Gentoo on a Macbook?

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slaq · Post by **slaq** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 10:02 pm

yay it works!!!

i did two things:

1. i rearranged Section "Module" in xorg.conf to match the order in your conf
2. i started hald

i strongly suspect that the missing hald was the culprit but i'm too tired to test it right now.
i'll rather spend my time on trying to get sound and touchpad back to work after resume.

first off i'll compile the sound driver as module now and see if a module-reload helps to revive it.

blscreen · Post by **blscreen** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 10:13 pm

slaq wrote:@blscreen

thanks for posting all that.
i already found one difference: you don't have an "append=" line in your lilo.conf!

how come your system doesn't do the APIC freeze on boot?
mine will freeze whenever i take my append= line out:

append="noapic irqpoll acpi=force"

did you patch the kernel to fix the lockups?

oh and do you use rEFIt for booting or something else?

Don't know about the APIC freeze. I didn't use any other patches than described. Maybe its an Apple Firmwareupdate? I remember installing one under MacOSX recently.

I use rEFIt and bootcamp for booting.

I'm glad resume works for you now

Strange, I don't need a module reload (though I also have sound as a module now).

slaq · Post by **slaq** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 10:24 pm

@blscreen

i applied your udev trick and it kept the pad alive for one resume cycle.
but after the 2nd cycle the touchpad dropped out completely :\
reloading the appletouch module did not help.
does it work 100% reliable for you? i'll recheck my conf anyways...

ps: sound survives through resumes without reload for me now

@all
the sound seems to come only out of the right speaker here...
anyone have an idea about that one?

blscreen · Post by **blscreen** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 10:33 pm

slaq wrote: i applied your udev trick and it kept the pad alive for one resume cycle.
but after the 2nd cycle the touchpad dropped out completely :\
reloading the appletouch module did not help.
does it work 100% reliable for you? i'll recheck my conf anyways...

So far no dropouts of the touchpads, had quite some suspend/resume cycles now. Maybe I should note that appletouch and usbhid are now the only two modules appearing in /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6.

Is there something suspicious in the logs about the touchpad or the modules after a resume?

blscreen · Post by **blscreen** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 11:18 pm

Anyone knows if it is possible to use the appleir driver together with lirc, in order to support more then only the bundled remote control? This would be great!

blscreen · Post by **blscreen** » Thu Aug 31, 2006 2:45 am

@slaq

You could try

Code: Select all

options usbhid pb_fnmode=2
install usbhid /sbin/modprobe appletouch && sleep 2 && /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install usbhid $CMDLINE_OPTS

in /etc/modules.d/touchpad and let udev handle the modprobe again. This way appletouch always gets loaded 2 seconds before usbhid.

I found that to be the most reliable approach so far. With the previous solution, sometimes usbcore registered usbhid before appletouch even though the modules were loaded in the correct order.

The cleanest solution would be a patch making usbhid ignore the touchpad if CONFIG_USB_APPLETOUCH is set... No userspace tweaking necessary then.

apoth · Post by **apoth** » Thu Aug 31, 2006 4:12 am

Just reporting success with suspend-to-ram. I tried it a while ago with s2ram from cvs after learning that the macbook was on the whitelist, but gave up on it to work on my synaptics issues (which I've never resolved, btw). Now it works pretty good.

Thanks everyone!

blscreen · Post by **blscreen** » Thu Aug 31, 2006 5:56 pm

apoth wrote:Just reporting success with suspend-to-ram.

Nice to hear this!

Whats in your Xorg.0.log about synaptics if you try to enable it?

I just updated the macbook wiki with an instruction how to make synaptics survive suspend/resume.

linuxjacques · Post by **linuxjacques** » Thu Aug 31, 2006 9:30 pm

915resolution and Xorg log report 800x600 and 640x480 modes to be available.

However, xrandr only shows 1280x800 and 1024x768.

I need 800x600 to play diablo2 under wine. (It's too small in a window)

I've googled to no avail.

jacques

justwantstohelp · Post by **justwantstohelp** » Thu Aug 31, 2006 9:52 pm

linuxjaques: have you tried editing /etc/conf.d/915resolution, and launching x in 800x600?

linuxjacques · Post by **linuxjacques** » Thu Aug 31, 2006 10:09 pm

justwantstohelp wrote:linuxjaques: have you tried editing /etc/conf.d/915resolution, and launching x in 800x600?

The 800x600 mode is already available in the video bios, according to 915resolution.

Did you mean editing xorg.conf to try to force X to start in 800x600 mode?
I hadn't thought of that. I will try it when I get home.

jacques

apoth · Post by **apoth** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 6:05 am

@blscreen

Your /etc/modules.d/touchpad fix worked just fine. Now I'm enjoying Suspend-to-ram and my synaptics touchpad, so thanks! However, I had to put that stuff in /etc/modules.d/usbhid. Things in /etc/modules.d are just conf files that run when the module is being loaded, right?

blscreen · Post by **blscreen** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 7:14 am

apoth wrote:@blscreen
Things in /etc/modules.d are just conf files that run when the module is being loaded, right?

Right, it controls the module loading behaviour. Actually the only file that matters to modprobe is /etc/modules.conf, and this file is compiled according to the contents of the files in /etc/modules.d every time you reboot or do a update-modules. So the file name really shouldn't matter, but glad to hear the fix worked!

I'm off for the weekend without internet connection, so see you all on Monday

apoth · Post by **apoth** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 9:22 am

I have no idea what happened, but now sleep locks up xorg like it did before. I'm using blscreen's configuration for the most part. I can't seem to pinpoint the reason why resume is unreliable again, but the problems didn't crop up until the synaptics driver started working.

ajordan · Post by **ajordan** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 10:31 am

I installed Gentoo successfully with the gentoo-wiki tutorial. Next I tried figure out the two finger behaviour with my touchpad. I have a MacBook (not a Pro) and it won't work. I tried without emerged synaptics driver and got the failure that synaptics driver could not found.
With the driver installed I get there's no Synaptics touchpad...
It's very difficult to work with KDE without the ability for scrolling and a right mouse button.

Is here anybody who successfully got this working on a MacBook?
Did he install the synaptics driver?
What about special points in xorg.conf?

apoth · Post by **apoth** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 12:18 pm

ajordan wrote: Is here anybody who successfully got this working on a MacBook?
Did he install the synaptics driver?
What about special points in xorg.conf?

Plenty of us. Check blscreen's xorg.conf in this thread (just a page before this one, if I remember correctly). Also, check out the points about synaptics installation in the wiki (also written by blscreen). I've gotten the synaptics driver to work, and the two finger scrolling. Everything you need to know is in the last 2-3 pages of this thread and at the end of the wiki.

Cheers,
Apoth

ajordan · Post by **ajordan** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 2:10 pm

It's a bit embarrassing, I tried always scrolling with two fingers. But the driver enables scrolling on the right side of the touchpad. This isn't what I looked for, but works very well, too. It's quite nice running three OS's with different behaviour on such a small (by size

) machine. Gentoo runs fastest, but lifetime on battery could be longer

.

slaq · Post by **slaq** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 2:50 pm

@ajordan

some hints for longer runtime:

* dim your display as much as tolerable
* shut your display off via DPMS when you're not using it (xscreensaver does it for you)
* don't use expensive 3d-screensavers or other gimmicks that waste battery
* don't set hdd-sleep-timeout too short (modern drives don't eat much when idle but spinup is expensive)
* use cpu frequency scaling (builtin kernel governors are better than powernowd and friends)
* don't use the cdrom (eats out your battery in no time)
* disable wifi when you're not using it

i get about 3,5h out of the macbook under normal use.
this is about the same as in OSX.

ajordan · Post by **ajordan** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 3:16 pm

Apart from shutting off my display via DMPS I'm benefitting from these features. But I'm supprised that your Macbook only runs 3,5h with MacOS X. I get up to 5 hours lifetime with WLAN enabled and display dimmed to 30%. I often use my MacBook for surfing in the internet with that conditions.

ErniBrown · Post by **ErniBrown** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 3:51 pm

ok, I've got problems with touchpad patching:

I compile gentoo-sources 2.6.17-r7: first the link on the wiki is broken (404). So I downloaded appletouch from sourceforge (upper link).

Then I tried to patch, but i got this:

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Pigpen linux # patch -pl < appletouch.patch
patch: **** strip count l is not a number

Searching the web for another patch I found this one

Same output and no patching.

Ideas? Someone has the right patch?

slaq · Post by **slaq** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 4:08 pm

ajordan wrote:Apart from shutting off my display via DMPS I'm benefitting from these features. But I'm supprised that your Macbook only runs 3,5h with MacOS X. I get up to 5 hours lifetime with WLAN enabled and display dimmed to 30%. I often use my MacBook for surfing in the internet with that conditions.

Hmm did you measure your time in OSX?
I think the little battery indicator in the titlebar is a bit too optimistic, for me the figures displayed there vary wildly.

But it could be that OSX really takes better advantage of some more advanced ACPI feats and
thus manages to run longer. The automatic display-dim definately helps, too.
My personal impression didn't show much difference between OSX and linux, though.

ErniBrown · Post by **ErniBrown** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 4:18 pm

Really noob error, sorry. l instead of 1

ajordan · Post by **ajordan** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 5:14 pm

@slaq
I own a MacBook, which usually has no sensor for auto-dim. I won't discuss about a half hour, but significantly more than 3,5h are possible. I think it's not comparable to a MacBook Pro because of it's larger display, it's GPU and possibly more RAM.

apoth · Post by **apoth** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 12:50 am

Interesting. About those problems with sleep mode I had earlier... they resolved themselves when I cleared the PRAM (option+command+n+p at startup, if I remember correctly)! Kind of weird, but perfectly within the range of reasonable possibilities. Can any of you explain this behavior?

blscreen · Post by **blscreen** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 3:50 pm

apoth wrote:About those problems with sleep mode I had earlier... they resolved themselves when I cleared the PRAM (option+command+n+p at startup, if I remember correctly)!

Nice information! You should mention this fix in the wiki... Might help quite a few.

Gentoo on a Macbook?

800x600 and 640x480 fullscreen modes in X?

new problems