Talk:Mac

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(Redirected from Talk:MacBookPro)
Latest comment: 2 February 2023 by August

Personal feedback

Hi. I've spent a lot of time to install Arch on a Macbook 1.1, and I've fixed several issues that can be of real interest for other people...

First, my hard drive was brand new, and I wanted a pure EFI boot. Moreover, my CDROM drive is dead, so I had to boot Arch install from a live USB. To do so, I've used a rEFIt usbkey. Then, after the standard Arch install, I've made a HFS+ partition for the *.efi grub2 have generated. Finally, I've bless-ed those files with OsX from another computer, so that my new install can boot without rEFIt.

My second issue was the keyboard mapping. I was forced to make a new console keymap from scratch to get all my keys working "apple-style". Not a big deal. For xorg, it was a bit more difficult. I've specified a "macbook79" keyboard in evdev xorg config file, and I've added the following lines at the end of /usr/share/X11/xkb/keycodes/evdev :

xkb_keycodes "macbook79" {
    include "evdev(evdev)"
    <RALT> = 64;
    <LALT> = 133;
};

And the new following rule to /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev (just after line 118) :

macbook79     =       evdev(macbook79)

This allows to have key combinations such as ALT+5 working, leading to a "{" symbol... without using dirty Xmodmap tricks. Since Mod1 (LALT) is used a lot, I've decided to map it to the left Option key, but you can choose another key.

—This unsigned comment is by Azeiodgfjkldsfg (talk) 08:21, 31 October 2012 (UTC). Please sign your posts with ~~~~!Reply[reply]

Question about primary partitions

It's said in the article that only 4 primary partitions are authorized, including the efi's one. But isn't that only true for MBR partition tables? The macbook pro uses GPT partition tables and thus can have as many primary partition as it supports partitions no? —This unsigned comment is by Geoffroy (talk) 22:50, 3 November 2011‎. Please sign your posts with ~~~~!

EFI bootloader

i think we should update bootloader section with latest selection of bootloaders

see the link for more info: [1] forum thread: [2]

--nTia89 (talk) 15:14, 15 July 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I'm updating the Boot section of the Macbook 11,x page. Perhaps we can merge some of that onto here when I'm done. Trusktr (talk) 20:40, 2 July 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Linking to common articles

I've added refereces to the common articles for some things like power management and suspending.

While there are a few small details to consider on macbooks, we were duplicating huge amounts of information from those articles, without keeping them up to date. I deleted the out-of-date information, and linked the relevant articles. Please only add information here if it only applies to macbooks. Otherwise, use the general article.

This all make this article shorter, and only include the really relevant information. Plus, we don't need to keep other stuff up-to-date here.

Let me know if you have any comments on these changes. Hobarrera (talk) 10:47, 5 July 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Duplication with Beginners' guide

Moved from Beginners' guide. -- Alad (talk) 05:50, 20 February 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Just wanted to lend my first time experience. I personally was installing on a macbook air, so perhaps this might be better suited for that discussion page. However, I can honestly say that most of it can be merged together with this page. I barely (and I mean barely.) deviated from the usual archboot install for a mac. And I did it three times to make sure it was do-able.

Considering the archboot is basically the live usb wrapped in a gui (I believe?) it probably means that the two would've been quite similar for installing on a mba, and thus for macs in general. (The issues of xorg, wifi, etc, are real problems for macbooks, but I meant the general install should not require two wiki pages) Victoroux (talk) 14:01, 7 June 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Recommended touchpad driver

The touchpad section explains that the driver xf86-input-multitouch-git adds functionality and that, oh by the way, there is xf86-input-mtrack-git which adds configuration capabilities. In reality most people seem to be using input-mtrack. Also input-multitouch doesn't seem to be maintained while input-mtrack received recent updates.

I propose to instruct the installation input-mtrack and mention input-multitouch in passing only or removing mention to it altogether. Tburette (talk) 09:28, 10 June 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Macbook Pro 2015 models

The 15" MBP from 2015 is actually the Macbook Pro 11,4, and was released in mid 2015, as opposed to the 13" MBP, which is the Macbook Pro 12,1 and was released in early 2015. Does anyone know if the 15" MBP is more similar to the MBP 12,1 or the 11,x models? Vijfhoek (talk)

I think the 11,4 (and 11,5) are pretty similar to the 12,1. If it helps, I am trying to keep an updated list of issues and fixes at https://teamsammut.com/blog/2015/09/apple-macbook-pro-linux-issue-tracking.html. There are fixes for the video brightness, bluetooth and 5Ghz wireless there, for example. tsammut

Macbook Pro 4,1 (Early 2008)

In case anyone tries to install arch on a Macbook Pro 4,1:

  • I couldn't boot from the live CD so I used a Fedora Live CD and installed manually from there.
  • To get a live USB to boot, create a GPT partition table on it, not MBR.
  • Refind will help a lot. Super Grub Disk also if you want to BIOS boot.
  • Mount the EFI partition(usually /dev/sda1) to /boot.
  • Nvidia won't work in EFI mode. In BIOS mode nvidia-340xx will do the trick.
  • If nouveau is giving you trouble when loading try using a vbios file. Boot in BIOS mode and use vbtracetool to dump it to /lib/firmware. Then load it by adding to the kernel command line the following and booting in EFI mode: nouveau.config=NvBios=vbios.rom
  • Nouveau and X11 wouldn't work until I modified xorg.conf and added the following (change the busID to match yours-get it from lspci):
Section "Device"
    Identifier "n"
    Driver "nouveau"
    BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

For BIOS booting:

  • Use syslinux as a BIOS bootloader.
  • Use gdisk to create a hybrid partition scheme(both MBR and GPT). Add the EFI partition and your linux partition.

Koassim (talk) 22:24, 16 May 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Updated bootloader section

Hi everyone. Just to inform that I updated to bootloader installation part in order to include a method that does not require external software such as rEFInd and is perfectly compatible with single/dual/triple boot configurations, as it uses the native Apple bootloader to load GRUB inside an HFS+ boot partition.

The section was written after re-elaborating the content from this source, with some minor addition regarding the setting of the partition type as af00. I tried on two different macbook models and it works nicely.

Jujstme (talk) 04:17, 20 Aug 2016 (UTC)

MacBook Pro 14,3 2018

MacBookPro14,3 Draft - Got Arch installed as the primary OS dual-boot (OS-X) on a brand new 2018 MacBook Pro 14,3 model. Latest arch iso was broken so had to use an older archboot image to boot via usb drive with usb keyboard, then install basic system to disk, then upgrade in ramdisk to latest arch, install systemd-boot to efi, finally got it installed after 4 hrs.

Still a ton of work to be done for it to feel like a real Arch machine and look/act the part. Working on the draft now, please feel free to let me know of any tips or tricks or anything else to help it along. Once done and tested will add to this main Mac article which is a bit outdated.

--AskApache (talk) 07:32, 9 March 2018 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Suggestion to remove useless advice for 128M 'gaps' in partition scheme

At Option 1: EFI, the wiki suggests:

OS X likes to see a 128 MiB gap after partitions, so when you create the first partition after the last OS X-partition, type in +128M when cgdisk asks for the first sector for the partition. More information about Apple's partitioning policy can be read here.

But the question is why? Because OS X likes to see that? Apple's own Disk Utility doesn't even partition like that, and it makes no difference whatsoever. Also the Apple article that is being linked to starts with: 'This document is no longer being updated.'. I suspect this advice can be safely considered a relic of the past that (especially!) no Linux user should be concerned with as it has no effect at all.

—This unsigned comment is by Eterps (talk) 10:49, 27 December 2018 (UTC). Please sign your posts with ~~~~!Reply[reply]

I have a 2010 Mac Mini and the default partitions seemed to have 128mb gaps. Maybe this is still relevant for older OS versions? I'm not sure - I ran with it and it sure didn't seem to hurt.

Yyyc514 (talk) 17:55, 27 December 2018 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I have a dual-installation 2012 Macbook, High Sierra, partitioned with Disk Utility. Between the partitions there is a 1 sector (512 bytes) gap, and 1449 sector (0.7 MB) gap. So this seems to be old advice. I also agree to remove the advice and mention that old Mac OS versions used to do this. Agustin (talk) 17:31, 4 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Bootloader instructions are confusing, omits efibootmgr

Using OS X's bless utility is nonsense, and jumping through Apple's hoops is not for the faint of heart. For a simple setup (even dual-boot where Arch is default), just install grub to the original EFI partition and do `efibootmgr -c -L Arch -d /dev/sda -l /EFI/arch/grubx64.efi`

Adfjjv (talk) 19:32, 14 March 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Older macbook microphone

The macbook2,1 seems to have a mic driver bug. I've found and explained a workaround in https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mac#Microphone_2%2C1 but I don't know enough about the kernel vs alsa vs pulse to describe why the fix works, or maybe improve it. If someone with more insight could increase the truthiness of that section that would be appreciated.

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/how-to-override-pulseaudio-alsa-files/6718/3 and https://www.mail-archive.com/pulseaudio-discuss@lists.freedesktop.org/msg20703.html%7C both imply there's no way to make that patch permanent (using some kind of conf.d/ directory), but I'm not sure I'm reading them right or if that's still true.

Kousu (talk) 21:17, 26 April 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Ensuring the keyboard backlight is on when entering the LUKS decryption password

The mkinitcpio hook in this section of the wiki works when using the standard encrypt hook, but it doesn't work when using systemd and the sd-encrypt hook (e.g. HOOKS=(systemd keyboard autodetect sd-vconsole modconf block mac_kb_backlight sd-encrypt filesystems fsck)). The keyboard doesn't get lit up until later in the boot process after the drive has been decrypted. I'm not sure whether that should be noted in the wiki itself, but if anyone has a version that works with sd-encrypt or both it seem like that should be added in.

--YhaNd (talk) 04:39, 19 April 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Disable Journaling

The "disable journaling" section suggests that 1) HFS+ is not supported, and 2) disabling journaling, i.e. HFS+ to HFS, is a good idea. I'm not so sure about these points, because hfsprogsAUR should work for all HFS and HFS+ use cases. I think someone should do some testing and revise the HFS+ section. August (talk) 18:52, 2 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]