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Installing Fedora 11 on a MacBook

Chris — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:39:39 +0000

This guide will help you through all the steps necessary for installing Fedora 11 on a MacBook Santa Rosa. This guide is aimed at Fedora 11 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 are specific to the MacBook 3,1 (Late 2007) and newer but not the new aluminium MacBooks since they have different hardware (especially the graphics card). These instructions are not suitable for the MacBook Pro either!! That said, many of the steps here are common to all MacBook models and I have included a few tips for people with the Aluminum MacBooks.

This guide is based largely around my previous guides for Fedora 8 and Fedora 10. This guide is much shorter than the previous two guides and that can only be a good thing!

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, firewire, USB, CD/DVD reading and writing, suspend/hibernate, cpu speed control, fan control (including applesmc), volume function keys, sound, and ethernet. Even the new "plymouth" graphical boot screen works out of the box.

I have yet to try the infrared or connecting an external monitor but I suspect they work just fine. Everything else works with the tweaks described below.

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 11 installation DVD ready. Note: you should use the x86_64 version of Fedora 11 and that I have only tested this using the Installation DVD, not the Live CD/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 free space for Fedora. Insert your Fedora 11 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 and create your new partitions in the free space you created above
Create a 200MB ext3 boot partition with mountpoint '/boot' (this will be /dev/sda3)
Create a new ext4 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. Remove the DVD.
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 11.

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 4,1 comes with a Broadcom 4328 wireless chipset. This is not supported by default in Fedora 11 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 "kmod-wl" package which will bring with it the required "broadcom-wl" package:

su -
yum update
yum install kmod-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

Note, for aluminum MacBook users at the time of writing the touchpad does not work at all. There is a bug report here and it looks like a solution may come with a kernel update any time soon.

For everyone else, the touchpad works out of the box but just needs a few settings to make it work with two finger scrolling and two finger clicking. In Gnome, go to System -> Preferences -> Mouse and then select the Touchpad tab. Enable the option for two-finger scrolling. You may also want to enable the option to disable the touchpad while typing. You can now scroll with two fingers, right click by holding down two fingers and clicking, and middle click by holding down 3 fingers and clicking.

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 functional. Test it with Cheese, Ekiga, or Skype2. At the time of writing there is a bug in gstreamer which makes the webcam output all green, I have raised a bug report for it, feel free to add a "me too" and we'll see if it gets fixed.

Bluetooth

Bluetooth works out of the box but due to some long standing 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.

Fixing the brightness keys

The brightness keys don't work but I have found a work around that fixes them.

To fix, disable kernel mode setting (KMS) by adding the following to the kernel parameters in /etc/grub.conf after "rhgb quiet":

nomodeset

And if you still want the graphical boot screen then add this also:

vga=0x318

While playing with these changes it is sensible to add a timeout value to grub.conf also so you can easily edit the boot config in case anything goes wrong...

So my grub.conf looks like this:

default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,2)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora (2.6.29.4-167.fc11.x86_64)
        root (hd0,2)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.29.4-167.fc11.x86_64 ro root=UUID=9efa16ed-8e34-4e88-9d7e-253fd5f9b43c rhgb quiet nomodeset vga=0x318
        initrd /initrd-2.6.29.4-167.fc11.x86_64.img

Note, your kernel and initrd paths may look different depending on your partition setup and the UUID will definitely be different so don't just copy and paste mine!! I am only showing the above so you can see where the "nomodeset vga=0x318" should go. Basically put it right after "rhgb quiet" on the kernel line.

Reboot and your screen brightness keys should be working fine.

Video driver for newer MacBooks

This only applies to MacBooks with an nVidia video card: newer white versions and all aluminum versions. You can check the type of video card by doing "lspci" and looking for the video card details.

For those with an nVidia card you can install the official nVidia drivers which give better performance and full 3D support. First ensure you have the rpmfusion repositories installed as in the above wireless section, then:

su -c 'yum install kmod-nvidia'

Reboot and you should be using the nVidia drivers.

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 thread.

Have fun!

Installing Broadcom Wireless STA Driver in Fedora 11

Chris — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 13:54:43 +0000

These are updated instructions for installing the Broadcom Wireless STA driver in Fedora 11. This driver is for use with Broadcom's BCM4311-, BCM4312-, BCM4321-, and BCM4322-based hardware.

1) Enable the rpmfusion repositories.

The broadcom-wl and wl-kmod RPMs that we need are in the rpmfusion non-free repository which also requires the rpmfusion free repository. To enable these repos in Fedora 11 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

su -
yum update
yum install kmod-wl

3) Make a couple of adjustments

At this stage you should reboot and provided you have Network Manager running (default setting for F11) it should detect your Broadcom wireless device and you should be able to connect to your wireless network.

If you're having problems then it is likely some conflict between Network Manager and the network service. To ensure that Network Manager can use the wireless go to System > Administration > Network and select the wireless device (if it's not there then this doesn't apply to you). Edit the device and check "Controlled by Network Manager" and "Activate device when computer starts". Close Network Configuration, save changes and then reboot.

You should also read the license and readme which are located in /usr/share/doc/

4) Enjoy your wireless!

That's all there is to it. At this stage you may need to reboot (if you didn't already) in order to enable the new driver and any new kernel that was installed during the update.

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.

Fedora 11 – first impressions

Chris — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 07:06:20 +0000

Just got Fedora 11 up and running on my MacBook and it's pretty damn good, nothing ground breaking but it seems like another solid release from the Red Hat folks and builds nicely on the foundations of Fedora 10. Here's what I noticed so far compared to Fedora 10:

The installation process is way more streamlined - only took 20mins for me and that was including some custom parititioning and messing with the selected packages. Also has a whole lot more polished feel about it. Great work by the Anaconda team.
Boot time is improved. I can't say how much quicker but it feels like it boots faster than Fedora 10, and gnome seems to login quicker too. I think they met their 20 second target time. Nice.
Gnome 2.26 - this is a minor update but has some nice features - Volume Control and support for multiple monitors are greatly improved.
Improved input device configuration and updated synaptics driver - this is huge. I especially like the fact that there is now an option to enable 2 finger scrolling on a touchpad without messing with HAL fdi files. The MacBook touchpad now works really nicely without having to getting knee deep in config files.
Firefox 3.5 and Thunderbird 3. Both beta releases but both seem stable and Thunderbird 3 finally has some half-decent search function and offline message caching.
Elisa Media Centre 0.5.37 - updated version that works really nicely. It was badly broken in F10 on my hardware.
Intel video drivers - these seem greatly improved since 10. No more system crashes when using 3D effect (touch wood).
Kernel - applesmc actually loads automatically now on a MacBook 4,1.

The bad: gstreamer is still broken with my webcam and gstreamer-properties refuses to save the custom config that would make it work.

It's all minor stuff, but still it's a big improvement over Fedora 10 which in turn was a big improvement over Fedora 9.

Simple time lapse video in Linux

Chris — Sun, 10 May 2009 16:24:37 +0000

Time lapse (or stop-motion) video is really cool, and this post explains how to make a simple time lapse style video in Linux using entirely free open source software.

There is more than one way to skin a cat and when I was searching for how to do this I came across many different methods and suggestions but not really anything that suited what I wanted. Andrew Wells suggests making a movie and then processing it with ffmpeg to only store 1 in every n frames. That seems a neat solution but I wanted to take a series of still shots and string those together into a movie. Tim Nugent published a teaser of some nice looking time lapse software he wrote but as yet there is no published source or binary. There were various other suggestions dotted around the web but each one I tried had some problem or other. So here's how I did it.

First of all, you need a working webcam. Webcam support has really improved recently in Linux and I found the built-in iSight on my MacBook and my cheapo Logitech USB webcam work just fine without any intervention from me.

Next we need some way to save an image from the webcam every x seconds. I found that camstream does the trick just fine despite it's sucky 1996-looking website and lack of a release since 2006. Under Fedora 10 to install camstream just use yum or your favourite GUI package manager:

yum install camstream

Camstream is pretty easy to use. Really, a child could do it. Just use the "File" menu to open up your webcam device. Then click the little configuration icon (it looks like a spanner) to adjust the file settings you'd like to use for capture. I found that JPG images work much better than PNG.

As the "Basename" enter the full path of the filename you'd like to save your images as, for example if you want to save your images as "/home/yourname/Pictures/Webcam/MyTimeLapse/image001.jpg" (and so on) then set the basename as "/home/yourname/Pictures/Webcam/MyTimeLapse/image" then choose "Number sequence" and set the maximum sequence number to something pretty big (like 100000). Close the settings. Click the icon to "show last snapshot".

Now click "take snapshot at regular intervals" and set your interval. I chose 3 seconds. Choose whatever you think is appropriate. Now you're all set. Camstream will take images at the interval chosen and save them into the directory you configured. Sweeeeet.

Ok, so now we have a directory full of images that looks something like this:

$ ls
image000.jpg  image003.jpg  image006.jpg  image009.jpg  image012.jpg  image015.jpg  image018.jpg
image001.jpg  image004.jpg  image007.jpg  image010.jpg  image013.jpg  image016.jpg
image002.jpg  image005.jpg  image008.jpg  image011.jpg  image014.jpg  image017.jpg

We're gonna feed these files to mencoder for it to pull together into a movie. To do this we need a text file containing a list of the files in the order that we want them. You could write this file yourself (boring) but we can create it using something like this:

ls -1tr > files.txt

This provides a listing (ls) of the current working directory outputting 1 file per line (1) sorted by modification time (t) in reverse order (r) and sends the output (>) to a file named files.txt. In the example above my files.txt looks like this:

image000.jpg
image001.jpg
image002.jpg
image003.jpg
image004.jpg
image005.jpg
image006.jpg
image007.jpg
image008.jpg
image009.jpg
image010.jpg
image011.jpg
image012.jpg
image013.jpg
image014.jpg
image015.jpg
image016.jpg
image017.jpg
image018.jpg

Now download and install mencoder. Again it's available on nearly all modern distros. For Fedora 10 just do "yum install mencoder". Now all we need do to make our move is issue a command like this:

mencoder -nosound -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4 -o test.avi -mf type=jpeg:fps=20 mf://@files.txt

This will encode all the files listed in files.txt into a movie called test.avi using the mpeg4 encoder with no sound and a framerate of 20 frames per second. Messing with the fps gives very different results. See "Encoding from multiple input image files" in the mencoder documentation for more info.

Here's an example video made using this method:

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

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

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

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!

RPM installation of Broadcom 802.11 STA wireless driver in Fedora 8/9/10

Chris — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 11:53:54 +0000

RPMs for the Broadcom 802.11 STA Wireless Driver are now available from the rpmfusion.org repos for Fedora 8, 9 and 10.

This is an official-release of Broadcom's IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n hybrid Linux device driver for use with Broadcom's BCM4311-, BCM4312-, BCM4321-, and BCM4322-based hardware. This driver also supports the incorrectly identified BCM4328 chipset which is actually a BCM4321 or BCM4322 chipset.

Previously I explained how to build the Broadcom STA driver from source but now the installation and updates can all be taken care of using yum and the rpmfusion non-free repository. Just follow these two simple steps:

1) Enable the rpmfusion non-free repository.

The broadcom-wl and wl-kmod RPMs that we need are in the rpmfusion non-free repository which also requires the rpmfusion 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

su -
yum update
yum install broadcom-wl

3) Make a couple of adjustments

At this stage you should reboot and provided you have Network Manager running (default setting for F10) it should detect your Broadcom wireless device and you should be able to connect to your wireless network.

You should also read the license and readme which are located in /usr/share/doc/broadcom-wl-5.10.27.6/

4) Enjoy your wireless!

That's all there is to it. At this stage you may need to reboot (if you didn't already) in order to enable the new driver and any new kernel that was installed during the update.

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.

Installing the Broadcom 802.11 STA driver in Fedora 9

Chris — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:56:39 +0000

Update 15 November 2008: Just a note to mention that I've packaged this up into an RPM and so this driver is now available as an RPM in the rpmfusion repos for Fedora 8, 9 and 10.

See this post for instructions of how to install using the RPM version (much easier!).

Update 26 January 2009: These instructions are now fairly outdated. The latest releases of the broadcom driver don't require the same patches as mentioned here to make them build correctly against recent kernels. I highly recommend using the RPM installation instructions linked above, or if you require help with building the latest drivers please drop me a message or leave a comment below.

Happy, happy days! At long last, a Linux Broadcom driver for the BCM4328 chipset that doesn't require ndiswrapper and Windows drivers. For me, this is really, really huge: ndiswrapper has never worked properly with NetworkManager using WPA security but this new Broadcom driver seems bullet-proof. It is even supposed to support 802.11n standard but I can't verify that just yet.

The source packages currently available from Broadcom (version 5.10.27.6) don't build on the current Fedora 9 kernel (2.6.26.5-45) and probably won't compile on any newer kernel either. Digging around a bit I found a patch that makes the driver build successfully.

Great, but that's not the whole story: I then found that with the new driver I was unable to SSH or telnet into any remote servers - bummer. However, some more digging turned up another patch that fixes this problem. With these two patches in place the new driver really rocks. For the first time in 10 months (since I bought my MacBook) I can actually connect to WPA secured networks using NetworkManager - no more fiddling around with wpa_supplicant scripts for me!

Anyhow, here's a little how-to guide to install the new Broadcom driver in Fedora 9. Note: I'm a little unsure of which Broadcom chipsets this driver actually supports but I can confirm that it works beautifully with the BCM4328 which is standard on MacBook 3,1 and 4,1 versions.

Important note: Since writing this guide Broadcom have released an updated driver (v 5.10.27.11). The updated driver and updated patches can be downloaded here along with the original driver/patches mentioned in this guide. Adjust the instructions below according to the version you are using.

1) Preparation

Ensure you have the kernel-headers package installed for your current kernel (I presume you already have make and gcc etc installed):

su -
yum install kernel-headers

2) Patching the source yourself

If you want to patch the driver yourself, download the original driver file from the broadcom website here. Make sure to get the 32 or 64 bit version depending on your installed kernel. I've made the patches available at my Fedora 9 page so go there and grab the patches then patch the source code.

3) Using my pre-patched source (easier)

If you're not sure how to patch the source code or just can't be bothered, then go grab my ready-patched tarballs from my Fedora 9 page and untar them. Here's how:

32bit users:

wget http://www.cenolan.com/fedora9/broadcom-patched-x86_32-5.10.27.6.tar.gz
tar zxvf broadcom-patched-x86_32-5.10.27.6.tar.gz
cd broadcom-patched-x86_32-5.10.27.6/

64bit users:

wget http://www.cenolan.com/fedora9/broadcom-patched-x86_64-5.10.27.6.tar.gz
tar zxvf broadcom-patched-x86_64-5.10.27.6.tar.gz
cd broadcom-patched-x86_64-5.10.27.6/

4) Building the driver

Now we've got our patched source building the driver kernel module is easy:

make -C /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build M=`pwd`

This should create a file called wl.ko - this is the magic driver file.

5) Install the new driver

We need to copy the new kernel module to the correct location, add wlan0 as an alias for this driver so that it loads on boot and resolve the module dependencies:

su -c "cp wl.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/net/wireless/
su -
echo "alias wlan0 wl" >> /etc/modprobe.conf
depmod -a

6) Blacklist conflicting drivers

This new driver suffers the same conflicts as the ndiswrapper driver so we need to blacklist the b43, ssb, and bcm43xx drivers, as well as the ndiswrapper driver:

su -
echo "blacklist bcm43xx" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
echo "blacklist ssb" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
echo "blacklist b43" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
echo "blacklist ndiswrapper" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

7) Remove the old module and activate the new one

su -
rmmod bcm43xx; rmmod b43; rmmod b43legacy; rmmod ndiswrapper
modprobe ieee80211_crypt_tkip; modprobe wl

8) All done!

Reboot, or restart NetworkManager and you've hopefully got the new driver installed.

Say hello to faster and more robust connections, and say goodbye to ndiswrapper and crappy badly supported Windows drivers!

References

Broadcom 802.11 Linux STA driver at FedoraForum.org

Broadcom 802.11 Linux STA driver at broadcom.com

*OFFICIAL* Broadcom Linux driver BCM4312 at jomcode.com

Broadcom driver for 4328 b/g/n wireless device at ubuntuforums.com

Bug #259816 wl: telnet/ssh connections blocked when going through NAT to external sites at launchpad.net

Fedora 9 fixes and files for MacBook 3,1 and 4,1 (Santa Rosa)

Custom build of synaptics for Fedora 8 x86_64 on MacBook

Chris — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 21:39:41 +0000

Based on the patches found in this post over at Ubuntu forums I have created an updated synaptics touchpad driver RPM package for Fedora 8 x86_64.

As the original author notes, this makes it more enjoyable to use the touchpad while using the MacBook. It does two things:

Adds the option "MultiFingerButton" to synaptics. This allows us to configure the touchpad to right-click and middle-click by placing two or three fingers on the pad and then clicking the button. In my experience this is far more reliable than the "two finger tap" method of right-clicking.
It makes the mouse arrow more stable - I have found this to be a HUGE improvement in usability over the stock synaptics driver. With the original driver, if you put two fingers on the mousepad and release only one, the mouse arrow moves. This is the default behaviour in Linux and Windows, but in MacOSX, the mouse arrow stays put, and in my personal opinion, this is a much better behaviour. This patch makes it behave just like MacOSX. This may not sound much, but you'll find it makes a huge difference to the stability and usability of the touchpad.

Install the RPM from my Fedora 8 page and add this option to the InputDevice Section in your xorg.conf, just like this:

	Option		"MultiFingerButton"	"1"

	Option		"MultiFingerButton"	"2"

With the value 1, you get middle-clicking if you click the button while resting two fingers on the mousepad, and right-clicking while resting three fingers.

With the value 2, it reverses, and you get right-clicking if you click while resting two fingers on the mousepad, and middle-clicking while resting three fingers. This is the behaviour in MacOSX.

Try it out, and give your opinion. If you don't like it, you can always revert to the default Fedora package.

Fedora 8 x86_64 fixes for battery being reported twice error

Chris — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 15:03:16 +0000

The latest 2.6.25.x Fedora 8 kernels have both ACPI_PROCFS_POWER and ACPI_SYSFS_POWER turned on and this can cause a strange problem with HAL which results in it incorrectly displaying the same battery twice and reporting incorrect charge levels for the "bogus" battery. This in turn creates problems with power management software such as kpowersave and gnome-power-manager.

I have only seen this reported on some specific x86_64 machines but it may affect other architectures too.

The problem has been reported (and fixed) in many other distros and the patch to fix it has been in circulation since January. The patch was even created by someone at RedHat so it's slightly annoying that it hasn't made it yet into the Fedora versions of HAL. I can only assume it is an oversight by the HAL development team or the package maintainers. However, at the very least, a response to the bug report would have been welcome.

The RedHat bug report can be found here (Bug #452356) and contains links to various other reports which contain plenty more information.

For anyone suffering from the same problem and impatient for a fix I've created a set of RPMs that include the patch. You can find them over at my Fedora 8 page.

Hope this is useful to someone. Usual disclaimers apply: if it breaks your machine then its not my fault.

Banshee 1.0 RPM for Fedora 8 x86_64

Chris — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 14:38:20 +0000

Banshee 1.0 was released on June 5 2008. At the time of writing I haven't been able to find an official Fedora 8 RPM build so I have built my own using the Fedora 9 source RPM and made it available here for you to download and install.

For those that don't know, Banshee is a great multimedia player for Linux with support for iPod syncing, podcasts, streaming radio, video and lots more. For iPod owners Banshee is one of few viable Linux alternatives to iTunes.

For Fedora 8 x86_64 users you can install my build of Banshee 1.0 using the following commands:

wget http://www.cenolan.com/fedora8/banshee-1.0.0-1.fc8.x86_64.rpm
yum localinstall banshee-1.0.0-1.fc8.x86_64.rpm --nogpgcheck

Note this a 64 bit build only! If you want to build it for i386 or another architecture then you can do so using the F9 source RPM available from Koji here.

More files, including the debug and devel packages over at my Fedora 8 page.

Usual disclaimers apply: if it breaks your machine then its not my fault.