Fedora 17 on new Macbook Air - Page 2

LambarO · #16 3rd July 2012, 01:27 AM

I haven't tried again with this, I'm running with VMs for the moment due to just needing to get things done. When I've got a bit more time I'll have a more serious crack at it, so it'll be interesting to see how people go with it in the meantime.

PompeyBlue · #17 9th July 2012, 01:55 PM

I have F17 running on the new Macbook Air.

Steps

1. Go to disc manager under MacOS and partition your hard drive. I split into 3. Partition 2 was labelled "Windows 7" and set to Fat. Partition 3 was "Fedora" and set to fat too

2. Download drivers using bootcamp, copy onto USB stick

3. Install ReFIT and reboot

4. Reboot again

5. Should now have the ReFIT boot menu appear

6. Put in the Win7 disc and connect to USB

7. Install Win7, when install appears select "advanced" and select the "Windows 7" partition. Format it before you install

8. Go through the windows installation, copy windows support files from the USB stick and install drivers

9. Go back to Mac OS and back to disk keeper. Look at your partitions and delete, remove, the Linux partition in partition 3.

10. Restart and from Refit elect to boot Fedora installation disc

11. Edit the boot lines and add noacpi

12. Follow installation (I used Fedora 17 64bit)

13 Remove media and reboot kit

14. Behold the triple booted Macbook Air

Everything works, out of the box, including graphics display driver and wireless. Only thing I noticed is missing is the backlit keyboard, but whether the hardware actually has that or not I don't know.

If anybody else has any problems then post here and I can probably help.

Can confirm that backlit keyboard doesn't appear under Linux. Could be indiciative of camera not working, as it appears under Mac OS. Will investigate further at home tonight.

mattatron · #18 9th July 2012, 02:24 PM

@PompeyBlue - thanks very much for posting this. I'm about to buy the new Air and was hoping someone would figure this out before me.

A question I have is whether it is possible to install Fedora without retaining OSX on the disk? In other words, trash OS X and only have Fedora.

jonathonp · #19 9th July 2012, 04:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PompeyBlue

I have F17 running on the new Macbook Air.

How many partitions does Fedora 17 require on an Intel mac? Do I need an efi boot partition?

/boot
/
/home
swap

Thanks for your detailed instructions.

mattatron · #20 9th July 2012, 05:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jonathonp

How many partitions does Fedora 17 require on an Intel mac? Do I need an efi boot partition?

I can't comment on the EFI partition, but I've not been using a swap partition on my PC laptop since I moved to an SSD. I have 8GB RAM, so very rarely would require swap.

PompeyBlue · #21 9th July 2012, 07:10 PM

Quote:

A question I have is whether it is possible to install Fedora without retaining OSX on the disk? In other words, trash OS X and only have Fedora.

Not sure. If you use ReFIT as the boot manager then I expect so since it boots flawlessly for me.

Quote:

How many partitions does Fedora 17 require on an Intel mac? Do I need an efi boot partition?

/boot
/
/home
swap

Not sure. The point of creating an extra "linux" partition was to stop MacOSX or Windows grabbing all space when installing. I then delete it before installing Fedora. I then tell Fedora to install to all available space and it creates it's own partition layout.

Quote:

Can confirm that backlit keyboard doesn't appear under Linux. Could be indiciative of camera not working, as it appears under Mac OS. Will investigate further at home tonight.

Camera does work fine under Fedora, the photo booth is active without a problem. I believe that Apple have changed the code for the backlight in the keyboard. Unfortunately I'm not smart enough to work out how to debug that. Looking at it, I think the module has changed and so that's why it's not working

Quote:

[root@macbook platform]# pwd
/sys/devices/platform
[root@macbook platform]# ls
alarmtimer Fixed MDIO bus.0 microcode power serial8250 vesafb.0
coretemp.0 iTCO_wdt pcspkr regulatory.0 uevent

[root@macbook platform]# modprobe applesmc
ERROR: could not insert 'applesmc': Input/output error

Although This topic suggests that the latest kernel has a fix in for it so hopefully it'll come online soon.

2 finger scrolling etc all works fine as does the volume function key.

eric232 · #22 10th July 2012, 07:23 AM

PompeyBlue,
Which model MacBook Air do you have? Most people that have tried the install with the Mid-2012 haven't been able to get the screen work properly.

Did you use the Apple Super-DVD drive?

PompeyBlue · #23 10th July 2012, 08:38 AM

I've bought the latest, arrived yesterday, and got max ram, upgraded CPU and also 512MB flash drive. Specs below:

Quote:

[root@macbook ~]# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge DRAM Controller (rev 09)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 0166 (rev 09)
00:14.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB xHCI Host Controller (rev 04)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point MEI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 04)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Panther Point High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev c4)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev c4)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 5 (rev c4)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point LPC Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation Panther Point SMBus Controller (rev 04)
02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM43224 802.11a/b/g/n (rev 01)
[root@macbook ~]# lsusb
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 05ac:8510 Apple, Inc.
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0424:2512 Standard Microsystems Corp. USB 2.0 Hub
Bus 002 Device 008: ID 05ac:821f Apple, Inc.
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 0a5c:4500 Broadcom Corp. BCM2046B1 USB 2.0 Hub (part of BCM2046 Bluetooth)
Bus 002 Device 005: ID 05ac:024a Apple, Inc.
[root@macbook ~]#

marceljj · #24 12th July 2012, 01:38 PM

Just install the boot loader on /dev/sda and sync your MBR/GPT with the tool in rEFIt.

eric232 · #25 13th July 2012, 06:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PompeyBlue

I've bought the latest, arrived yesterday, and got max ram, upgraded CPU and also 512MB flash drive. Specs below:

PompeyBlue,
Did you use the MacBook Air Super Drive for the install? Or a different DVD player or USB stick?

Thanks

PompeyBlue · #26 14th July 2012, 12:16 PM

I just used some external USB drive that our IT department had lying around. I think it was Samsung? Not sure it'd be very different if I'd used the Super drive.

Raxor · #27 15th July 2012, 01:03 PM

Hi!
I read u managed to get fedora 17 running on the macbook air 2011.
was that a triple-boot?

I just plug in the fedora media, boot it, do the media check and get a FAIL -> hard reset
Anyone else tried the media check on a macbook air?

eric232 · #28 22nd July 2012, 07:49 PM

Did you have any issues with the screen during the install? I tried with FC17 and the screen would look weird. I couldn't see what was going on.

enbdk · #29 31st July 2012, 01:45 PM

I have just managed to get F17 installed onto my new 2012 MBA. Initially the usb installation didn't work but I added the "nointremap" flag to grub and it worked fine. Nearly everything worked without any configuration e.g. touchpad (not as well as in OS X but 2-finger scrolling works), wireless, brightness, sound, suspend/resume, shutdown, reboot etc etc all worked from the start.... really happy about that.

I am having a few issues though. When I installed F17 from the live usb, the kernel version that was installed was 3.3.4-5. As soon as the installation was done i ran a "yum update", and this updated the kernel to version 3.4.6-2. I have not yet figured out how to boot into this new kernel and am stuck using the older version at the moment. No initramfs was created for the newer kernel, and I created one with mkinitrd. This allowed me to proceed slightly further in the boot process than before but now boot fails with a cascade of "DEPEND" errors, and I am given the option to log into a root console to debug the issue. Any ideas on what the problem is here?

Also, I am having issues with applesmc not working properly, which I think I saw discussed here and also on the Ubuntu forums. I believe there may be a patch for fixing this issue, but I am more interested in troubleshooting my first problem at the moment. If these issues were both fixed as far as I can tell F17 would be fully functional.

I would also like to know exactly what the "nointremap" option in grub is disabling. I know it has something to do with interrupts. One of my concerns is that some vital system management functions are not enabled/working and I am going to unknowingly fry my brand new crispy MBA from the inside. I have installed lm_sensors and the cpu temps seem to be reasonable, although I'm not an expert on this. What are the system monitoring programs that people use to make sure things are running cool and normal under the hood?

I would be happy to help with any communal issues by posting the appropriate outputs if anyone desires.

Cheers

slopsbucket · #30 1st August 2012, 12:02 AM

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.

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

Cheers,

Andrew.

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.

---------- Post added at 08:32 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:16 AM ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by mattatron

A question I have is whether it is possible to install Fedora without retaining OSX on the disk? In other words, trash OS X and only have Fedora.

Yes. That's one of the options in the Fedora Setup Menu: use entire disk space.