Fedora 11 and MacBook Aluminum 5,1 Touchpad

[SendDerek]

Hello!

I'd like to get the touchpad working on the MacBook 5,1 with Fedora 11 installed. I'm not sure where to start and I would sure appreciate some help.

What I have so far:
After running "yum install xorg-x11-drv-synaptics", I get this message...

xorg-x11-drv-synaptics-1.1.0-7.fc11.i586 already installed and latest version

I noticed that there was a bug which seemed to deal with this problem, but it looks like the version I have installed is > the version they recommend.
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/upda...s-1.1.0-6.fc11

Another member on the forums tried to get this questions answered about F10. I made this new thread because I thought it was appropriate to distinguish F10 from F11.
http://fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=219104

Again, any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[BlueC]

What doesn't work about it? Does it work at all, or just some feature isn't working?

The other thread mentions that the fixes are in more recent kernels (2.6.29.1) and F11 is using 2.6.29.4-167 which would seem to suggest it should include the patches although I don't know for sure. The fedora team are normally pretty good at getting the mactel-linux fixes into the kernel pretty quickly as they understand there are plenty of people running macs with fedora.

[SendDerek]

Thanks for the reply. I didn't realize until you said it that I didn't make it very clear. The touchpad doesn't work at all. There is no response what-so-ever when you try and use it.

[BlueC]

guessing a bit here cos i'm not on a linux box, but try this:

lsmod | grep bcm5974

if that returns nothing then the driver module for the touchpad isn't loaded, in which case try this (as root)

modprobe bcm5974

and what is the output of that command? does the touchpad start working?

[SendDerek]

Thank you for you help.

After lsmod | grep bcm5974, nothing was returned. I tried "su -c 'modprobe bcm5974'" and recieved this message:

WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/broadcom-wl-blacklist, it will be ignored in a future release.

I'm not sure what that means. But after that, the trackpad still doesn't work. Keep the suggestions coming please!

Also, when I run "lsmod | grep bcm5974" I do get:

bcm5974 6912 0

.

[Min]

Since this also question about alumunium macbook, i'll post it here

How do i change the brightness of the screen? I think it is at maximum, and i hate it too bright. I don't mind (yet) about no sound and trackpad problem, but that is the most annoying me.

[BlueC]

Thank you for you help.

After lsmod | grep bcm5974, nothing was returned. I tried "su -c 'modprobe bcm5974'" and recieved this message:


I'm not sure what that means. But after that, the trackpad still doesn't work. Keep the suggestions coming please!

Also, when I run "lsmod | grep bcm5974" I do get: .

You can ignore that warning, it's just a minor problem in the broadcom-wl package that I need to fix.

The results of lsmod you did suggest that the module is loaded so that's odd that it doesn't work. I have no more ideas really since I don't use the aluminum macbook.

&Min: not sure. the brightness buttons are broken on my white macbook too whereas they worked fine in F10 - I'll try hunt it down.

[BlueC]

SendDerek: here ya go: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=504197

Seems to be the problem you're having, there is a link there to a koji kernel build that apparently fixes the issue... you may wanna try that and just add a note to the bug report with your results. (be aware you won't be able to get a wl-kmod package for your wireless under that koji kernel so you'd need to either build it yourself or install the akmod.)

[bpierce815]

Min,

The only way that I could get brightness to work is to install pommed 1.26. Follow the install directions to compile and install.

[bpierce815]

There is a new guide being put together on Derek Hildreth’s Blog. http://www.derekhildreth.com/blog/fe...inum-51-guide/

[SendDerek]

Min,

The only way that I could get brightness to work is to install pommed 1.26. Follow the install directions to compile and install.

Care to elaborate? I have taken these steps and no backlight control. This is taken right from my blog guide:

This part requires that pommed be installed. Let’s get to it…
Download it and then extract it:
https://alioth.debian.org/frs/downlo...ed-1.26.tar.gz

Install the required packages:
su -c 'yum install libdbus-devel alsa-lib-devel audiofile-devel zlib-devel libconfuse libconfuse-devel pciutils-devel'

“Make” pommed by typing this into the terminal while in the pommed-1.26 parent directory:
make pommed

Become su and copy the files to the needed directories (one line at a time):
cp pommed/pommed /usr/bin
mkdir /usr/share/pommed
cp pommed/data/* /usr/share/pommed
cp pommed.conf.mactel /etc/pommed.conf
chmod +x pommed.init
cp pommed.init /etc/init.d/pommed
cp dbus-policy.conf /etc/dbus-1/system.d/pommed.conf

Then, reboot.

Note: I just went through these steps and rebooted. It didn’t seem to work. I’m trying to use the gnome brightness applet and it simply states “cannot get laptop panel brightness”. I’ll be looking into this soon… Also, the FN+F1 and FN+F2 keys aren't making a different either.

There is a new guide being put together on Derek Hildreth’s Blog. http://www.derekhildreth.com/blog/fe...inum-51-guide/

Thanks for the link! I'm glad you think it's useful.

[BlueC]

I opened a bug report here about the backlight issue, it would be very helpful if you guys could add some weight to it with some "me too's" and describe your hardware etc. Please add to it so we can get this fixed:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=505531

You shouldn't need pommed to enable backlight control... it should be done by HAL/DeviceKit/Power Manager.

C

[SendDerek]

So, I know that this is a thread for the trackpad, but while we're on the subject of the backlight, somebody had suggested I added this line to the instructions after copying the init:

chkconfig--add pommed

I'm sorry to report that it didn't work for me. Any other insights bpierce?

[BlueC]

well you'd need a space there:

chkconfig --add pommed

then you'd need to do:

/etc/init.d/pommed start

chkconfig pommed on

However using pommed is a dirty fix here - it really shouldn't be required and wasn't required in F10 so we have a regression somewhere in HAL or most likely something not yet configured correctly in DeviceKit

Instead of wasting time and effort on pommed when it isn't required and is not even available for Fedora it would be most helpful to add your experiences to the bug report I mentioned above.

[SendDerek]

I added another instance of the issue in the bug that you had suggested to me. Here's to hoping for the fix...