Posts Tagged “Mac”

I decided to do a complete reinstall with Intrepid on my iMac. Everything went quite well, so I decided to share the steps that I took to do the install. Note that in the end, I want to dual-boot OS X and Ubuntu on my iMac with no other partitions. You will need to adjust your install for any custom setup you might want to have.

1. Download the Ubuntu 8.10 x64 Desktop iso and burn to a CD with Toast at the slowest possible speed.
2. Use DiskUtility to resize the OSX partition and make space on the hard drive for Ubuntu. Select your hard drive on the left side, and on the partition tab, click the “+” to add a partition to the disc. You can make this partition any format as it will just be removed later. Right now, we are just allocating space for the install.
3. I already had rEFIt installed, but if you do not have it yet, now is a good time to do it.
4. Make sure that the Ubuntu CD is in the drive and shutdown the iMac. Start it up again, and this time you should see the rEFIt menu on startup instead of the grey and white Apple logo screen. If you still boot directly into OS X, then you might need to perform the manual installation of rEFIt.
5. Once you have rEFIt working, you will be able to select the Ubuntu CD to boot. Eventually, you will get to the Ubuntu desktop.
6. Once there, go to System > Adminstration > Partition Editor. This will start gParted. In this application, you will see a graphical representation of the partitions on your hard drive similar to how DiskUtility does in OSX, except this will show ALL the partitions (even ones that Apple tries to hide) and free space on the disc too.
7. Near the Right end of the bar at the top, the partition that was created with DiskUtility will show. There will likely be a tiny bit of free space before and after this partition as well. At the beginning of the disk, there will be a EFI partition (don’t touch!) and the OS X partition (shows as an HFS+ filesystem). Select the FAT32 partition created in DiskUtility and delete. This will leave a bunch of free space on your hard drive for Ubuntu. When you are ready, click “Apply” and the partition will be deleted.You can now quit gparted.
8. Now,  start the installer with the icon on the desktop. Choose your language and then Timezone. (I chose English and the Central Time Zone [Chicago]). Why in Linux do we always have to choose a city for the time zone? I just want to specify the name of the time zone I am in!!
9. On the next screen select the Macintosh variant of your language’s keyboard. (I chose USA-Macintosh. This variant has always worked for me on my older White Apple Keyboard as well as my newer Aluminum Keyboard).
10. On the next screen, choose to install to the largest continuous free space on the hard drive. This will allow the installer to create a root and swap partition in the free space you left on the drive.
11. Next you will setup your user account and password. (I also chose to enable auto-login as I am the only person that uses this machine.)
12. On the final screen, click the Advanced button and choose to install GRUB to /dev/sda3. This is the Ubuntu root partition. Click OK for that and back at the summary screen, click Install to start the installation.
13. During the install play a little Tali or Tetravex :). After the install is complete reboot the machine.

That is it for the basic installation. After the reboot I went to System > Admin > Hardware Drivers and enabled the “Broadcom STA driver” (not the B43 driver) to get the WiFi working. 3D Acceleration and “Extra” desktop effects worked with the default open source driver, but there seems to be an issue when using 3D graphics while desktop effects are enabled (to test this, you can enable the “Extra” desktop effects and then run ‘glxgears’ from the commandline). Turning off the desktop effects will fix the issue. Enabling the Proprietary ATI driver in the same place where you enabled the Broadcom driver will probably help that situation.

After all that, you can install any updated packages with the update manager and reboot. WiFi should now work. Stay tuned for other tweaks that I make to my machine to get things working the way I want.

Update: A new kernel driver has been created that adds the multi-touch functionality to the Linux kernel rather than through a daemon. A version has already made its way into the vanilla kernel source.

New kernel driver for the BCM5974 touchpad (Macbook Air, Penryn)

I regular the Ubuntu Apple Intel forum and had the pleasure meeting a user, tannewt. He had just obtained a new Macbook Pro (with the multi-touch trackpad) and was very helpful in getting some of the first information about the new hardware into the forums. He also started hacking on the touchpad to make it a bit more useful since the new hardware was quite limited with the current available software

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Well, when I first heard the rumblings of a new mall to be constructed in Cummings Research Park (which I though to be a very odd location, and really still do), I looked online to see if I could find any mention of it. I did, in fact find that the mall is actually a franchise-like mall that had similar setups in other locations. I happened to run across a site plan for the mall early-on which happened to mention a space marked Apple as “In discussion/negotiating”. Well, this stirred a bit of interest, but was dismissed since I had already heard plans that the local privately owned “Mac Resource” was planning to relocate. No, biggie, they were planning to move into the new mall, and they developers simply marked the space Apple… Right?

Well, actually, not that long afterwards, a sign with a little apple on it appeared in a completely different location from where the mall was being built and was marked as the new location for Mac Resource… Well, I decided to dig in a little deeper. Soon, I found that monster.com had job listings in Huntsville made by Apple… not Mac Resource. At this point I was pretty sure that they were going to open a store, especially after Mac Resource opened their new building.

Well, now it is in full plain view of the public on the Bridge Street Towne Centre website. Apple is clearly listed as coming to the mall. Now, I have been there, and walked through and I did not see any sign of a coming Apple store. I was beginning to think they had changed their mind. It is a shame that this will likely limit the business of the locally-owned Mac Resource though.

NOTE: I no longer have a copy of the original site plan that was marked with Apple on it. I do have this updated version with an unmarked #108 space which is where the store is rumored to be located.

Also, the Job Opportunities Section of the website includes positions for the Apple store.

Feb 22, 2008 UPDATE:

Someone has finally dug to the bottom of the Apple Store. The building permit has been acquired, and the location determined. It will be in the southern-half of the mall in location #S23.

June 1, 2008 UPDATE:

The store opened on the 31st.

We get the question or comment quite a bit that people are planning to purchase a Mac and want to run Ubuntu (or some other variant of Linux) on it exclusively. Now, this can be done, and you might end up with exactly what you want in the end, but I have to say, “Why in the world would you do that?”

Don’t get me wrong, I like my iMac, and I am even getting a Macbook Pro soon for work. I also like running Ubuntu on my iMac, but buying a Mac just to use Linux just doesn’t make any sense to me. There are so many other options out there for a linux-specifc application. With Dell now offering machines made specifically with Linux compatibility in mind in addition to the several linux-compatilible hardware vendors out there, it is way too easy to obtain hardware that can coexist with linux peacefully.

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I like to help in support forums for various things that I am interested in. I am not paid for it. I don’t do it for glory. I don’t do it for popularity. I am just interested in sharing my knowledge with others so that they might be able to do something that they were unable to do before.

I am not going to claim that Linux is the perfect OS and that anyone can use it. I think it just “makes sense” myself, but I also have a machine running Windows Vista that I use as a PVR, and I actually tend to spend more time on my iMac in OSX Leopard than I do in my Ubuntu install. I have the mindset to use whatever you want. I don’t preach Open Source. I am not a Apple fanatic. Yet, more than once, it has been the case that, when someone is frustrated in the Ubuntu Apple Users’ Forum (as well as elsewhere) they threaten to ‘leave’ Linux… to go back to Windows, or OSX, or whatever.

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Knowing your Mac version is very helpful when asking for help in forums or mailing lists since hardware changes are made when Apple decides to update their machines.

Just use the following command. (I use Ubuntu by the way)

sudo dmidecode| grep Product

In the output, you should have a line that looks similar to:
Product Name: MacBookPro2,2

and in this case the version would be: MacBookPro2,2

Apple must really be trying to get rid of the Airport Extreme technology:

The Apple Store (U.S.) - AirPort & Wireless (20080209)

Here is a screenshot in case it gets changed

Apple Airport Extreme Cards Must Sell!

Introduction

Intel Macs use EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) instead of the typical BIOS (Basic Input / Output System) that most PCs use. EFI has a standardized specification that, unfortunately, Apple, in their infinite wisdom, decided that they do not need to abide by, and slightly modified their implementation. This makes developing Linux software that interfaces with this system difficult. In fact, there is, as of yet, no reliable method of booting Linux directly through EFI although work is being done by the mactel-linux group, elilo, and Grub2 to allow for this functionality. Part of this system is the use of a partitioning system called GPT (GUID Partition Table) which is used in place of the MBR (Master Boot Record) that would coincide with the use of a BIOS. NOTE: GUID means Globally Unique Identifier, which is basically a unique number that is used to identify something, a partition in this case. There is not much more that is needed to understand about that. Apple also places an “EFI partition” at the very beginning of the disc. This is used as a location to place executables for the EFI system to perform firmware updates. Read the rest of this entry »

This question gets asked a lot, especially since people are having non-functioning keyboards in Linux Bootloaders (Windows too). If you make room on your Intel Mac to boot Windows and Linux, most distros will now detect windows and add an entry to grub and/or lilo, and install the bootloader to the MBR (Master Boot Record) of your disk. This is ok on most PCs, as there is not normally any other way to choose which OS you want when booting up. However, most Mactel multibooters are using rEFIt to select the OS, and there is no need to use grub for anything but Linux (and hopefully, a EFI native bootloader will be available someday to replace that).

The way to get around this annoyance is to install your Linux bootloader to the root partition (or your /boot partition if you have one), and leave the normal Windows bootloader in the MBR. I use Ubuntu and Grub, and will focus there, but these general instructions should work for any system.

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Here I am posting a lot of information about my iMac for configuration in linux. Hopefully this will help a few people out that are wanting to try out linux on their Macs. I use Ubuntu linux, so all of this information has been tested only under that system. I am currently using 7.04 Feisty Fawn, although 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon will be released soon and seems to be running OK on my model Mac at the moment.

First, you can download my fully verbose lspci here.

The display built into the iMac is essentially a 20″ Apple Cinema Display. The following are the correct entries for the xorg configuration file including specific modelines as found on the Gentoo hardware wiki:

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier      "Apple Cinema Display"
    VendorName      "Apple Inc."
    ModelName       "Apple Cinema Display 20"
    HorizSync       28-90
    VertRefresh     43-72
    DisplaySize     434 270
    Option "DPMS"
    UseModes "Modes0"
EndSection

Section "Modes"
    Identifier "Modes0"
    ModeLine "1680x1050" 119.00 1680 1728 1760 1840 1050 1053 1059 1080
    Modeline "1280x800" 67.26 1280 1312 1560 1592 800 817 824 841
    Modeline "1024x640" 51.90 1024 1056 1248 1280 640 653 660 673
    Modeline "800x500" 30.98 800 832 944 976 500 510 515 526
EndSection

I recently compiled a kernel for linux 2.6.22.6 with the latest mactel and ck patches. My config can be downloaded here: config-linux-2.6.22.6-mactel-ck1