
    Option "TapButton2" "2"
EndSection

Fedora 26 notes:

  • Selected manual partition setup, then had system create mount points automatically.
    • It set /boot to 1024MB and swap to 3GB (based on 1536MB system RAM)
    • Changed / and swap from LVM to standard partition
  • Selected "MATE Desktop" for the base environment, and the following add-on packages:
    • LibreOffice
    • MATE Applications
    • Administration Tools
    • C Development Tools and Libraries
    • Design Suite
    • Development Tools
    • Editors
    • Engineering and Scientific
    • Network Servers
    • Office/Productivity
    • Python Classroom
    • Python Science
    • RPM Development Tools
    • Security Lab
    • Sound and Video
    • System Tools

Upon booting, installed VBox Guest Additions: 

dnf -y install kernel-devel kernel-headers binutils gcc make patch libgomp glibc-headers glibc-devel

Reboot then didn't work right - machine would not maximize screen and basically locked up. Tried rebooting and same result. Fix is to use VirtualBox v5.1.24.

Fedora 24 notes:

Switching Desktops

Fedora 20 notes:

Installed much easier and cleaner than Fedora 18 (I never tested Fedora 19).

Fonts:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/google-droid-fonts
http://blog.whatgeek.com.pt/2011/11/10/install-core-fonts-centos-6/
http://worldofgnome.org/how-to-greatly-improve-font-rendering-under-fedora-20/

Using Xfce and making tweaks:
http://www.binarytides.com/better-fedora-20-xfce/

Adjust grub default timeout/hidden/rhgb:
https://ask.fedoraproject.org/question/24444/changing-grub2-timeout-fedora-18/

Make grub default to latest kernel (see Chris Murphy entry):
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=273347

Also, change /etc/grub.d/00_header (make a backup first in its own directory). Edit out the sections of code that use the set default = ${next_entry} logic. Just use set default = ${GRUB_DEFAULT}

Then make a backup of /boot/grub2/grub.cfg to compare updated changes with the next step

Then as root: grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Change DPI to 94

Change system terminal font to 9pt Monospace

Screenshot samples on available Fedora 20 Desktops/Window Managers (installed from YUM software repository):

LXDE:

Cinnamon:

GNOME:

MATE:

Openbox:

Xfce:

Fedora 18 notes:

  • When setting up VirtualBox settings, be certain to select "Enable 3D Acceleration" under the Display > Video section
  • Note, increasing the allocated VM memory from 1024MB to 2048MB and changing the allocated video memory from 12MB to 128MB allowed GNOME3 to start up but then it crashed again. This occurred on a host system with 8GB of RAM running another VM in the background.
  • Install FC18 using full DVD .iso via download
  • Choose Xfce desktop; GNOME won't boot into graphical on VirtualBox
    • The top and bottom panels can be adjusted for size, right-click on an empty area of the panel to get the available settings (might be tough if the panel is very small or full)
    • 24 pixels seems to be the appropriate row size
  • Do all the yum updates
  • Adjust SELinux if necessary
  • Install kernel-headers, kernel-devel, gcc, dkms via yum
  • Install VirtualBox Guest Additions; reboot
  • Yum tips
    • yum group list
    • yum install @^foo (environment group)
    • yum install @foo (regular group)
  • To switch installed display managers use system-switch-displaymanager
    • edit /etc/sysconfig/desktop
     DESKTOP="KDE"
     DISPLAYMANAGER="KDE" (or Xfce, GNOME, etc)

Fedora 18 boot into GRUB flashes for a second, goes black, eventually fails:

http://funwithlinux.net/2013/02/fedora-18-wont-boot/

After following those instructions, edit grub.cfg to remove the "rhgb quiet" flags.

For GNOME, the graphical login screen won't appear:

May need to edit grub.cfg to force into run level 3. In FC18, /etc/inittab is no longer supported. Find the line with linux vmlinuz and add a "3" to end to force into run level 3.

You can use "startx > $HOME/startx_errors.txt" to capture the X server output to a file and then look for problems.

The error can also be found in /var/log/Xorg.0.log: 

[  1034.985] (EE) Failed to load module "vboxvideo" (module does not exist, 0)

Remember this page has pre-requisites for Guest Additions:

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=15679 

Fedora users need the following packages:
    dkms
    binutils
    gcc
    make
    patch
    libgomp
    glibc-headers
    glibc-devel
    kernel-headers
    kernel-devel OR kernel-pae-devel
    potentially *openGL*

So need to install Virtual Box Guest additions, but it would not mount the .iso file when choosing Devices > Install Guest Additions. Needed to manually rsync over the Guest Additions from a known good working machine. Then navigate to that directory and install the software with this command: 

[root@localhost VBOXADDITIONS_4.2.10_84104]# sh VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing VirtualBox 4.2.10 Guest Additions for Linux..........
VirtualBox Guest Additions installer
Removing installed version 4.2.10 of VirtualBox Guest Additions...
Removing existing VirtualBox DKMS kernel modules           [  OK  ]
Removing existing VirtualBox non-DKMS kernel modules       [  OK  ]
Building the VirtualBox Guest Additions kernel modules     [  OK  ]
Doing non-kernel setup of the Guest Additions              [  OK  ]
Starting the VirtualBox Guest Additions                    [  OK  ]
Installing the Window System drivers
Installing X.Org Server 1.13 modules                       [  OK  ]
Setting up the Window System to use the Guest Additions    [  OK  ]
You may need to restart the hal service and the Window System (or just restart
the guest system) to enable the Guest Additions.

Installing graphics libraries and desktop services componen[  OK  ]

[root@localhost VBOXADDITIONS_4.2.10_84104]#

Then reboot the guest OS.

Still getting a splash screen "Something as gone wrong…" which appeared to be a Graphics Hardware acceleration issue (GNOME 3?)

virtualbox_notes_for_fedora_17.txt · Last modified: 2022/11/29 15:48 by juckins