Archlinux on Macbook Pro (8,1)

I have a 2011 Macbook Pro (8,1) and I'm looking to install Arch. I was running Ubuntu on my previous MBP (5,5) but when upgrading, discovered that the graphics and wireless drivers are not available for this maching.
Here are the specs:
2.3 GHz i5 (Sandybridge)
4 GB DDR3
Intel HD 3000 GPU
Broadcom BCM43xx Network card (Airport Extreme)
It seems as if because the Sandybridge system is so new, it's not supported. Does anyone have any experience with this? I looked at this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBook, but it didn't go up to 8,1. Any help is appreciated. Thanks

Perhaps you would get better results with CTKArchLive flash install to ram.
If so, please advise in this thread.
EDIT: Well in order to obtain your goal you need to "trick" the EFI of the macbook pro..what you need to do is to use a cd to load initrd and vmlinuz kernel from you can enable USB flash access ..From there on it's easy ..
More detailed information can be found here :
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/usb-boot-c … buntu-810/
Hope this helps
The above copied from another forum..............................
EDIT2: Probably the info above is too old.
One item of interest says that the boot media should be vfat. In the case of CTKArchLive it is udf. I use the flash Compact Flash in a true IDE mode using a sata to CF adapter and it boots as a hdd either from USB2.0 or the Sata adapter.
CTKArchLive is a hybrid .iso permitting the above behavior.
Last edited by lilsirecho (2011-05-18 23:58:57)

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Switching to archlinux on MacBook Pro 13'' (december 2010)

Hi all!
I've been missing a lot archlinux since i bought a 13 inches MacBook Pro in december.
So i started looking around on the forum get some informations about using Arch on the MB, and i'm very happy that all runs smoothly without issues.
Before moving, tho, i still have some questions.
I bought this laptop for three reasons: the battery, the mobility and the multitouch.
I do a lot of developing, always moving from university to office to home, and i needed a robust and quick laptop with a lot of battery time, other than low weight.
I use it for django and python developing (so, also, mysql server) and c/c++/java for university projects, and with those i am sure i'll have no problem!
I need to have windows installed too (just for steam, actually, and dawn of war 2), to be sure i can use the mini display port (with hdmi, for the external monitor and movies) and have no problems with the graphic chipset (just to play hd videos on the monitor)
If i'm leaving osx (lot of bloatness) for arch, i'll be back to my minimal configuration with urxvt, xmonad (or awesome), irssi, vim and mpd, xrandr to handle the multi monitors and old proud conkeror as browser.
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Thanks all in advance for your opinion!

Can't seem to find mini display port.
It seems others have been successful, alas I am not. I am attempting to attach an external monitor on my aluminum body macbook running Arch, but the mini display port seems to be evading detection.
Output of lspci:
[09:44:10] tds3 ~ $ lspci
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)
Output of xrandr -q: (with external monitor attached and powered on)
[09:49:18] tds3 ~ $ xrandr -q
xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 175, current 1280 x 800, maximum 1280 x 800
default connected 1280x800+0+0 0mm x 0mm
1280x800 50.0*
1024x768 51.0 52.0
832x624 53.0
800x600 54.0 55.0 56.0 57.0 58.0
720x400 59.0
700x525 60.0
640x512 61.0 62.0
640x480 63.0 64.0 65.0 66.0 67.0
640x400 68.0
640x350 69.0
576x432 70.0
512x384 71.0 72.0 73.0 74.0 75.0
416x312 76.0
400x300 77.0 78.0 79.0 80.0 81.0
360x200 82.0
320x240 83.0 84.0 85.0 86.0
320x200 87.0
320x175 88.0
Does this make sense?

ArchLinux on Macbook pro mid 2012 - Internet wifi dilema

Hello Everyone,
I've been using Arch Linux with i3wm in my machine for the past 20 days and I am really enjoying and learning a lot about everything. I have a real problem with my wifi, I can connect but after some minutes or even hours (sometimes) I need to turn it down and on again because it just stops working. I already searched a lot in the forum and I am getting stuck with this situation.
I am using
Wicd 1.7.3 (bzr-r933)
but already tried the networkmanager (nm-applet) and it's even worst.
I am posting some informations about my drivers.
lspci -vnn | grep 14e4:
01:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM57765 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe [14e4:16b4] (rev 10)
Subsystem: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM57765 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe [14e4:16b4]
01:00.1 SD Host controller [0805]: Broadcom Corporation BCM57765/57785 SDXC/MMC Card Reader [14e4:16bc] (rev 10) (prog-if 01)
Subsystem: Broadcom Corporation Device [14e4:0000]
02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4331 802.11a/b/g/n [14e4:4331] (rev 02)
The ip link output is weird for me... the name is kind of messy:
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT group default
link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
2: enp1s0f0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state DOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
link/ether 68:5b:35:a1:c6:dd brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
3: wlp2s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP mode DORMANT group default qlen 1000
link/ether a8:86:dd:93:8a:9a brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
I tried to use the b43-firmware and b43-legacy but that just worked for a while. I follow the Broadcom Arch wiki page and installed the broadcom-wl. Right now I have the following modules loaded relate to internet connection:
lsmod
Module Size Used by
bcm5974 20480 0 (not sure if related to internet)
wl 6303744 0
cfg80211 483328 1 wl (neither this one)
I also disabled the dhcpcd.service because I read that it may cause some issues.
I imagine that this problem is due to some interferences happening between the packages I have installed to handle the wifi connection. I really need some guidance here.
Thank you guys. This is my first post in here and any Arch community forum, so if there are some wrong formatting above, please point out.
Thx!!

Hello,
I'm no pro, started using Arch recently myself. Not sure about disabling dhcpcd.service. However, you might try blacklisting unneeded modules, more on that in https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Kernel_modules. You may need to blacklist b43 and b43-legacy.
Here's how my /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf looks like:
blacklist bcma-pci-bridge
blacklist ssb
blacklist b43
blacklist brcmsmac
blacklist brcmfmac
blacklist bcma
install bcma-pci-bridge /bin/false
install ssb /bin/false
install b43 /bin/false
install brcmsmac /bin/false
install brcmfmac /bin/false
install bcma /bin/false
Last edited by riddle00 (2015-05-26 15:28:46)

Problem installing archlinux on macbook pro retina

Currently i don't have ethernet cable but i would like to install archlinux on my macbook machine. I face a problem that i will need to install broadcom-wl or broadcom-wl-dkms, on either case i will need linux-headers for that kernel which seems missing in bootable archlinux made from archlinux-2014.06.01-dual.iso. Now linux-header package available in repository is new version i.e linux-headers-3.15.1-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz. I don't know how can i enable my wireless driver and install archlinux? Why installation media is so abstract that it is very difficult without internet. Is there some good iso file available and i am not sure about manjaro distribution having their own repository.

Thanks for your response. I have downloaded the files from base-devel group and i can install them but I am not able to install linux-headers for particular kernel in bootable usb as i will need to build broadcom-wl from AUR first. Can i install all files in hard disk without using
pacstrap -i /mnt base base-devel
safely.

Is KVM VGA Passthrough Possible on Macbook Pro Mid 2014?

I've been using Arch on and off for a couple years on different hardware, and this time I'm trying to get it to work semi-flawlessly on my mid 2014 Macbook Pro. My Linux skills are meager, so I need some help understanding if VGA passthrough is possible on this machine, and if it is, how to set it up. I have hope that it might work after reading this blog and the Arch forums. An outline of my current setup follows. I will also document progress and research for anyone who might want to try this in the future.
Here are the specifications for this machine:
Processor: 2.5 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory: 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics: Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB, Nvidia GT 750M 2 GB
I have successfully dual-booted Mac OS X Yosemite and Arch with EFI on a btrfs partition using this blog and the wiki as starting points. Somlo's research also helped. All the basic functionality works (networking, WiFi, etc.), and I am able to boot the physical Arch partition as a Virtualbox VM with the help of the wiki. However, I'm having trouble with getting the integrated Intel graphics to work. The following command:
lspci | grep VGA
prints the Nvidia card specifications, and nothing about the Intel graphics.
Reading this blog, it looks like someone had to apply a "grub gmux" patch to grub to disable the Nvidia card at boot. I feel uncomfortable installing anything other than the official Arch packages, so I have to know if installing a patched grub is still necessary, and if installing it would still allow me to use VGA passthrough in KVM.
My ambitious to-do list looks like this:
1. Dual-boot Mac OS X and Arch with btrfs. -done
2. Setup the physical Arch partition to boot in Virtualbox. -done
3. Get Intel graphics to work on Arch ideally with OpenGL support. -done
4. Get Enlightenment working as the desktop environment on Arch. -done
5. Get Qemu+KVM to boot off the physical Mac OS X partition. -tbd
6. Enable VGA passthrough for Mac OS X from Qemu+KVM. -tbd
7. Install Windows as a VM in Qemu+KVM. -tbd
8. Enable VGA passthrough for Windows from Qemu+KVM. -tbd
9. Work and do research on Mac OS X from Arch, play hardcore 3D games on WIndows from Arch, play around with Arch, and live happily ever after. -tbd
Can anyone help me with this? Thanks in advance for any hints/input.
Edit:
The Ubuntu forums has something about getting the two graphics cards to be recognised by using `refind` instead of `grub`. I was able to set up `refind` to boot using the `efi-stub`, but:
$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Crystal Well DRAM Controller (rev 08)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Crystal Well PCI Express x16 Controller (rev 08)
00:01.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Crystal Well PCI Express x8 Controller (rev 08)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB xHCI (rev 05)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #1 (rev d5)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #3 (rev d5)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #4 (rev d5)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #5 (rev d5)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation HM87 Express LPC Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller (rev 05)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK107M [GeForce GT 750M Mac Edition] (rev a1)
01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GK107 HDMI Audio Controller (rev a1)
03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4360 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter (rev 03)
04:00.0 Multimedia controller: Broadcom Corporation 720p FaceTime HD Camera
05:00.0 SATA controller: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Apple PCIe SSD (rev 01)
06:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 156d
07:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 156d
07:03.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 156d
07:04.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 156d
07:05.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 156d
07:06.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 156d
08:00.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Device 156c
still only shows the Nvidia card. The boot options suggested by this blog did not change anything. However, this very helpful discussion led me to this on-going project. I patched the kernel according the instructions in the said project's `readme`, and Arch is now able to see the two graphics cards and an extra Intel audio controller.
$ lspci
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Crystal Well Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 08)[/bold]
00:03.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Crystal Well HD Audio Controller (rev 08)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK107M [GeForce GT 750M Mac Edition] (rev a1)
Also, I was able to fire up Enlightenment using the Intel graphics card and `0xbb`'s `gpu-switch` script. After using some post-installation tips from this, the computer started getting hot. I followed this thread to get it back to normal.
Edit:
So I finally got some time to experiment on this. I ended up installing Gnome 3 after trying out Enlightenment, KDE Plasma 5, and Cinnamon. I thought Gnome 3 and Cinnamon had the best Hi-DPI support of those four. Cinnamon's look was too much trouble for me to configure, so I ended up choosing Gnome 3.
To achieve the graphics card passthrough, I tried setting up and starting a VM in `virt-manager`, but starting the VM would cause Arch to freeze. Finally, I tried following the instructions on the wiki, this thread, and the Arch forums. I haven't yet tried booting the Windows installer, but the following are the steps I took so far:
1. Uninstall all `nvidia` drivers from my system.
2. Blacklist the `nouveau` driver.
3. Add `pci-stub` to the modules array in `mkinitcpio.conf`.
4. Recreate the `initramfs`.
5. Add `intel_iommu=on pci-stub.ids=10de:0fe9,10de:0e1b,8086:156c` to the `refind.conf` `options` line.
- These three IDs are ones for the Nvidia graphics, Nvidia sound, and the "Intel Corporation Device" (probably the HDMI port, or something related to the
ethernet card), which belong to the same "IOMMU group". What was curious was that a Gigabit ethernet controller would appear in the IOMMU group iff I had
an ethernet cable connected to my thunderbolt port. I don't know if I have to add the ID for this, but so far there are no complaints about it in `dmesg`.
6. Install `ovmf-svn` from the AUR.
6. Follow the "Binding a device to vfio-pci" section documented at https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=162768.
7. Follow the "Testing if its working out" section documented at https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=162768.
So far, the test at step 7 is failing -- I get a `vfio-pci 0000:01:00.0: Invalid ROM contents` complaint in `dmesg`, and I see a prompt in the `qemu` window. I'm supposed to be getting a black `qemu` window, and a prompt on an external monitor which I haven't connected yet. I read the comments on this blog about graphics card ROM and EFI compatibility, and it looks like my graphics card ROM can't be read. I also read that the graphics card ROM would only be read once by qemu/KVM and saved as a file for later use, so all I need to do to get around that is pass a snapshot of the ROM of the Nvidia GT 750M card to qemu/KVM. Apparently, "You can download the 750m rom files directly from Lenovo's website on the support page" according to this thread, but all I see is this. I will continue hunting around for a ROM file for this graphics card.
Last edited by rb3 (2015-06-05 02:01:20)

It`s not beacuse of the case. I have the same problem with a macbook pro retina 15 late 2013 (I7 - 2.3 Ghz, 16 GB, 512 SSD, GT750M) with windows 8.1 on bootcamp. The temperature is higher than yosemite. It gets easily at 80 celsius in a demanding game, while on yosemite it barely reaches 55-60 under heavy load. It`s beacuse of windows, and these are the temperatures, I got the same average 55-60 in windows and 45 celsius in yosemite. I read on the forums and I tried evend with a cooler pad. But it doesn`t seem to be any improvement with lowering the temperature in windows.

[SOLVED] Unable to load GRUB on MacBook PRO with GPT partition

Hi,
I have made an install of Arch on my MacBook Pro. I have made the installation of Arch to work before but I decided to make a clean install since I changed WM. I have written down my instructions thoroughly and followed them like a slave. It worked before but now it just decided not to work. When I was starting my Mac before I ended up at the GRUB menu being able to chose to load Arch. If I pressed the alt button I was able to load OS X. But after the reinstall the computer did not load GRUB.
I have reinstalled OS X again just to make sure everything is clean, especially the boot partition.
During the installation I mounted the partitions like so (sda4 = boot, sda5 = root, sda6=swap, sda7=home)
# mount /dev/sda5 /mnt
# mkdir /mnt/boot
# mount /dev/sda4 /mnt/boot
# mkdir /mnt/home
# mount /dev/sda7 /mnt/home
# mkdir -p /mnt/boot/efi
# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot/efi
After installing base and base-devel and modifying the system I did the following:
# pacman -S grub-efi-x86_64
# modprobe dm-mod
# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=arch_grub --recheck --debug
# cp /usr/share/locale/en\@quot/LC_MESSAGES/grub.mo /boot/grub/locale/en.mo
NB! I executed these commands with /dev/sda1 still mounted on /boot/efi in the chrooted environment. This put the arch_grub bootloader-id under /boot/efi/EFI on /dev/sda1. I made sure to remove the old /boot/efi/EFI/arch_grub before I executed this command. This way is a little bit different from the Wiki but as I said before, /dev/sda1 was already mounted on /mnt/boot/efi when I followed these instructions.
Without installing the os-prober (I don't want to have OS X in grub) I then executed
# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
exited, unmounted and rebooted. After the reinstall, suddenly the computer does not load grub? Instead I just end up booting into OS X.
Does anyone have any clue on what to do here? I have tried to reinstall a couple of times without success.
Last edited by archolith (2013-06-30 07:22:10)

Hi,
I have found a solution to the problem. When you are booting from the cd if you look carefully you will see that the system is missing firmware for module aic94xx and bfa. This error message also pops up when you are creating the initial ram disk environment with:
# mkinitcpio -p linux
To make it work I did as followed:
1. I have rEFInd installed
2. I booted from the disk and mounted /dev/sda1 somewhere and made sure to remove the old ../EFI/arch_grub that was lying there
3. I continued with a normal install making sure NOT to mount /dev/sda1 on /mnt/boot/efi before generating the fstab
4. I chrooted into /mnt and followed the instructions up to setting up the network (in my case # systemctl enable [email protected])
5. Before I created the initial ram disk environment I installed aic94xx and bfa from the AUR as root (maybe not 100% correct)
5.a https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/aic94xx-firmware/
5.b https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/bfa-firmware/
6. I then ran the code # mkinitcpio -p linux, this time without the error messages I had gotten before
7. I set the root password and continued with these instructions:
7.a https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ma … Bootloader
8. When I installed grub the system said that it could not find a boot manager but I continued with the instructions
When I rebooted the computer everything went fine, I booted into rEFInd followed by grub. Can anyone with the same problem please follow these instructions and report back. It is good to see anyone else succeed before I report this thread as SOLVED. If you have any questions I will try to help.

Xorg doesn't start on Macbook Pro 4,1

I've just installed Arch on my Macbook Pro 4,1 (Early 2008).
The machine has this graphics card:
VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G84M [GeForce 8600 GT] (rev a1)
I've installed "nvidia" package driver, launched "nvidia-xconfig" but when I try to launch:
X -config /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Xorg gives me some errors and doesn't starts X.
http://i.imgur.com/AtzHf77l.jpg
Ideas?
-- mod edit: read the Forum Etiquette and only post thumbnails http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/For … s_and_Code [jwr] --

Yeah it is quite a mess... but thats what you get when you try to use hardware that picks and chooses the bits of the UEFI standard it wants to include.
So like most UEFI systems, Mac(book)s are able to boot their own system with it's EFI setup. It *can* also be used to boot other systems, but setting it up is unique to Macs. So for the purpose of "bootcamp", Apple introduced a bios compatibility mode. When it was introduced, there was no real windows UEFI prevalence (existence?) at that point. So that is how they made this possible.
But the compatibility mode is not turned on by default. OSX uses GPT (according to the standard and everything in this case), but when it makes a "bootcamp" partition it adds to the GPT a MBR partition table (ms-dos) with partitions. According to the GPT spec, there is the actual GPT partition table, but there is also the inclusion of a MBR with a single partition spanning the whole disk. This is to protect the disk from being overwritten by non-GPT aware tools (like fdisk was until recently). So a hybrid MBR simply adds partitions to the ms-dos partition table that (hoepfully) line up with at lease the first few partitions of the GPT. When this is present, the machine will enable the bios compatibility mode.
Booting the Mac with EFI will have no bearing on the Arch Linux installation that is installed in bios compatibility mode. It will use its own bootloader and everything. So there should be no issue. It is probably good to use something like rEFInd in order to give yourself a nice interface with which to select between the two though. The other boot loaders and/or boot managers don't have the ability to recognize both EFI and bios bootloaders.

Screen flicker and trackpad issues on macbook pro 8 2

Hi I have a macbook pro (8,2) 15 inch with a high rez anti glare display. The display stared to flicker after living my computer open in arch for about 30 min. I tried rebooting and it even started happening in the boot screen and in mac os x. The last thing I did before it happened was setup pommed in arch and leve my computer open.
Also this has sort of been asked but my question is a little different. I am trying to set up my multitouch trackpad. I installed mtrack from the aur but changing the settings does nothing. What I want to accomplish is this. 1) I want to right click by clicking (not tapping) with one finger in the button right corner of my trackpad. 2) I need to disable tap to click!!!! 3) I want to be able to click the trackpad with my thump and use my index finger to drag instead of only my thumb. for example I want to click on a window border with my thumb and move it around with my index finger while holding down my thumb.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Glad you figured it out. Sorry to see no one else chimed in.
I have arch on a macbook as well. I have never seen a need for the many elaborate packages which claim to make these things work. If they're working then stick with it - but if you need another option, I've had great luck with simply properly configuring synaptics:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Touchpad_Synaptics

[Bounty] Free Macbook Pro to get Arch Linux running on Amazon's EC2

First, the details:
I will purchase a lowest–end Macbook Pro 13″ ($US 1,200 on Apple's store, new) for the first person to deliver to me a working set of step–by–step instructions for installing the latest Arch Linux on top of Amazon's EC2 platform.
Caveats & Rules:
- I don't care how long it takes you—there's a good chance I'm doing something absolutely stupid in my noobishness that's causing the problems I've been experiencing; if it takes you half an hour to make a working AMI, and produce instructions to do such… you just won yourself a Macbook Pro for half an hour's work. Booyah!
- Again, I say, I don't care how long it takes you—if you don't produce a working set of instructions, there will be no payout, even if you spend 200 hours trying (as I already have!). It's a bounty, not a work contract d-:
- You must provide me with instructions that work for me (as I don't intend to use your AMI, but rather modify the steps that worked for you a bit at a time until I arrive at an AMI configured exactly as I want it). If you arrive at a working AMI, and can reproduce your steps successfully locally, but they can't be made to work for me, I may be able to go about procuring alternative hardware for myself on which to preform the steps, or taking other measures to reproduce your environment; but the bottom line is I will not shell out until I can, personally, produce a working AMI running Arch Linux.
- The instructions are considered to be "working" when I can successfully SSH into the root account on an instance instantiated from an AMI created by following the instructions using the key generated by EC2.
- Your instructions must work both for x86_32 and x86_64 instance types; however, this shouldn't be too much of a problem, as (barring any weirdness) anything that works on x86_32 should be easily made to work on x86_64.
- Instructions that involve instantiating an intermediate bundling host (say, a CentOS or Fedora Core instance) and then installing Arch to a loopback filesystem using a statically–built pacman are much preferred to instructions that involve me having to install and package Arch locally and then ship it up to S3, because my upstream is unimaginably slow and I eventually will need to create something between eight and twenty different AMIs (see below). But anything that works will be accepted.
- If you don't want a Macbook Pro, alternative payment methods may be arranged, though you need to contact me before you start and arrange these, as there's only so much I can do.
- If you are in any way confused or unsure of what I'm offering here, please contact me before you start (see below for contact info)
Backstory:
I set up the first AMI for Arch Linux on Amazon, but unfortunately, I did some really stupid things (hey, I was completely new to Linux at the time, gimmie a break!). The root filesystem was limited to 1GB, there was a whole bunch of software that really was completely unnecessary (WiFi drivers? on a virtualized server? seriously?), there were no kernel modules provided… and so on.
So, after running all my stuff on instances of that for a while, I finally got fed up and found the time to start setting up a newer, cleaner AMI. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of deleting my old AMI before starting work on the first. Now I find myself completely unable to create an AMI that will work whatsoever, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why.
I've already invested 200 or so hours of my personal time since deleting my original, broken AMI; I'm very fed up and in badly need of working instances. I tried every method I could think of; running the Arch installer from a LiveCD locally and then bundling the running (and thus proved working) Arch install and shipping it off to S3; installing Arch on a loopback filesystem locally, cloning it to a local partition, booting to it to ensure it works, and shipping it off to S3; installing Arch on a loopback filesystem on a remote bundling host running CentOS or whatever and then shipping it off to S3… I've tried installing nothing but the essentials, I've tried installing everything the installer offers… I've tried to do my best to remember the exact steps I took the first time around, years ago, and reproduce them exactly… nothing has worked.
If I take EC2 out of the equation, and install the images I've prepared locally, they work. If I take Arch out of the equation, and install, say, CentOS instead, and then ship it off to EC2, it works. The only time I have problems is when I attempt to install Arch Linux specifically on EC2 specifically; the exact use–case I need.
I've run into a lot of problems along the way, and fixed them as I go, but I universally end up with an AMI that, once instantiated, does not successfully boot. Worse yet, I get absolutely no output from the console (provided by the ec2-get-console command–line tool) to help me debug the problem. I can't give you any more specifics beyond this to help you, because I don't want to insinuate some idea that will cause you to make some little stupid mistake that I also made, thus dooming the project.
Contact:
For more info of any sort, please hit me up on Google Talk or Jabber (… or any other XMPP–federated chat service, or AIM, or ICQ, or MSN, or whatever you like, they all use the same address anyway) at the following address:
[email protected]
Edit: I should point out that it would be good form to post here if you're going to make a stab at it, so interested parties know how many people are already making attempts.
Last edited by elliottcable (2009-07-25 03:59:46)

drtoki wrote:
http://blog.mudy.info/2009/04/archlinux-ec2-public-ami/
lolwat
from fryguy
Public AMIs aren't what I need, because I need to mass–produce quite a few AMIs with different custom configurations for different purposes; so I have to be able to start from scratch and arrive at a working AMI *myself*.
As for the script, I'm sitting down to play with it now; it looks just about exactly like what I've been doing so far. Maybe there's some small thing he did differently that will make it work. Here's hoping it works for me; that'll be a real load off my chest.

[SOLVED] Linux kernel 3.6.2-1 issues on Macbook Pro 4,1

After my recent system upgrade to linux-3.6.2-1, I ran into a couple noticeable issues on my laptop. The first was the inability to use "mount -i /home/user", which is in my .bash_profile, to mount my encrypted home directory at login. An error message would respond saying that eCryptfs does not support aes. I was able to manually mount it with "mount -t ecryptfs /home/user/.private /home/user", but could not figure out the issue. I also noticed my laptop running a hotter that usual and found that my fans were not changing according to the sensors. I use macfanctld from the AUR to change my fan speed and killing its process and restarting it had no effect. I then decided my recent system upgrade may be at fault so I rebooted into linux-lts and the issues were solved. I then downgraded linux-3.6.2-1, linux-headers-3.6.2-1, nvidia-304.51-4, virtualbox-guest-modules- 4.2.0-6, and virtualbox-host-modules-4.2.0-6 to linux-3.5.6-1, linux-headers-3.5.6-1, nvidia-304.51-3, virtualbox-guest-modules-4.2.0-5, and virtualbox-host-modules-4.2.0-5. These issues are now fixed on my system with the downgrade and I have blocked them from upgrade in pacman.conf. I did not notice any other issues.
Macbook Pro 4,1 (2008)
Graphics: NVIDIA Corporation G84 [GeForce 8600M GT]
uname: Linux archlinux-MBP 3.5.6-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun Oct 7 19:30:49 CEST 2012 x86_64 GNU/Linux
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T9500 @ 2.60GHz
I felt it was necessary to post this issue, especially if another person also has it, so that it may be resolved in future kernel updates. If there are any logs or other information people need to help resolve this issue or if I should notify a mod of this or something, please let me know.
Last edited by mojojojo (2012-10-28 21:15:37)

After further investigation the issues were easily solved.
Regarding my encrypted home directory, I checked kernel.log and found that ecryptfs did not like the argument ecrypt_key_bytes=16 and that manual mount has the variable name ecryptfs_key_bytes=16. So I simply changed that in my fstab. Auto-mounting my home directory works nicely again.
In regards to the fan issue, I had to alter /etc/macfanctl.conf because the output of the sensors command (lm-sensors) contained some negative values which may have affected average temperatures and such. I excluded those temperatures and played with the constraints more until the fans spun faster when I felt they should.
Still found it strange that some of these issues happened during kernel upgrades, but glad to have solved the issues.

Installing Arch on a MacBook Pro Retina

I've spent many hours trying to install Arch on my macbook pro to no avail (over 14 times I've tried), I've learned a lot through this process, but apparently not enough. I get the system installed and blessed (in OSX), but when I try to boot into it I get stuck on "loading initial ram disk." (Previous errors were a read-only file system, but this one is latest) My hunch tells me it has something to do with the mkinitcpio.conf (I was told to add "ahci" to MODULES and "keyboard" after "autodetect" in "HOOKS") and I know the mkinitcpio -p linux command creates the initial ram disk environment (thanks to the docs).
Here are my steps, the bash scripts I created to do all this. Does anything look out of the ordinary to anyone?
cgdisk /dev/sda #(setup partitions as below, sda1-3 not shown)
#partitions: (sda4 == 128MB Hfs+, sda5 == 256MB Linux (boot), sda6 == 30GB Linux (root), sda7 == 70GB #Linux Home)
#first script
mkfs.ext2 /dev/sda5
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda6
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda7
mount /dev/sda6 /mnt
mkdir /mnt/boot && mount /dev/sda5 /mnt/boot
mkdir /mnt/home && mount /dev/sda7 /mnt/home
pacstrap /mnt base base-devel
genfstab -p /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
arch-chroot /mnt /bin/bash
#second script
#install wifi (dmesg | grep firmware still says no firmware tho...)
pacman -S wget b43-fwcutter
wget https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/b4/b … are.tar.gz
tar -zxf b43-firmware.tar.gz
cd b43-firmware
makepkg -si --asroot #kosher?
rmmod b43 && modprobe b43
echo arch > /etc/hostname
ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Central /etc/localtime
hwclock --systohc --utc
useradd -m -g users -G wheel -s /bin/bash dmj && passwd dmj
sudo pacman -S sudo
nano /etc/sudoers #comment out wheel portion
sudo nano /etc/locale.gen #pick locale
locale-gen
echo LANG=en_US.UTF-8 > /etc/locale.conf
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
mkinitcpio -p linux #someone said i need "ahci" in modules?
#make boot loader, copy to usb
pacman -S grub-efi-x86_64
grub-mkconfig -o boot/grub/grub.cfg
grub-mkstandalone -o boot.efi -d usr/lib/grub/x86_64-efi -O x86_64-efi -C xz boot/grub/grub.cfg
mkdir /mnt/usbdisk && mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/usbdisk
cp boot.efi /mnt/usbdisk/
umount /mnt/usbdisk/
sudo pacman -S dialog wpa_supplicant iw
exit
umount /mnt/home
umount /mnt/root
umount /mnt/
sudo reboot
I finally got a descriptive error message and am very excited to show everyone.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10021156/arch.jpg
Moderator Edit: Converted over sized in-line picture to link - ewaller
Last edited by dmj (2013-06-25 02:59:00)

Ok, so I managed to boot into arch. The issue was my fstab. The custom settings I was using were incorrect. Going with the defaults helped. Also, the version of grub I was using was broken. See this link for the fix: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=164101
So after I tar -xvJf xxx.tar.xz the fixed version I was able to generate a boot.efi, copy it onto the 128MB HFS+ on OSX and then bless and boot.
A whole new slew of errors occurred.
First, the video mode error occurs "No suitable video mode" (and something about a font).
I found a fix for it here: (but it didn't work) https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GR … d.22_error
I added
cp /usr/share/grub/unicode.pf2 ${GRUB_PREFIX_DIR}
Then add:
UEFI systems:
insmod efi_gop
insmod efi_uga
After that add the following code (common to both BIOS and UEFI):
insmod font
if loadfont ${prefix}/fonts/unicode.pf2
then
insmod gfxterm
set gfxmode=auto
set gfxpayload=keep
terminal_output gfxterm
fi
Gist: Add these few lines to your grub.cfg, result: no luck still this error
What I'm not sure is if if this is affecting my ability to start the xorg-server.
Then after that the network became unreachable (which is strange because the ethernet worked ootb on install)
systemctl enable dhcpcd@enp0s10
systemctl start dhcpcd@enp0s10
allows me to ping -c 3 google.com
Lastly, I cannot start the xorg server. Says the nvidia module is bad. I installed bumblebee, and ran startx (not from root) and I get a black screen. This is after installing: xorg-server xorg-xinit xorg-server-utils xf86-input-synaptics nvidia acpid
Then running: systemctl enable acpid nvidia-xconfig
My graphics card is a Geforce 650M and I've read I should be using the nvidia module, not the open source noveau module.
startx just boots into a blank screen now and I'm unsure why.
Any speculations, ideas, or thoughts would be gladly welcome.
Thanks ahead of time!
Last edited by dmj (2013-06-26 03:05:26)

[SOLVED] Arch Linux on Macbook Pro 4.1

Hey There,
I'm a 2 years old Arch Linux guy and due to the problems I've had with my HP Pavilion PC, I've bought a Macbook Pro 3-4 months ago.. Because that it's a pain in the ass to install, upgrade and remove software on Mac OS X, especially development software such as Python and its bindings, I'm thinking of migrating to Arch Linux. Any way, I've just installed Arch Linux and dual boot..
I've installed X, GNOME, NVIDIA so far and when I try to open GNOME (via startx), it opens up a 800x600 or 1024x768 resolution X and shows GNOME.. But I can't move the mouse and no matter what I type no menus show up.. So I'm stuck after GNOME starts.. I can't drop back into the terminal so I hold the power button to shutdown and start the machine...
It seems that this is the only problem I have for now.. Anyone had this problem before? I've tried it with and without xorg.conf and the result is the same..
Last edited by T-u-N-i-X (2008-11-30 16:17:11)

CTRL + ALT + Backspace
That should close startx. Also, the user manual has a couple of alternative methods of setting up your xorg.conf file. I'd try those next.
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beg … phic_Cards
Last edited by sharpie (2008-11-30 14:05:39)

[Solved] Installing packages on MacBook Pro 8.1, No Internet!

I'm trying to install archlinux to a partition (I'm dual booting) on my MacBook Pro Early 2011 model, my issue is I can not have a wired connection since my ethernet port is broken.
So my plan is to download all the base and base-devel packages from the packages on this webstie, and install from a portable device. From there I'll download and install the wireless drivers (from AUR) for my MacBook, connect to the internet and continue the Arch installation from there.
So far I downloaded the base and base-devel packages. Now I'm confused on how to install them from my mounted USB without pacman. I don't know how to work with pacstrap so maybe there is a command on that script I can use to install the packages from my USB to my system?
(I know with pacman i can use pacman -U /path-to-install-from)
Can someone help me out?
Last edited by mastrgamr (2013-04-15 18:40:41)

For clarity sake, I'll assume a few things:
You are booting from a live USB of the netinstall image and *not* your internal hard drive.
You say you need files from the AUR, so you must have downloaded the tarballs when you grabbed base and base-devel.
While in the live environment, you have access to these downloaded files (tarballs, base, and base-devel)
You're going to create a local repo on the live USB.
While booted in the live environment, use the repo-add utility to do this. Add all the packages from base and base-devel.
Using the pacman -U command, install your base-devel packages to the live environment. This will allow you to build your AUR packages. Do that, and then add the newly created packages to your local repo.
Once you've done both of these, modify /etc/pacman.conf to point only to the local repo. From here on in, you should be able to use pacstrap to setup the system as normal. More help here.
Hope that helps!

Macbook pro 2011 efi problems

Hello there, i've had archlinux working on bios mode but due to delays in boot etc i decided to try to switch archlinux to efi.
I had to boot into bios mode since efi gave an error about no controller found but it's something that can be later fixed on mkinitcpio.
I booted into macos, installed refind, rebooted, picked the bios option of archlinux and did the usual stuff installing gruib-efi into /mnt, i mount /dev/sda1 (the efi boot partition of macos) into /mnt/boot , sda4 into /mnt and sda5 into /mnt/home.
Then i did the normal install steps up until the grub part and then i did :
# modprobe dm-mod
# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=arch_grub --boot-directory=/boot/efi/EFI --recheck --debug
It complained about not being able to hook the efi things (i guess due to booting in bios mode), then did the grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Then i set the password and rebooted and nothing shows up on the refind menu, only the vmlinuz if i set it to search for all kernels, but not the grub entry, the kernel one doesn't help me much since it just puts me on a recovery shell right away.
Spent all day yesterday and a big part of today googling all around but still no luck.
Thanks in advance.
I changed vmlinuz-linux to vmlinuz-linux.efi as well, and it does show up but i get a
ERROR: DEVICE '' not found. Skipping fsck.
ERROR: Unable to find root device''
and then recovery shell.
But if i go into /dev in the recovery shell i see the sda1 sda2 etc in there, i guess it's because i'm missing some options in the real place to boot directly into kernel mode.
Anyway no matter what there should also be the grub option present no?
Edit: well to make some progress i created the refind_linux.conf and at least is mount the devices.
Problem now is [drm:intel_dsm_platform_mux_info] *ERROR* MUX INFO call failed
time to chroot into the install and install packer and install linux_mainline to see if it helps as i've seen people with it hanging there too and saying that fixed it.
Well i didn't have to do that crazy move, just had to add a nomodeset entry, tried installing the ati drivers but if i boot normally i still get the same intel error and hangs.
Can i use X etc normally with nomodeset or what can i do here? blacklist the intel module?
Thanks
Well getting no screens found so guess not, it seems the answer lies within a linux-mainline.
Theres a patched one at https://github.com/fooblahblah/linux-ma … deon-patch , how can i use packer to compile that? or do i need to use abs?
EDIT:
Well compiled the linux-mainline and linux-mainline-radeon-patch and not much luck, booting hangs on waiting for udev uevents to be processed
Also managed to get grub to work, turns out it should be only /efi/cookies not /efi/efi/cookies
How can i start X with nomodeset?
Ok fixed with linux-mainline, can at least boot with the intel graphics card now, a cooler macbook pro at last!
Thanks Jeff for the help.
Last edited by cpxy (2012-08-10 01:10:23)

OK, this is not "downgrade", this is new installation into new partition. Downgrade would mean that you started Snow Leopard and it reverts everything from Lion to Snow Leopard leaving intact all (or majority) installed applications, settings etc.

Macbook Pro wifi Help...

Hi,
Brand new to these forums and to archlinux and i am amazed so far, imo it is the best distro i have ever used period. Now down to business i have a macbook pro and i have installed archlinux alongside mac os x. I am using the x64 version overlord with the latest kernel 2.6.25, i have installed gnome desktop and many other things i can connect via eth0 which is my wired connection via dhcpcd. However even after installing madiwfi and reading the wiki i am still lost.
My wifi is WPA2 encryption ubuntu picked it up using madwifi no problem but i seems to be struggling with this on arch. I have issued the command "iwconfig ath0 up" and it shows up as a device under ifconfig but i can't get it to connect.
Just wondering if anyone can help me out with this
Thanks
If you need anymore information i would be happy to post it.

Yeah sure,
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 PCI Express Root Port (rev 03)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Contoller #4 (rev 03)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 03)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 03)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f3)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HEM (ICH8M) LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA IDE Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 8600M GT (rev a1)
0b:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5418 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)
0c:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. Marvell Yukon 88E8058 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 13)
0d:03.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB82AA2 IEEE-1394b Link Layer Controller (rev 02)
Thanks

Archlinux on Macbook Pro (8,1)

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