A.5. Enhancing Hardware Support

A.5. Enhancing Hardware Support
Prev	Appendix A. Boot Options	Next

By default, Fedora attempts to automatically detect and configure support for all of the components of your computer. Fedora supports the majority of hardware in common use with the software drivers that are included with the operating system. To support other devices you may supply additional drivers during the installation process, or at a later time.

A.5.1. Adding Hardware Support with Driver Disks

The installation system can load drivers from disks, pen drives, or network servers to configure support for new devices. After the installation is complete, remove any driver disks and store them for later use.

Hardware manufacturers may supply driver disks for Fedora with the device, or provide image files to prepare the disks. To obtain the latest drivers, download the correct file from the website of the manufacturer.

	Driver Disks Supplied as Zipped Files
	Driver disk images may be distributed as compressed archives, or zip files. For identification, the names of zip files include the extensions `.zip`, or `.tar.gz`. To extract the contents of a zipped file with a Fedora system, choose Applications → Accessories → Archive Manager.

To format a disk or pen drive with an image file, use the dd utility. For example, to prepare a diskette with the image file drivers.img, enter this command in a terminal window:

 dd if=drivers.img of=/dev/fd0

To use a driver disk in the installation process, specify the dd option at the boot: prompt:

 linux dd

When prompted, select Yes to provide a driver disk. Choose the drive that holds the driver disk from the list on the Driver Disk Source text screen.

The installation system can also read drivers from disk images that are held on network servers. Refer to Driver Disk Image Sources for the supported sources of driver disk image files.

Driver Disk Image Sources

Image Source	Option Format
Select a drive or device	`dd`
HTTP Server	`dd=http://server.mydomain.com/directory/drivers.img`
FTP Server	`dd=ftp://server.mydomain.com/directory/drivers.img`
NFS Server	`dd=nfs:server.mydomain.com:/directory/drivers.img`

A.5.2. Overriding Automatic Hardware Detection

For some models of device automatic hardware configuration may fail, or cause instability. In these cases, you may need to disable automatic configuration for that type of device, and take additional steps to manually configure the device after the installation process is complete.

	Check the Release Notes
	Refer to the Release Notes for information on known issues with specific devices.

To override the automatic hardware detection, use one or more of the following options:

Hardware Options

Compatibility Setting	Option
Disable all hardware detection	`noprobe`
Disable graphics, keyboard, and mouse detection	`headless`
Disable automatic monitor detection (DDC)	`skipddc`
Use basic VESA driver for video	`xdriver=vesa`
Disable mainboard APIC	`noapic`
Disable power management (ACPI)	`acpi=off`
Disable Direct Memory Access (DMA) for IDE, SATA, and ATAPI drives	`libata.dma=0`
Enable DMA only for IDE and SATA drives	`libata.dma=1`
Disable BIOS-assisted RAID	`nodmraid`
Disable Firewire device detection	`nofirewire`
Disable parallel port detection	`noparport`
Disable PC Card (PCMCIA) device detection	`nopcmcia`
Disable USB storage device detection	`nousbstorage`
Disable all USB device detection	`nousb`
Force Firewire device detection	`firewire`
Prompt user for ISA device configuration	`isa`

	Additional Screen
	The `isa` option causes the system to display an additional text screen at the beginning of the installation process. Use this screen to configure the ISA devices on your computer.

Prev	Up	Next
A.4. Automating the Installation with Kickstart	Home	A.6. Using the Maintenance Boot Modes