Gentoo on a Macbook?

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

I put the order in for my MacBook yesterday. :) Hopefully it'll be here in about a week and then I can show the wiki page some love.

Techboy74 · n00b Joined: 16 Mar 2006 Posts: 4

All, Hi.
I have a lovely shiny new MacBook that seems to FLY along.
I'm not that interested in using OSX, as I have given it a go over the last few days, and it's just not tooting my whistle.

I can't seem to find information on installing JUST Gentoo on my macbook. There is lots of info on triple booting and dual booting that is of little help.

Does someone know where I should seek info on using JUST gentoo on the laptop. Happy to use EFI or Bootcamp BIOS emulation should it be required.

Considering that I have no need for OSX, I also have a feeling that it should be fairly straight forward to JUST BOOT GENTOO.

Ideas?

Also.... Does anyone know whether the Intel Xorg drivers will work under EFI.

Thanks!

Paul

Maintenant · n00b Joined: 18 Jan 2005 Posts: 30

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

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

Hi guys, just received the black 2Ghz model this morning and I'm installing Gentoo 2006.0 using the bootcamp, rEFIt, LILO option outlined in mactel-linux.org's wiki. I'll let you all know how it goes. Just out of curiosity though, anyone know what mcpu flag to use with gcc to get the most out of the core duo? Is it just a P4 or what?

Have fun!

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

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

Okay, I've managed to partition the drive using bootcamp and run through the normal Gentoo install right up to where I install LILO and reboot the machine. On reboot though I'm getting the following error

Kernel Panic: unable to mount root fs on unkown block (8,2)

I'm guessing this is something to do with the partition table although I followed the instructions exactly and made sure the table shown in parted (gpt) and sfdisk (msdos) matched. Does anyone have any ideas? I'm going to continue trying different things.

Just to note though I have compiled in support for my drive controlled ICH7, my root fs ext3 and my partition table gpt. I also have boot from EFI support in there.

Regards,

sjanssen · n00b Joined: 04 Jun 2006 Posts: 1

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

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

+egosearch

I'll be receiving a MacBook soon, and this thread has given me some hope. In the end, I hope to triple boot, although I don't recall if anyone has successfully done so on a MacBook yet... I really would like to get all 3 OS's on there. bssteph, keep us posted on your progress, and what combination of OS's are you going to keep on the notebook?
_________________
"Ford," he said, "you're turning into a penguin. Stop it."

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

Phew, okay thanks for the tips everyone.

As I am using LILO I need to have old MSDOS style partition map, luckily rEFIt has a menu item called partitioning which calls gptsync and replicates your gpt tables in the MBR. After doing this it just worked. I am typing this massage form Gentoo on my MacBook

I'm not done yet though as there is still much to do. Need to figure our the touchpad, backlight, 1280x1024 res on the screen, fn keys, and no doubt many other things.

Although suprisingly sound and wireless just worked after installing madwifi-ng.

Thanks for the CFLAGS tip. I'll change that now.

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

Cool stuff, deephack1982! I don't think 1280x1024 is possible, though (unless you meant 1280x800 which is what Apple advertises).

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

Heh, of course you are right 1280x800 it is. I got it working by the way by using 915resolution with the following command line

915resolution 5c 1280 800

After that I get a nice hires xorg display. Things I'm still working on are fn keys which even after patching my kernel didn't work and synaptics on the touchpad which doesn't seem to support multifinger yet. Apart from that I'm doing quite well, running KDE 3.5.3 quite the thing.

Have fun!

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

Correct me if I'm wrong, but because the MacBook uses Intel integrated graphics, we won't be seeing any compositing for Linux on the MacBook, will we? I was considering, if that's the case, to run e17, just to get some nice eye candy without a dedicated graphics card...

Oh, and I'd love a screenshot of your KDE 3.5.3 desktop. =)
_________________
"Ford," he said, "you're turning into a penguin. Stop it."

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

I think I saw on whatever wiki page listing supported hardware for XGL, that the Intel chip in the MacBook would work. Don't know if anyone tried though. So perhaps there's eye-candy for that, down the road. Don't know about compositing though.

In other news, I've started work on the wiki, updating as I go. I'm past partitioning, my current method being OSX/Gentoo dual-boot without Boot Camp. Hopefully it'll pan out nicely.

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

Er... so it seems, according to rEFIt documentation, the Intel graphics need to be booted through BIOS compatibility mode (using Boot Camp) in order to work properly (or maybe even at all). And Boot Camp refuses to run properly (I think) unless it only sees one disk, meaning due to my lack of RTFWikis, I need to start over.

A useful, non-Boot Camp install seems impossible at the moment.

Deleting my stuff in the wiki for now and giving it another whirl.

slashcom · n00b Joined: 05 May 2004 Posts: 41

Someone needs to post a full xorg.conf for the MacBook. My trackpad doesn't work at all. Rather, up/down works, but left/right doesn't and the mouse-down causes the cursor to move right. I'd like to know which driver I should be using. I added a link on the Wiki page to a patch for getting sound to semi-work.
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nah, that's gangsta.

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

slashcom · n00b Joined: 05 May 2004 Posts: 41

slashcom · n00b Joined: 05 May 2004 Posts: 41

One thing I missed at first that really helped with acceleration was making sure the intel-agp module was loaded. This created a /dev/agpgart device and really sped up rendering and smoothness.
_________________
nah, that's gangsta.

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

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

Hi guys, I believe that you do need to use bootcamp just now to get the correct video BIOS calls working but I may be wrong. If you guys are interested in my screenshot and xorg.conf please see my blog.

http://deepcack.blogspot.com

I'll be posting more info and pictures there soon. Also I'll throw my oar into helping update the wiki tonight when I get back from work. My xorg.conf doesn't have synaptics configured by the way as this machine doesn't have multifinger support yet and the accuracy of the touchpad in synaptics mode sucks. I'm using bog standard USB HID in the meantime.

Have fun!

d_m · Posted: Tue Jun 06, 2006 2:29 pm Post subject:

So I have installed Gentoo on my Intel Mac Mini. I did the install before Boot Camp was out, so I am just using the rEFIt bootloader (via EFI) and the kernel patches which create the imacfb framebuffer. It works with X (although it's not at all accelerated).

For the mini, there is another patch which fixes the ALSA driver for the HDA intel audio driver, and a third patch which improves support for the SATA controller. From the mactel-linux-dev mailing list, I think the Macbook Pro is pretty well supported and the Macbook support is coming along.
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d_m · Posted: Tue Jun 06, 2006 2:31 pm Post subject:

Also, if anyone here knows a good way of getting the Legacy BIOS to work without having to wipe my drives and reinstall, that would be awesome. I've heard from various people that either:

1. all you need is a windows partition on your HDD
or
2. that you need to tell Apple's Paritition tool to use an MBR layout and repartition to enable it.

Legacy BIOS emulation is better because then you can just use the vesafb and the intel X driver, rather then the imacfb and the basic X driver.
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The name that can be named is not the eternal name.

slashcom · n00b Joined: 05 May 2004 Posts: 41