On Fri, 15 Jul 2022 14:41:09 -0400 Chris Murphy <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi, > > I have a request for list regulars. > > The Fedora Workstation working group is curious if there's any pattern > or categorization how Fedora installations typically break. i.e. the > installation is successful, the system has been updated multiple times > successfully, and then for whatever reason it breaks. I find Gnome 3 unusable, so I use Mate instead of Workstation. > Are most failures hardware related? This could be broken down into > hard failure (drive or logic board failed) and soft failure (some > hardware configuration change and reverting the change resolves the > problem). I have had my share of hardware failures, but it is far more common for hardware to reach end of support or to be replaced by an upgrade. > What portion of the failures are early boot failures? (Defined as > bootloader, kernel, or early initramfs failures. But excludes being > landed at a dracut prompt.) Almost none, and those are usually self inflicted. > What portion of the failures land the user at a dracut shell? Almost none, and those are usually self inflicted. I did have one case where LVM did not find the root volume group and another with a corrupt root partition, but those were years ago. > What portion of the failures does the user get to a graphical shell > but can't login? Never. (Except when a network failure happens and NIS is unhappy.) > What portion of the failures can the user login but there's some sort > of anomalous behavior? Most. I have recently started seeing kernel panics in the nouveau kernel driver. Many are new “features” that aren’t ready for prime-time. Two recent examples are systemd-resolved with bridged networks and pipewire with bluetooth. There were also a few upgrades that changed the RPM database format, and the migration from authconfig to authselect. I feel that the Fedora Change process and QA are helping here. (I missed the great a.out to ELF transition). > What portion of all failures are fixable without reinstalling? All except drive failures. > Is the GRUB "rescue" menu entry ever useful in resolving problems? No. I have a bootable USB drive I can use for this purpose, or I can boot the installer into rescue mode. I remove dracut-config-rescue and the rescue image from /boot. > The questions list is not complete, feel free to add your own > categorizations / failure patterns that you tend to see. I have never had hibernation work right. Applications designed for Gnome 3 often do not play nicely with other window managers; they show Gnome 3 window decorations instead of what I have configured marco to show. (Blueberry and evince are two examples.) I set a delay in the BIOS so I can access the BIOS menus, and a delay in the boot manager so I can access its menus. Jim _______________________________________________ users mailing list -- users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
