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Installing Fedora 10 on a MacBook

Chris — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 16:55:45 +0000

This guide will help you through all the steps necessary for installing Fedora 10 on a MacBook Santa Rosa. This guide is currently aimed at Fedora 10 x86_64 but will also work on i386 version (adjust as necessary). Most of the steps equally apply to pre-Santa Rosa models too.

These instructions will work with the MacBook 3,1 (Late 2007) and newer but will NOT work with the new aluminium MacBooks since they have different hardware (especially the graphics card). These instructions are not suitable for the MacBook Pro either!!

This guide is based largely around my previous guide for Fedora 8, and again much credit goes to the people who created the original Ubuntu wiki guide.

What works and what doesn't?

There are a few things that need fixing (covered in detail below) but the following all work "out of the box" with Fedora 10: video/graphics, compiz effects, firewire, CD/DVD reading and writing, function keys (brightness, volume etc), sound, and ethernet. Even the new "plymouth" graphical boot screen works fine once activated.

I have yet to try the infrared or connecting an external monitor. Everything else works with the tweaks described below, except for suspend and hibernate which seem generally pretty broken in F10 (as it was in F9 too). Update 7 November 2008: Suspend and hibernate are fixed with 2.6.27.7-134 kernel and newer. See bug report.

Basic installation instructions

If you're new to installing Linux then these steps should help you. If you're an old hand then skip below to view the post-installation steps necessary to fix the things that don't "just work".

Update the MacBook firmware to the latest version. If you prefer, you may use the standard "Software Update" in OS X.
Get your Fedora 10 installation DVD ready. Note: you should use the x86_64 version of Fedora 10 and that I have only tested this using the Install Media, not the Live DVD.
Install rEFIt on OS X if you want a boot menu to select between OS X/Fedora to appear on every boot. This is highly recommended but optional - this guide assumes you have installed rEFIt. You can make Fedora boot by default and change the menu timeout by editing the "refit.conf" file (described on the rEFIt website).
Use the OS X partition manager in Disk Utility to resize your OS X partition and make space for Fedora. On my 260GB hard drive, I shrank the OS X (hfs+) partition to 120GB to leave about 130GB for Fedora. Insert your Fedora 10 installation DVD in the drive and reboot.
If you have rEFIt installed, then on boot you will be given the option to boot from the DVD, choose it. If you don't have rEFIt installed, then hold down "C" to boot from the DVD.
Install Fedora as usual, except:

In the partitioner, select to manually edit partition table
Create a 200MB boot partition with mountpoint '/boot' (this will be /dev/sda3)
Create a new ext3 partition with mountpoint '/' - this will be your main Fedora partition on /dev/sda4. Make sure to leave 2GB free space after this partition for your swap partition
With the remaining 2GB, create a linux swap partition - this will be /dev/sda5

Finish the installation and reboot.
If you installed rEFIt, you should have a choice between booting OS X and Linux. Use the arrow keys and Enter to select Linux.
Log in to Fedora
Follow the steps in the sections below to work around things that still do not work out-of-the-box in Fedora 10.

Post installation

Note: The wireless on the MacBook doesn't work out of the box in Fedora, so you're going to need an ethernet internet connection available until we get round to fixing the wireless later in this guide.

It is very important now to update your Fedora installation to the latest packages using yum. To do so:

su -
yum update

Once yum has finished updating, reboot, and then do a yum update again. Repeat this process until yum finds no more packages to update.

Fixing the wireless

The MacBook comes with a Broadcom 4328 wireless chipset. This is not supported by default in Fedora 10 and there are two options to make it work: using ndiswrapper and Windows drivers or using the new official Broadcom STA wireless driver. In this guide we will use the official Broadcom driver because it is easier and more reliable.

1) Enable the rpmfusion non-free repository.

The broadcom-wl and wl-kmod RPMs that we need are in the rpmfusion.org non-free repository which also requires the rpmfusion.org free repository. To enable these repos in Fedora simply do this:

su -c 'rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm'

2) Update and install the driver package

Now that you have the appropriate repository enabled, to install the driver package we first ensure that we have the latest updates and then install the "broadcom-wl" package which will bring with it the required "kmod-wl" package:

su -
yum update
yum install broadcom-wl

That's all there is to it. At this stage you may need to reboot in order to enable the new driver and any new kernel that was installed during the update. For more details or if you have any difficulties see this post.

When future kernels are released a simple "yum update" command should install the new kernel and also pull in the updated Broadcom driver for that new kernel.

Fixing the touchpad

(Thanks to bodom_lx for this tip)

The touchpad works out of the box but there is no way to right or middle click. Traditionally this was fixed by adding the appropriate options to /etc/X11/xorg.conf but the new xorg-server in F10 doesn't use the traditional xorg.conf file. Instead it is configured through HAL fdi configuration files.

To create the appropriate file for configuring the touchpad:

su -
gedit /etc/hal/fdi/policy/appletouch.fdi

Copy and paste the following into the empty file:

Save the file and reboot. You should now be able to right-click by using a two finger tap on the touchpad and middle-click by using a three finger tap. You can also right-click by holding two fingers on the touchpad and clicking the button, and middle-click by holding three fingers and clicking the button.

If you want to adjust any of the options (or add new ones) see "man synaptics" for an explanation of what they do.

Disable touchpad while typing

The placement and sensitivity of the MacBook touchpad means that it is prone to moving your cursor while you're typing which is very annoying. We can fix this:

To disable the touchpad while typing use this command:

syndaemon -i 1 -d

This disables the touchpad for 1 second after you type something. This works well but if you go back and forth a lot it can be a hassle to wait that one second. NOTE you can use ".5" for half a seconf instead and it works much better.

Alternatively,

syndaemon -t -d

This disables tapping motions but not movement while typing.

Both work fine, and the one that works best for you will likely be determined by the type of computing you do. Try them both and decide for yourself.

Once you've found the one you want to use, add it as an application to start in your gnome session.

iSight camera

First of all, you will need a copy of the firmware from Apple. You can either download this here, or copy it from a Mac OS X partition. While the latter is usually preferred I can't guarantee that the firmware distributed with your MacBook will be supported, so sometimes its easier just to download it.

To acquire the firmware, save the file AppleUSBVideoSupport to your home directory. Next, we need to convert the AppleUSBVideoSupport to a useable firmware file. The isight-firmware-tools will do this for us so we need to install that package:

su -c "yum install isight-firmware-tools"

Now, finally, we can convert the AppleUSBVideoSupport to a useable firmware file. From your home directory where you downloaded the AppleUSBVideoSupport file:

su -c ift-extract --apple-driver AppleUSBVideoSupport

Reboot and your webcam should be fully functionally. Test it with Cheese, Ekiga, or Skype2.

Bluetooth

Bluetooth works out of the box but due to some kernel bug it needs to be enabled properly first.

Edit /etc/sysconfig/bluetooth and make sure it says 'HID2HCI_ENABLE=true'.

That'll fix it on subsequent reboots. For now, just run '/sbin/hid2hci' as root.

Apple SMC (Optional)

This is an optional but recommended step. The Apple SMC (System Management Controller) provides an interface to devices such as fans, temperature sensors, motion sensors, leds and controls these.

The applesmc kernel module is not loaded by default - I guess this is a bug. The correct way to load a module on boot in Fedora 10 is to create a .modules file in /etc/sysconfig/modules/ - here is how to do it for applesmc:

su -
gedit /etc/sysconfig/modules/applesmc.modules

Paste the following into the file:

#!/bin/sh

if [ ! -d /sys/devices/platform/applesmc.768 ] ; then
        exec /sbin/modprobe applesmc >/dev/null 2>&1
fi

Save and exit, then change the file permissions as follows:

chmod 755 /etc/sysconfig/modules/applesmc.modules

On next boot the applesmc module will load. Meanwhile, just do "modprobe applesmc" as root.

Plymouth graphical boot (Optional)

To activate the plymouth graphical boot you must edit /boot/grub/grub.conf and add your framebuffer resolution at the end of the kernel line. For the MacBook with Intel graphics the resolution that works is "0x318". So, become root and edit the kernel line to look something like this:

title Fedora (2.6.27.5-117.fc10.x86_64)
	root (hd0,2)
	kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.27.5-117.fc10.x86_64 ro root=UUID=afb18b52-bfdf-49aa-95f0-234d3013f87d rhgb quiet vga=0x318
	initrd /initrd-2.6.27.5-117.fc10.x86_64.img

By default only the solar and text themes are installed. To add additional plymouth themes type:

su -
yum install plymouth-plugin-{fade-in,pulser,spinfinity}

Now you can try any theme you want like shown below, just replace pluginname with one of the following: solar, fade-in, pulser, spinfinity, text:

su -
plymouth-set-default-plugin pluginname
/usr/libexec/plymouth/plymouth-update-initrd

After that just reboot your computer to enjoy a lovely graphical boot.

What next?

Now your MacBook hardware should be fully functional so it is time to get busy adding the software you want and tweaking the system to your needs.

This guide by Mauriat Miranda is a great place to look for details of how to install common media players, codecs and fonts.

For the native 64bit flash plugin see this post.

Have fun!

Yorkshire Dales three peaks challenge!

Chris — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 21:12:58 +0000

Big thanks to everyone who contributed to my birthday present of a weekend away in the Yorkshire Dales to do the 3 peaks challenge. We had a lovely time and to spare me the pain of telling everyone about it individually I thought I'd write about it here instead.

We completed the gruelling 25 mile trek including 1,672 metres ascent in just under 9 hours. The target time is 12 hours so we did pretty well. If you can't be bothered reading then scroll straight to the bottom for a gallery of our photos from the walk.

We set off from Liverpool at 5pm on Friday and arrived in Horton-in-Ribblesdale just before 9pm. The journey was uneventful apart from a mad dash up the platform at Leeds station just as the guard was blowing the whistle for the last train to Horton to depart... yikes! Fortunately we made it, just, otherwise it would have been a weekend in Leeds.

Arriving at the hotel we got our keys, threw our stuff in the room and went to grab some food downstairs. The bar was packed and there was nowhere to sit so we were directed to the "dining room" which looked like it had been taken directly from a Little Britain sketch. If you were being kind you could describe it as quaint but in reality it was just odd: pink walls, green tables, red chairs, brown carpet, curtains from 1970, hundreds of awful paintings on the wall, and most bizarrely a few dozen nodding dogs on top of a piano watching us eat!

Claire had tomato soup which had come straight from a packet and was accompanied by the cheapest doughiest white bread roll you've ever seen. I ordered chicken and chips and was given a deep-fried hunk of chicken with some grey chips that looked like they had been cooked in fat that was as old as the pub. I wouldn't mind if it had been cheap but the prices made you feel you should be getting at least some half-decent "pub grub".

At least it gave us something to moan about!

Next morning we got up for breakfast which unsurprisingly was also pretty dreadful. Apparently they think that a "continental breakfast" is a choice of stale cereals. No fruit, nothing. The cooked breakfast was just about edible.

We left the hotel just after 9am and wandered to the local shop to grab some water and to get a butty from the cafe down the road. With our provisions taken care of we started the walk at about 9:20am. Our plan was to do the walk "backwards" going clockwise from Horton: up Ingleborough then Whernside then to Ribblehead where we would decide whether to complete the final leg up Pen-y-ghent or take the train back to the hotel.

The first hour or so was just a long haul towards Ingleborough. The weather was dry but overcast and foggy so we couldn't really see much. Climbing Ingleborough from this side was relatively easy and we made it to the top in less than 2 hours. Quite a steep descent led us down then we headed north towards Whernside. The cloud and fog was more patchy lower down and we rewarded with some of our first views of Ribblehead viaduct. I imagine it's quite nice round there when you can actually see something!

The ascent up Whernside was direct but gentle except for one short section where the path became steep and difficult. An easy walk up the broad and gentle ridge brought us to the top of Whernside only 2 hours after the previous summit. Still the weather on the tops was very foggy and we couldn't see anything. We stopped here for lunch and then headed down towards Ribblehead. During this descent we met some 200 or so other walkers who were headed upwards - I've never seen so many people on a mountain!

It seemed to take forever but eventually we made it past the viaduct and into Ribblehead where we stopped again for a quick drink. By this time we had done 14 miles in less than 5 hours and we were both pretty knackered. The thought of walking again in the morning didn't seem appealing and we really wanted to do the challenge in one day so we decided to continue towards Pen-y-ghent. Besides, I wanted to get back to watch the football on Sunday evening.

The next section from Ribblehead to Pen-y-ghent was an absolute killer. It wasn't steep, just a long slog, but we had been able to see Pen-y-ghent ever since descending Whernside and it was demoralising because it never seemed to get any closer. To make things worse the ground underfoot was boggy and energy draining to walk on. After 2 1/2 hours we finally reached the bottom of Pen-y-ghent from where it was a short but difficult and energy sapping ascent to the top. We made it to the top at about 5:20pm. Hooray!

A very steep initial descent from Pen-y-ghent gave way to a gentle footpath and then just a short hop across a few fields and back into Horton-in-Ribblesdale. Feet in absolute agony and aching all over we were glad to be back. A short rest and shower then, figuring that the food couldn't be any worse, we walked to the other pub in the village for some well-deserved dinner. They didn't disappoint providing us with monster portions of top quality grub for a fair price. Yum yum!

You can view all our pictures (with commentary) below. Feel free to leave a comment!