Ubuntu on MacBook Pro Santa Rosa

Preface

With the release of the third revision to the MacBookPro line (June 2007), several hardware incompatibilities were introduced with Ubuntu.

The primary hardware changes from previous hardware revisions include:

1. NVIDIA Graphics (Geforce 8600M GT)
2. Airport Extreme Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n
3. Sound

In order to document these incompatibilities and the workarounds a thread was created: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=474144

This Wiki page is based of this thread and the contributions made by members in the forum.

Before starting please note:

• If you are new to installing Ubuntu on your Intel Mac, you may like to familiarize yourself with the installation process by visiting the generic Wiki page for the MacBookPro or MacBook help page .

• If you are dual booting, this page presupposes that you will

• Install the EFI boot menu GUI: rEFIt (http://refit.sf.net)

• Create a new partition to house your Ubuntu installation on you internal Hard Drive

Installation:

To install Ubuntu on your MacBookProSantaRosa:

Text Installation

1. Download the Alternate Install CD (32bit or 64bit)
2. Burn the install CD under OS X/Windows/Linux

3. Download and install Boot Camp or rEFIt (http://refit.sf.net)

4. Boot from the Ubuntu CD by holding the 'c' key during boot
5. Follow the on screen instructions
6. install Ubuntu

GUI Installation

1. Download the Live Install CD
2. Burn the install CD under OSX/Windows/Linux

3. Download and install Boot Camp or rEFI (http://refit.sf.net)

4. Boot from the Ubuntu CD by holding the 'c' key during boot
5. Choose "Safe graphics mode" and press F6 to edit the boot parameters
6. Remove "splash", "quiet" and "--" then add "all_generic_ide"
7. Boot into the Live environment and install Ubuntu from Ubiquity

Getting Graphics to Work

You will find after installation that you computer will not correctly boot. This is due primarily to the new unsupported graphics.

Change Graphics Drivers

1. Reboot you Mac and choose the Linux icons from the rEFIt menu
2. Press Esc when asked

A black screen will presented with text similar to: {{{Ubuntu kernel 2.6.20-15-generic Ubuntu kernel 2.6.20-15-generic (recovery mode) Ubuntu memtest }}} etc...

3. Select the recovery mode option
4. Edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file

{{{nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf }}}

5. Search for "nv" and replace with "vesa"
6. Exit nano and start an X session

{{{/etc/init.d/gdm start }}}

Installing the nVidia Drivers

If you want to have 3D hardware acceleration (e.g. for a composite desktop like Compiz-Fusion/Beryl), you will need to install the closed source nVidia drivers. The drivers in the Ubuntu repositories (nvidia-glx or nvidia-new) do not support the MacBookProSantaRosa.

You will need to install the latest drivers available from nVidia and patch it prior to installation.

1. Download the NVIDIA driver from http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/100.14.11/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-100.14.11-pkg1.run

2. Download the patch nvmacbook.diff from https://cbg.dyndns.org/store/config/nv_macbook.diff

3. Patch the driver by executing the following:

{{{sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-100.14.11-pkg1.run -x cd NVIDIA-Linux-x86-100.14.11-pkg1/usr/src/ patch -p0 < ../../../nv_macbook.diff cd ../.. }}}

5. If you haven't already, install build-essential package so you can build the driver

{{{sudo apt-get install build-essential }}}

6. Run the nVidia install script

{{{sudo ./nvidia-installer -aN -no-x-check }}}

7. Follow the onscreen instructions to install the driver.
8. Restart your X session to install the driver

{{{/etc/init.d/gdm restart }}}

Some problems that have been encountered with this method

• Installing the nvidia drivers in this way means that after each kernel upgrade you will have to rebuild and install the graphics drivers. Follow the same procedure as above.
• You may need to blacklist the graphics drivers.
• Edit the default modules configuration file

{{{sudo gedit /etc/default/linux-restricted-modules-common }}}

2. Disable the nv and nvidia_new modules by changing:

{{{DISABLED_MODULES="" }}} to {{{DISABLED_MODULES="nv nvidia_new" }}} Generic instructions can be found here (thanks #pepe): https://cbg.dyndns.org/wiki/ReadingCorner/LinuxOnMacbookPro#graphics

Install Wireless

1. Prepare to build the drivers

{{{sudo apt-get install build-essential }}}

2. Download the snapshot of madwifi drivers

{{{cd /usr/src/modules/ wget http://snapshots.madwifi.org/madwifi-ng/madwifi-ng-r2372-20070525.tar.gz }}}

3. Build and install the madwifi drivers

{{{tar -xzf madwifi-ng-r2372-20070525.tar.gz cd madwifi-ng-r2372-20070525 sudo make sudo make install sudo modprobe ath_pci }}}

Controlling backlight and Keyboard Light

The system used to control backlight on Mac laptops is a proprietary Apple implementation which has been implemented under linux by pommed. To install last version of pommed (1.9): {{{sudo apt-get install dpkg-dev build-essential cd /usr/src/ mkdir pommed cd pommed wget http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/p/pommed/pommed_1.9~dfsg.orig.tar.gz wget http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/p/pommed/pommed_1.9~dfsg.diff.gz wget http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/p/pommed/pommed_1.9~dfsg-1.dsc dpkg-source -x pommed_1.9~dfsg-1.dsc cd pommed_1.9~dfsg sudo dpkg-buildpackage -d cd .. sudo dpkg -i *.deb }}}

Getting Sound

1. Install alsa dependencies

{{{sudo apt-get install automake autotools-dev autoconf }}}

2. Move into your modules source directory and download the latest alsa source which includes a patch for the MacBookProSantaRosa

{{{cd /usr/src/modules/ rsync -avz --delete rsync://alsa.alsa-project.org/hg/alsa-driver alsa rsync -avz --delete rsync://alsa.alsa-project.org/hg/alsa-kernel alsa }}}

3. Build and install the driver

{{{cd ../alsa-driver ./hgcompile make make install /etc/init.d/alsasound stop }}}

4. Verify all snd modules are unloaded