Fedora Core 2.91 Test 2 Release Notes

Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL) support is unavailable in architectures below i686. This includes VIA, AMD K6, and i586 Pentium processors. This is known to be problematic for certain applications that rely on NPTL db4, such as subversion.

By default, the Sendmail mail transport agent (MTA) does not accept network connections from any host other than the local computer. If you want to configure Sendmail as a server for other clients, you must edit /etc/mail/sendmail.mc and change the DAEMON_OPTIONS line to also listen on network devices (or comment out this option entirely using the dnl comment delimiter). You must then regenerate /etc/mail/sendmail.cf by running the following command (as root):

make -C /etc/mail

Note that you must have the sendmail-cf package installed for this to work.

Users new to the X.org X11 implementation should take note of a few differences between it and the XFree86.org X11 implementation which shipped in previous Red Hat operating systems. In particular, the names of some files have changed, including the following:

X Server Binary

    XFree86 X11: XFree86

      X.org X11: Xorg

X Server Configuration File

    XFree86 X11: /etc/X11/XF86Config

      X.org X11: /etc/X11/xorg.conf

X Server Log File

    XFree86 X11: /var/log/XFree86.$DISPLAY.log

      X.org X11: /var/log/Xorg.$DISPLAY.log
            

When configuring or troubleshooting your X server configuration, be sure that you are using the correct files.

There has been some confusion regarding font-related issues under the X Window System in recent versions of Fedora Core (and versions of Red Hat Linux before it.) At the present time, there are two font subsystems, each with different characteristics:

- The original (15+ year old) subsystem is referred to as the "core X font subsystem". Fonts rendered by this subsystem are not anti-aliased, are handled by the X server, and have names like:

-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--10-100-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1

The newer font subsystem is known as "fontconfig", and allows applications direct access to the font files. Fontconfig is often used along with the "Xft" library, which allows applications to render fontconfig fonts to the screen with antialiasing. Fontconfig uses more human-friendly names like:

Luxi Sans-10

Over time, fontconfig/Xft will replace the core X font subsystem. At the present time, applications using the Qt 3 or GTK 2 toolkits (which would include KDE and GNOME applications) use the fontconfig and Xft font subsystem; most everything else uses the core X fonts.

In the future, Fedora Core may support only fontconfig/Xft in place of the XFS font server as the default local font access method.

NOTE: An exception to the font subsystem usage outlined above is OpenOffice.org (which uses its own font rendering technology).

If you wish to add new fonts to your Fedora Core 2.91 Test 2 system, you must be aware that the steps necessary depend on which font subsystem is to use the new fonts. For the core X font subsystem, you must:

1. Create the /usr/share/fonts/local/ directory (if it doesn't already exist):

mkdir /usr/share/fonts/local/

2. Copy the new font file into /usr/share/fonts/local/

3. Update the font information by issuing the following commands (note that, due to formatting restrictions, the following commands may appear on more than one line; in use, each command should be entered on a single line):

ttmkfdir -d /usr/share/fonts/local/ -o /usr/share/fonts/local/fonts.scale

mkfontdir /usr/share/fonts/local/

4. If you had to create /usr/share/fonts/local/, you must then add it to the X font server (xfs) path:

chkfontpath --add /usr/share/fonts/local/

Adding new fonts to the fontconfig font subsystem is more straightforward; the new font file only needs to be copied into the /usr/share/fonts/ directory (individual users can modify their personal font configuration by copying the font file into the ~/.fonts/ directory).

After the new font has been copied, use fc-cache to update the font information cache:

fc-cache <directory>

(Where <directory> would be either the /usr/share/fonts/ or ~/.fonts/ directories.)

Individual users may also install fonts graphically, by browsing fonts:/// in Nautilus, and dragging the new font files there.

NOTE: If the font filename ends with ".gz", it has been compressed with gzip, and must be decompressed (with the gunzip command) before the fontconfig font subsystem can use the font.

Due to the transition to the new font system based on fontconfig/Xft, GTK+ 1.2 applications are not affected by any changes made via the Font Preferences dialog. For these applications, a font can be configured by adding the following lines to the file ~/.gtkrc.mine:

style "user-font" {

fontset = "<font-specification>"

}

widget_class "*" style "user-font"

(Where <font-specification> represents a font specification in the style used by traditional X applications, such as "-adobe-helvetica-medium-r-normal--*-120-*-*-*-*-*-*".)