MacBook Pro 5.1 (unibody late 2008) installation log/q&a

MacGyver031

Hi folks,
The day before yesterday, I decided to wipe out OS X and install Gentoo on my MBP. I have noticed that stage 1 has some bugs : lmza config dies with "gcc doesn't create executables". Looking at the logs reveals that the right compiler is not selected/found. If one set "nocxx" flag, lmza is ignored and the compiling goes further. But as I ran into an other trouble, I decided to give stage 3 a try (as other have done).

Stage 3 (amd64) works well. I managed to get very far: Kernel 2.6.28-r4, Xorg-X11, Mplayer and Fluxbox. Following things doesn't work yet:
- Sound: hd-audio is detected (Realtek) but no sound is produced even though all mixer settings are tried.
- Touchpad: synaptics driver is unloaded with the message "query no synaptics: 6003C8". I have tried x11-drivers/synaptics as well as x11-drivers/xf86-input-synaptics. The first one lead to unstartable xorg if the pointer was core device, the latter started xorg, but the logs showed that synaptics itself was not loaded. I am using the kerneldriver: bcm5974

If someone might give me a hint. Furthersteps I have in mind is to get the power management right (the laptop gets really hot, gpu temperature 73°C). Kernel 2.6.28-r4 has the applesmc and 20temperature sensors are detected and the fanspeed seems to be correct. lspci is not able to resolve all "devices", many are just nvidia unkown device xxxx. Wireless lan is a subject for this evening.

Thanks.
_________________
Sincerely your
Joanand K.

MacBook Pro 5.1: 2.4GHz Core2 Duo, 4096MB, 500GB, NVidia 9400/9600 M GT
Gentoo, Kernel 3.4.9, XOrg, Fluxbox.

MacGyver031 · Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2009 1:59 pm Post subject:

Sound works: hd-audio with realtek hd codec AND an additional line in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa

MacGyver031 · Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 9:09 am Post subject:

So after a long time, I am proud to inform that I have made some small progresses:

Touchpad: The driver has to be loaded prior to usbhid! This is done by blacklisting usbhid.

ELilo: Today I have started my macbook pro out of efi. The screen states just says

MacGyver031 · Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 10:13 am Post subject:

EFI-Frambuffer seems to work. I have a disordered display, resolution is 1440x900@77. I think that the refreshrate of 77Hz ist to high.
_________________
Sincerely your
Joanand K.

MacBook Pro 5.1: 2.4GHz Core2 Duo, 4096MB, 500GB, NVidia 9400/9600 M GT
Gentoo, Kernel 3.4.9, XOrg, Fluxbox.

MacGyver031 · Posted: Tue Jun 23, 2009 6:23 am Post subject:

I am not sure it it is useful what I am trying to do for someone, or worse if someone is reading. But until I am said otherwise, ....

Yesterday I succeeded in activating the chipset-graphic card (as in NVidia 9400) by using elilo. Nvidiafb doesn't work as it cannot determine without BIOS-Mode, but Nvidia-drivers and Xorg comes up:

purplefuku · n00b Joined: 23 Jun 2009 Posts: 4 Location: Boston, MA

Getting the 9400 (and the extra battery life) is certainly useful! ^^ Thanks for the info. Any other tips you might have are most appreciated.

MacGyver031 · Posted: Tue Jun 23, 2009 7:15 pm Post subject:

By doing so many "experimentation" one gets into trouble and gets stuck! I was playing around my kernel and rendered my system unusable for nearly one day :-(

So here are the imporant information on how to get the same stage as I am now:

Git-sources: 2.6.30-r14, .config
Nvidia-drivers: 180.60
Xorg-X11: 7.2 xorg.conf
Xorg-server: 1.5.3-r6
elilo: 3.10

dman777 · Veteran Joined: 10 Jan 2007 Posts: 1004

nvidia 185.18.14 drivers will decrease your heat significantly. i would do some more research on getting your system to run optimal...from reading other posts it seems there shouldn't be that many problems in running macbook pro 5,1. please keep us posted on your progress...as i am considering buy a macbook pro and putting gentoo no it.

entity · Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2009 8:24 pm Post subject:

I'm kind of noob in this (and google did not reveal anything relevant) so here goes: If elilo is installed on efi partition, does that blow away existing Mac OS X bootloader or do they live happily ever after?

EDIT:

Existing boot loader will remain, at least if you just copy the elilo.efi to EFI partition mounted as vfat. And rEFIt was able to pick it elilo.efi up without any trouble.

MacGyver031 · Posted: Tue Oct 20, 2009 9:42 am Post subject:

So here am I after a long time of inactivity :oops:

Meanwhile, Kernel 2.6.31-r4 seems to work quite well (sound works without any modifications, even stereo), Nvidia 185.18.31 works well too. Despite my unsoluble problem with kernel panic seems to dissapear with those both.

I am still using elilo and a blank screen upto xdm-login. As soon as I can, I am willing to try efi-framebuffer but I am pretty sure that this experiment will lead in some crashes.

@entity:
The efi-partition is still unused by apple. This is a small modification in efi compared to the original efi-definition of intel, and a blessing has to be done to ensure that the firmware starts refit and not mac os x. So thats why you wount blow away your Mac OS X. But you already found that out.

@dman777:
even with the newest nvidia-drivers I have no additional runtime. I am unable to unpower the nvidia 9600, because it still gets upto 60°C warm, an further approach is to get it unpowered somehow. Disabling over "/sys/bus/pci/devices/0000\:02\:00.0/enable" didn't change anything visibly.
_________________
Sincerely your
Joanand K.

MacBook Pro 5.1: 2.4GHz Core2 Duo, 4096MB, 500GB, NVidia 9400/9600 M GT
Gentoo, Kernel 3.4.9, XOrg, Fluxbox.

will824 · Posted: Tue Oct 27, 2009 7:16 am Post subject: Thanks

This is an Amazing post!.

I just got a Macbook and I am a little bit worried about installing gentoo (I have replaced gentoo completely over Windows since 5 years ago).

My concern is specially performance, hardware useability (so the laptop componentes have a longer lifespan) and battery life.

Please keep on posting your experiences

_________________
--
Will

Arthanis · Apprentice Joined: 21 Mar 2008 Posts: 166

I have a Macbook Aluminium, that has quite similar hardware:

00:00.0 Host bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP79 Host Bridge (rev b1)
00:00.1 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP79 Memory Controller (rev b1)
00:03.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP79 LPC Bridge (rev b2)
00:03.1 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP79 Memory Controller (rev b1)
00:03.2 SMBus: nVidia Corporation MCP79 SMBus (rev b1)
00:03.3 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP79 Memory Controller (rev b1)
00:03.4 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation Device 0a98 (rev b1)
00:03.5 Co-processor: nVidia Corporation MCP79 Co-processor (rev b1)
00:04.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP79 OHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev b1)
00:04.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP79 EHCI USB 2.0 Controller (rev b1)
00:06.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP79 OHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev b1)
00:06.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP79 EHCI USB 2.0 Controller (rev b1)
00:08.0 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP79 High Definition Audio (rev b1)
00:09.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP79 PCI Bridge (rev b1)
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: nVidia Corporation MCP79 Ethernet (rev b1)
00:0b.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP79 SATA Controller (rev b1)
00:10.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP79 PCI Express Bridge (rev b1)
00:15.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP79 PCI Express Bridge (rev b1)
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation C79 [GeForce 9400M] (rev b1)
03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01)

Well, after all my trouble, my macbook is like 90% from perfection, but I have things yet to fix:

- Cant change my lcd brightness inside X with pommed or any "lcd manager" besides nvclock, which is quite unstable around here and make my system crash when I use its smartdimmer feature. So I must exit X, change lcd brightness and startx again (quite annoying). From what I read, its a nvidia driver/module problem with mpb_nvidia_bl module.

- Mac OS X tells me (I didnt benchmark it vs linux battery life) that battery will last like 25% more than in Gentoo, although Im using cpufreq ondemand governor to clock down the cpu while idle, laptop tools and all apci parafernalia. I think its the nvidia gpu power management, how can I get around it? I read somewhere about powermizer, but I cant get to find information on how enabling it in gentoo. Also, it seems I cant get to control my fans speed as I did in my previous macbook (early 2006 I guess), althogh I have applesmc module compiled in the kernel.

- Shutdown is OK, but reboots shutdown the system, but whether the system stays blackscreen after shutdown, or it shutsdown but it keeps making 3 consecutives beeps in loop

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

NOTE: I installing using REFIT and grub to triple boot (MacOS, Gentoo and Windows XP) , my cpufreq ondemand seems to work (steps 1.6 and 2.0 ghz).

EDIT: I realized that powermizer is a featurein nvidia-drivers and its already enabled and working, any other thoughts on why is linux is supposably using more power?

MacGyver031 · Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2009 2:46 pm Post subject:

MacGyver031 · Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2009 9:12 pm Post subject:

AT ALL: If you use Snow Leopard DO NOT USE OPTION

Arthanis · Apprentice Joined: 21 Mar 2008 Posts: 166

Wll, Im not even aware of elilo, so I probablu didn't use it xP. Anyway, I used Refit boot manager + grub for linux ( I have 3 options, MacOS, Linux and Win XP, when I choose Linux, it enters in GRUB menu), so I guess its bios emulated. About powertop, this is what I got:

PowerTOP version 1.9 (C) 2007 Intel Corporation

Cn Avg residency P-states (frequencies)
C0 (cpu running) ( 8.0%) 2.00 Ghz 1.5%
C1 0.0ms ( 0.0%) 1.87 Ghz 0.0%
C2 1.8ms ( 0.5%) 1.60 Ghz 98.5%
C3 2.0ms (91.4%)

Wakeups-from-idle per second : 460.6 interval: 10.0s
no ACPI power usage estimate available

Top causes for wakeups:
23.3% (135.6) <interrupt> : extra timer interrupt
21.3% (123.6) emesene : hrtimer_start_range_ns (hrtimer_wakeup)
17.5% (101.6) USB device 3-6 : Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad (Apple, Inc.)
16.1% ( 93.5) <interrupt> : ohci_hcd:usb3
5.3% ( 30.6) firefox : hrtimer_start_range_ns (hrtimer_wakeup)
4.7% ( 27.3) <interrupt> : eth1, nvidia
2.5% ( 14.6) X : hrtimer_start_range_ns (hrtimer_wakeup)
2.2% ( 12.9) <kernel IPI> : Rescheduling interrupts
1.7% ( 10.0) async/0 : ehci_work (ehci_watchdog)
1.3% ( 7.6) <interrupt> : ahci
0.9% ( 5.0) pommed : hrtimer_start (timerfd_tmrproc)
0.9% ( 5.0) iwconfig : wlc_903 (wl_add_timer)
0.5% ( 3.0) wicd-client : hrtimer_start_range_ns (hrtimer_wakeup)
0.5% ( 2.

<kernel core> : wlc_684 (wl_add_timer)
0.2% ( 1.1) X : nv_start_rc_timer (nv_kern_rc_timer)
0.2% ( 1.0) iwconfig : wlc_up (wl_add_timer)
0.2% ( 1.0) <kernel core> : wlc_828 (wl_add_timer)
0.2% ( 1.0) <kernel core> : schedule_delayed_work_on (delayed_work_timer_fn)
0.1% ( 0.5) hald-addon-stor : hrtimer_start_range_ns (hrtimer_wakeup)
0.1% ( 0.3) gnome-power-man : hrtimer_start_range_ns (hrtimer_wakeup)
0.1% ( 0.3) <kernel core> : neigh_table_init_no_netlink (neigh_periodic_timer)
0.1% ( 0.3) roxterm : hrtimer_start_range_ns (hrtimer_wakeup)
0.0% ( 0.2) hald-addon-acpi : hrtimer_start_range_ns (hrtimer_wakeup)
0.0% ( 0.2) async/1 : scsi_request_fn (blk_rq_timed_out_timer)
0.0% ( 0.2) <kernel core> : page_writeback_init (wb_timer_fn)
0.0% ( 0.2) wicd-monitor : hrtimer_start_range_ns (hrtimer_wakeup)
0.0% ( 0.2) firefox : sk_reset_timer (tcp_write_timer)

Also, is there a way to downclock the processor below the 1600 mhz threshold? Using userspace governor or something like it?

Thanks in advance.

nikitas350 · n00b Joined: 09 Sep 2009 Posts: 19

I have a problem with keyboard and trackpad. When i start a graphical enviroment (kde), they hang. Here is my xorg.conf

vincent- · Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2009 5:05 pm Post subject:

Why don't use an Xorg with hal support and clean the xorg.conf? Your xorg.conf will be reduced to four lines, and your keyboard and synaptics configuration will be under /etc/hal/fdi/policy/ directory.

nikitas350 · n00b Joined: 09 Sep 2009 Posts: 19

because i'm a noob, can u show me how to enable hal support for xorg? [I recompiled the xorg with the use variable to contain hal but i don't know what to do next]. Nevertheless is this going to solve my problem?

vincent- · Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2009 10:54 pm Post subject:

First, check if your kernel has event interface support:

nikitas350 · n00b Joined: 09 Sep 2009 Posts: 19

Thanks you very much, problem solved...

vincent- · Posted: Sat Dec 05, 2009 1:34 pm Post subject:

You are welcome.

MacGyver031 · Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 6:45 am Post subject:

Since yesterday there is a firmware update available. As I have predicted, after the update my macbook pro works as it should. So I'm back in the game.

I still have power management issues (as in the laptop is a heater) and I will be doing some research (hopefully without bricking the firmware again).

So stay tuned.
_________________
Sincerely your
Joanand K.

MacBook Pro 5.1: 2.4GHz Core2 Duo, 4096MB, 500GB, NVidia 9400/9600 M GT
Gentoo, Kernel 3.4.9, XOrg, Fluxbox.

blamothe · Posted: Wed Jan 27, 2010 10:21 pm Post subject: efi boot

any word on reliably booting to efi and having everything work? i'm currently running in bios mode now and am suffering through the terrible battery life and high temps of the power hungry graphics card. i'm a bit afraid to try out efi because i run snow leopard and i don't want my other drivers to stop working just so that i can get to the more economical video card.

MacGyver031 · Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 1:01 pm Post subject:

Depends on what you understand by *reliably booting*, I am in fact only using EFI mode. My best runtime upto now has be about 3 hours (instead of about 5 hours with OS X).

If your understanding of *reliably* is "everything works out of the box", then the answer is *no*. But with some little work, you might experience what I have the first time I saw the xdm login window (may be not same way, because you are not the first one who got it working, I was :lol:

and I did it without any help)!

So if you are willing to sacrifice your unibody, I will help, otherwise you will have to live with Bios-mode.
_________________
Sincerely your
Joanand K.

MacBook Pro 5.1: 2.4GHz Core2 Duo, 4096MB, 500GB, NVidia 9400/9600 M GT
Gentoo, Kernel 3.4.9, XOrg, Fluxbox.

MacGyver031 · Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2010 10:12 pm Post subject:

@blamothe: Hope you read this post!

One needs "EFI GUID Partition support", NVidia-drivers and gentoo-sources-2.6.30-r9 to get a successful efi-boot. If one has a fresh GPT-partition, (for example after a fresh install with the install cd), then you will also need refit-cd. It is not required that one has to use bootcamp, with the help of refit-cd you will only have to sync GUID partition table with the MBR table (refit->partition->yes).

It is not possible to make an efi-boot in the bios-emulation mode. One has to start 2.6.30-r9 in bios mode, run elilo -v --efiboot, then startup the system with refit and selecting the elilo.efi. Please read older posts to make nvidia use the correct graphic device, otherwise you will end up in a white display but a running system (ssh will help you out). After booting into X and using the terminal of you choice, rerun elilo -v --efiboot and from now on you will no longer require refit.

I now have a GUID partition table with a 200MB FAT, 20GB root, 4GB swap and 443GB home partitions. I have made good experiences with 2.6.30 when one wants to install efibootmgr, if someone has other kernel, please report so we will have a list of working kernels.
_________________
Sincerely your
Joanand K.

MacBook Pro 5.1: 2.4GHz Core2 Duo, 4096MB, 500GB, NVidia 9400/9600 M GT
Gentoo, Kernel 3.4.9, XOrg, Fluxbox.