Gentoo on a Macbook?

chunderbunny · Posted: Tue Jun 06, 2006 7:01 pm Post subject:

For what it's worth the GUI installer on the 2006.0 liveCD seemed to work flawlessly on my Mac Mini. The only issie I'm really having now is trying to get Linux to mount my HFS+ partition, every time I try the kernel complains about bad superblock errors.

has anyone else managed to mount their OSX partition in Linux yet?

d_m · Posted: Tue Jun 06, 2006 8:04 pm Post subject:

bssteph · l33t Joined: 26 Feb 2003 Posts: 652 Location: Wisconsin

d_m · Posted: Wed Jun 07, 2006 1:18 am Post subject:

deephack1982 · n00b Joined: 06 Apr 2004 Posts: 45 Location: Scotland

Hi guys!

The only real things I'm trying to sort out now are the build in iSight camera and the touchpad. Does anyone know if the built in isight is a firewire device like the external one? I've tried looking for it using libdc1384 but it's not finding it. A quick peek through the devices on different buses in /sys hasn't show much either.

As for the touch pad I think with a bit of fiddling I could get it working better. I'll post my synaptics config here once I find a good one for it.

Have fun!

bssteph · l33t Joined: 26 Feb 2003 Posts: 652 Location: Wisconsin

I filed a request bug for powernow-0.97.ebuild. With any luck it will be in Portage soon. For those impatient types who want to do things the Gentoo way, you can just copy an existing ebuild, and the two powernowd files in files/, into an overlay and rename the ebuild. Worked for me.

Has anyone found out anything about sensors? Kernel config, etc? I haven't tried yet, I'm just hoping the work's already been done for me. :)

slashcom · n00b Joined: 05 May 2004 Posts: 41

Has anyone gotten the fn key to work? If so, what did you need to patch or module compile in, and what did you do to X11 to enable it.

What module does the DVD-burner drive use? edit: it uses pktcdvd
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tsm23 · n00b Joined: 11 Jun 2006 Posts: 12

Hi,

I've been a Gentoo user for a few years now and as soon as I got my new MacBook Pro, I set about installing Gentoo on it. So far, I've gotten kde working with 3D accelleration and I still need to configure audio, wireless, and the built in trackpad, but before I tackle those issues, there's an extremely odd problem I need to fix.

Portage was able to download ebuild files without any trouble, and I can ssh and sftp to my servers and my university's servers, but for some reason, whenever I try to download a significant amount of data, the ssh/sftp/http connection hangs and I need to restart eth0. Sometimes, all that it takes to trigger this is trying ls over an ssh connection. Other times, it occurs after I've downloaded 10 megabytes of a 90 megabyte file. Once it has occured, I can still log into servers, but every command causes the connection to hang.

I'm at something of a loss as to what could cause this. My university does filter MAC addresses and since I haven't yet received registration confirmation for my new computer, I've been spoofing the MAC address of one of my other registered (and currently disconnected) computers using "ifconfig eth0 hw ether <address>", but this shouldn't cause any problems that I can think of. Does anyone have any suggestions or has anyone encountered a similar issue with the MacBook?

Thanks

tsm23 · n00b Joined: 11 Jun 2006 Posts: 12

Just an update - I can download files using the same method (changing the MAC address) when I'm booted off the 2006.0 minimal install cd so it would definitely seem to be a kernel configuration issue. Can anyone share any tips (or better yet actual config files) for compiling the kernel on the macbook pro? I'm using vanilla sources and my own configuration options since the config at http://svn.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.cgi/mactel-linux/trunk/misc/misc/ didn't work properly.

d_m · Posted: Sun Jun 11, 2006 4:55 am Post subject:

You should get the mactel patch(es).

Check out mactel-linux.org.
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tsm23 · n00b Joined: 11 Jun 2006 Posts: 12

The sourceforge link I posted is actually where the mactel-linux patches are stored as well, but I didn't try them because the guide I was following (http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Triple_Boot_via_BootCamp) specifically said not to. Has anyone actually tried them on a MacBook (as opposed to an iMac or mac mini)? The patch descriptions also make no mention of resolving networking issues...

vanten · n00b Joined: 08 Jan 2006 Posts: 44 Location: Sweden

Hi all. Post your progress with those macbooks

I have ordered a new macbook today. It will be delivred perfect to midsommer.
Its a 10 days wait I know, but Its festivals time

Edit: It have happend alot to the wiki. Nice to see that.
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slashcom · n00b Joined: 05 May 2004 Posts: 41

I got the FN key working by following these directions: http://desrt.mcmaster.ca/macbook.xhtml

I wish I knew what he did to get mac_hid to compile...
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d_m · Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 2:54 am Post subject:

mbechler · n00b Joined: 17 Jun 2006 Posts: 4

Hi there,

I got my MacBook some days ago and i will tell you about the things i got to know since then. First of all there seems to be alot of confusion about booting. You will propably not want to use EFI, because then you won't have graphics acceleration. Also in my setup I couldn't get elilo to work in combination with rEFIt. In fact, you don't need to install anything except rEFIt because the bootcamp firmware is already installed on you MacBook. Any newer (containing the neccesary ICH7 SATA drivers) bootable CD (I used Knoppix 5.*) will work.
You won't need any FAT partition (except the internal EFI partition that will show up as first partition). But so far neither lilo nor grub do support GUID partition tables so you will have to create a standard partition table. This step can be done using the rEFIt partition tool. grub didn't work for me at all, lilo needed the flag -P ignore to install. Lilo goes to a ext2 boot partition, not mbr, in my setup.

Things that work:

Gigabit networking (gentoo-sources-2.6.15-r9 using module sky2)
i945 direct rendering (gentoo-sources-2.6.15-r9 using module i915 <-> xorg-x11-7.1)
backlight intensity control (see http://desrt.mcmaster.ca/code/macbook-backlight)
wireless lan using madwifi-ng (including wpa support using wpa_supplicant)
trackpad works in compatability mode
acpi events (lid, power button, low battery)

Things that don't work (yet):

The system does not return from hibernation
I couldn't find any matching keymap
There's no working bluetooth driver in this kernel
Backlight cannot be switched off (dpms seems only to disable output)

I'm sure i forgot to mention some interesting facts. If you have solutions for one of the problems, please answer.

quellthrix · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 09 May 2005 Posts: 111

Thought I'd stop by and mention that I've got a successfully triple-booting laptop. I've got a beautiful boot menu via rEFIt with all 3 OS's available, with only Linux needing work. Although I'd prefer to use linux primarily, I can't get the frikin touchpad to work and I really find some of the OS X features handy as far as the laptop hardware compatability goes. The patronizing finder is already grinding on my nerves.

I'll work on the wiki when I have time to help those who are looking to do the same.
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chunderbunny · Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2006 11:21 am Post subject:

Thought I would just mention that I fixed my HFS+ mounting troubles. It turns out that my mbr partition table wasn't quite the same as the GPT partition table. It was close enough that some partitions would mount, but not all of them.

In the end I tarred up my linux root filesystem, and comepltely re-partitioned the drive. This time I used the partition table tool that comes with rEFIt-0.7 to create the MBR. I then replaced the Linux root filesystem, a few minor tweaks to get it going again and now the HFS+ partition mounts perfectly!

deephack1982 · n00b Joined: 06 Apr 2004 Posts: 45 Location: Scotland

@mbechler

Just to let you know that I've been using the bluetooth on my macbook from the start. You need to compile in the hci_usb driver and then run hid2hci at boot to switch the bluetooth device from hid mode. Then restart your bluetooth services and all should be well. I wrote a little script to do this for me at boot.

Have fun!

JoKo · Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2006 12:06 pm Post subject:

Hi,

My MacBook is about to come, so I have to start planning... I want a triple boot setup, so I'm mostly concerned about the partitions and the booting part.

Is it true that I can only have 4 partitions? If so, is the swapfile slower than a swap partition? And what about Windows, why not to use the better, faster NTFS instead of FAT32? Finally, what about the boot loader, GRUB won't work?

chunderbunny · Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2006 8:41 pm Post subject:

d_m · Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2006 3:07 pm Post subject:

rzr · Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2006 1:03 pm Post subject:

i'm still wondering about keymap. why would the same keymap (us/41) work perfectly in the installer cd but not in the installed one.

btw, i've modified us map so i could change vt and do scrolling on console , in case anyone need it.
* us-mb map put it on /usr/share/keymaps/i386/qwerty/
* macbook layout go in /usr/share/keymaps/i386/include/

and i don't know a clean way to fix keymapping on x. xmodmap seems do not work on combination key [and i'm an alt+f2 addict on kde], so here is my attempt.

* xfree86 keycodes to replace /usr/share/X11/xkb/keycodes/xfree86, and
* pc symbols to replace /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/pc .

i also mapped the eject button to F13, so i could use it with khotkey.

if anyone could point me to The Right Way To Do It(tm), i will be more than glad

marvellous · n00b Joined: 02 Jul 2006 Posts: 3

Hi!

i have the same problem like slashcom. My trackpad doesn't work. i cant move the pointer left/right, only up/down are ok.
which driver is correct?

can someone complete the touchpad-section on the gentoo-wiki?

Thanks

dmvianna · Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 10:34 am Post subject:

Well, I have a very basic problem. :oops:

I'm not interested in MS, so I am trying to dual-boot OSX and Gentoo. I've already a working Gentoo system in /dev/sda3, but I can't seem to make rEFIt boot Gentoo, even though I have installed lilo & all. rEFIt shows two Linux startup options, but when I select either one it tells me it can't find them. Still, if I turn to its partition utility, it shows me that * next to the Gentoo partition, showing that it's bootable. I don't know what to do from here. :cry:

I'm missing the world of Linux variety so much under OSX. It's good to work on Unix, but having a community is much more fun. :roll:

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