first impression of the macbook air 4,2
Signed-off-by: Nico Schottelius <nico@kr.ethz.ch>
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blog/macbook-air-4,2-archlinux.mdwn
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[[!meta title="Installing Linux on a Macbook Air (4,2)"]]
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These are my first impressions of the Archlinux installation
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on the MacBook Air (4,2).
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## General impression
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The installation feels pretty rough, very much like the installation
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to a PPC based iBook some years ago: A lot of stuff is still different
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from a usual PC, there is no intuitive debugging on bootup, the keyboard
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and trackpad works differently, etc. etc.
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But in general: ***Linux works on the MacBook Air***, there are just
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some workarounds needed today, which may vanish tomorrow already.
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## Installation
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I choose to use Archlinux on the MacBook Air, but this is just a minor
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detail, the hints can be used on any other distribution as well.
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## Shrink MacOS X partiton
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In MacOS X I've shrinked the HFS partiton to 50GB using the disk utility
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to make up some free space for Linux. Although removing MacOS X completly
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was in my mind, it may be useful in the end to get Linux working.
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## Install refit
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[Refit](http://refit.sourceforge.net/) is the de-facto standard for
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multiboot on Macs, in the FOSS world, which allows me to easily
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select a different OS.
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## Prepare install medium
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I've used **archlinux-2011.08.19-core-dual.iso** and put it to a
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USB stick:
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dd if=archlinux-2011.08.19-core-dual.iso of=/dev/sdc
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## Bootup
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Without refit, you could hold down the option key on the mac
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and select the USB drive. With refit, you'll see the usb stick
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directly and can boot from it.
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## Partitioning
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I've not touched the three partitions from MacOS X
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(efi, customer, recovery hd), but added two new partitions:
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* /dev/sda4: Used for /boot
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* /dev/sda5: Used for /, encrypted using Luks
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Using parted or sgdisk (preferred)
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## Bootloader
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My first idea was to use Syslinux on vfat on /dev/sda4, but
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that does not work: refit sees the partition and allows you to
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boot from it, but trying to boot it goes into a black screen
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heading the following line:
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No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key
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After I reformatted /dev/sda4 with ext4 and used extlinux instead with
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extlinux --install /boot
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the boot into syslinux works.
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## Mouse
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I've read some forum entries about loading appletouch before usbhid, but
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on this device it actually needs to be ***bcm5974***. A temporay workaround
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to behave like a synaptics touchpad is the following command:
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rmmod usbhid; rmmod bcm5974; modprobe bcm5974; modprobe usbhid
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I'm somehow wondering whether module loading order should be significant
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(I know it had been at some other situations, but it does not feel right),
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but for now it definitely is.
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## WLAN
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The **bcma** module is loaded by default, which needs to be blacklisted
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([arch1](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Broadcom_wireless#Wi-Fi_card_does_not_work.2Fshow_up_since_kernel_upgrade_.28brcmsmac.29),
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[arch2](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Kernel_modules#Blacklisting)
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)
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Temporay & Permanent fix:
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# echo 'blacklist bcma' >> /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf
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# rmmod bcma
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# rmmod brcmsmac
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# modprobe brcmsmac
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# mkinitcpio -p linux
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## Keyboard
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The **fn-key** does currently not work on my installation
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and thus I cannot access the emulated Page-Down/Page-Up/Home/End
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keys, you usually get when using fn+cursor keys.
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This also seems to be related to hid_apple, but issuing the following
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commands stops input from working at all:
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rmmod usbhid; rmmod hid_apple; modprobe hid_apple; modprobe usbhid
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I've opened a
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[bugreport on the archlinux site](https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/26425).
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## Keyboard Backlight
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The backlight driver (***applesmc***) works pretty well and can be used
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by simple adding the brightness into a sysfs file.
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I've started the [kbsd](http://git.schottelius.org/?p=kbsd) project
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to automatically adjust the brightness depending on the environment
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light, as detected by the light sensor.
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## Display
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The machine boots up into a 1280x800 screen, although the panel
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natively supports 1440x900.
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Using the intel driver xorg does not start at all,
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using fbdev instead is a workaround. You can use fbdev by putting
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the following content into ***/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-fbdev.conf***:
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Section "Device"
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Driver "fbdev"
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Identifier "card0"
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EndSection
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There is also a [bugreport for the display issue](https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/26426).
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Keith Packard is also working on this issue,
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as can be read [here](http://keithp.com/blogs/MacBook-Air/) and
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[here](http://keithp.com/blogs/MacBook-Air-2/).
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[[!tag unix]]
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