Fedora 17 on new Macbook Air

[eric232]

endbk,
Great post. Lots of detail.

Did you use Bootcamp during the intall? Or native UEFI?

[enbdk]

endbk,
Great post. Lots of detail.

Did you use Bootcamp during the intall? Or native UEFI?

Thanks. I didn't use boot camp I used native UEFI. The steps I went through were:

1. Decrease OS X partition by half to leave unfromatted space for Fedora
2. Use "livecd-iso-to-disk" to create a usb stick with an F17 live iso image on it
3. Boot into Fedora by holding down "option" at start up (had to add "nointremap" option to grub2 to boot)
4. Install F17 by instructing the installer to grab all the free space
5. Done

For both OS X and Fedora to show up at boot time I need to hold down the "option" key, otherwise it jumps straight into Grub2. I think installing Refit or Refind would fix this so that holding down "option" isn't required, I might do this once I've ironed out all the other creases.

As I said in my previous post I'm still using an older kernel as the latest one I have doesn't boot. I'm going to play around with it a little more tonight. Something I didn't say in my first post is that the camera works fine (tested by opening "Cheese" program in Fedora). I haven't properly tested the battery life in Fedora yet, but I haven't fixed the aforementioned applesmc issue and I was thinking that might affect things like battery life. Battery life 'seems' ok though.

---------- Post added at 07:11 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:00 PM ----------

Originally Posted by slopsbucket

Hi endbk,

don't know if this is of any help to you or not. I installed Fedora on a 2009 Mac Pro, figured a lot of it out myself. I used a different kernel parameter than PompeyBlue did.

Instead of "noacpi" I used "nogpt" which forces mbr type boot same as is required for Windows.

I never had to feed it any other parameters, none to grub either. It just works exactly the same as it does on a PC. This is true for both F16 and F17.

I am UEFI booting Fedora so would "nogpt" be appropriate for me?

Originally Posted by slopsbucket

As for a system monitor, I like gkrellm. But you need to do a right click on it and go into it's configuration to get it to display temperatures - Built Ins/Sensors/Temperatures.

Cool. I will download gkrellm tonight and try it out.

Originally Posted by slopsbucket

Forgot to add - if you try grub2-mkconfig it should rewrite your boot menu with everything that it can find that is bootable including every kernel and that kernel's corresponding failsafe mode.

Thanks for the suggestion I will try this out tonight. Since I'm UEFI booting Fedora I'm not sure exactly how to run the grub2-mkconfig command to get the desired outputs. I'll do a bit of reading about it tonight.

[eric232]

Good stuff. Thanks for posting.

The "nointremap" is something I did not try. I was using "noapic" and also trying "nomodeset" (gui kept going smugy and weird).

---------- Post added at 03:52 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:16 AM ----------

I forgot to ask. Did you use the 32-bit Fedora, or 64-bit?

[enbdk]

Originally Posted by eric232

I forgot to ask. Did you use the 32-bit Fedora, or 64-bit?

64 bit fedora 17

[Raxor]

For me (MBA2011) the following instructions worked fine to install Fedora 17:

- Install OS X Mountain Lion to begin with.
- Let it create some 50GB free space (20 should also work).
- Create the Live Media: (in OS X Terminal) dd if=fedora.iso of=/dev/disk1 bs=1m
(https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Ho...%20USB%20Stick)
- Boot Fedora 17 Desktop Edition Bootable Live Media (64-bit) with rEFIt and use the free space to install it (let fedora do the partitioning).
- Use the default settings when unconfident about what to do and finish installation.

[enbdk]

Though I'd post an update since I've made a bit of progress since I last posted. I used yum to erase the newer kernel I had (3.4.6-2) and installed the latest kernel using yum (which was 3.5.0-2). I checked and this time an initramfs got created without any extra trickery needed. I rebooted into the new kernel and it works fine, except booting still requires the "nointremap" flag for grub.

Next, I applied this patch to the module applesmc.c and now the applesmc read/write issue is fixed! On boot there are no read/write errors, the keyboard lighting works, and Gkrellm now detects more of the hardware features than before. Also, the battery was bugging out a bit before this patch was applied and now it seems to be behaving.

The only thing left to do now is to tackle the "nointremap" boot option. If anyone knows more than me about boot options and the like I'd welcome some advice on how to start learning about this issue and ways of fixing it. I'm still concerned about having things disabled that perhaps shouldn't be.

cheers

[enbdk]

I found some info on the nointremap option here, and it says something about the intel IOMMU (IO Memory Management Unit). So then I googled around a bit more and found this page on intel's site about interrupt remapping and the IOMMU. It reads as though the main thing interrupt remapping is used for is to handle situations where an OS is running inside a virtual machine. Since I am not running a Virtual Machine, I wonder if using this option is not so detrimental for me. I would welcome some input on this from someone who knows more than me.

[chrismurphy]

[QUOTE=enbdk;1594782]I am UEFI booting Fedora so would "nogpt" be appropriate for me?/quote]

No. GPT is part of the UEFI spec, and Macs by default only use GPT. If the disk has Mac OS on it already, anaconda will leave it GPT it will not convert it MBR, nor would you want it converted MBR anyway.

Since I'm UEFI booting Fedora I'm not sure exactly how to run the grub2-mkconfig command to get the desired outputs.

Not applicable because when UEFI booting, Grub Legacy EFI is used, not GRUB2. This is expected to change in Fedora 18.

[enbdk]

Originally Posted by chrismurphy

Not applicable because when UEFI booting, Grub Legacy EFI is used, not GRUB2. This is expected to change in Fedora 18.

I figured something was awry there, because I tried using grub2-mkconfig and it killed grub. Made a copy of the config file before I ran it though luckily.

[chrismurphy]

You shouldn't even have the grub2 package on an F17 UEFI installation.

[enbdk]

Possibly I downloaded it by mistake then. grub2-mkconfig is there now.

[BerndM]

Hello to all! Thank you very much for your posts. I am new here and I followed the procedure enbdk suggested to install Fedora 17 on a macbook. It worked fine on my MBA (13'' mid 2011). I am not that experienced with bootloaders and the details of Linux, but I will read more and hopefully can contribute more in the future.

The one thing that seems also to be important besides the issues suggested here are also the power saving issues.
I installed tuned and got that daemon to work. But sadly at the moment it seems not possible to get ASPM to work, which seems to be more important.

[PompeyBlue]

What should the applesmc patch look like ? I've tried this:



index 0162f55..f41585e 100644
— a/drivers/hwmon/applesmc.c
+++ b/drivers/hwmon/applesmc.c
@@ -54,7 +54,7 @@
#define APPLESMC_MAX_DATA_LENGTH 32
/* wait up to 32 ms for a status change. */
-#define APPLESMC_MIN_WAIT 0×0040
+#define APPLESMC_MIN_WAIT 0×0010
#define APPLESMC_MAX_WAIT 0×8000

#define APPLESMC_STATUS_MASK 0x0f
–
1.7.11.1



But keep getting:

patch: **** malformed patch at line 8: /* wait up to 32 ms for a status change. */

[BerndM]

Ok, lets give away my incompetence regarding Linux. It may sound silly, but what is
an applesmc patch? Where can I read more about this?

addition:

Ahhhh now I know something about the applesmc, i.e. the apple System Management Controller.

[BerndM]

There is an important question:

Has anybody solved the problem installing only Fedora 17/18 on a Macbook Air (f.e. on the Mid 2011 one)?

I think I would like to change completely to Fedora.

Has anybody done that yet?

Thank you very much for any answer...

Bernd