Arch Linux

hjorthboggild

Member

From: Denmark

Registered: 2005-11-05

Posts: 89

Macbook Pro 3 - success stories

Hi,

As I've recently purchased a Macbook Pro 3 (with Nvidia graphics card) I was wondering if anyone has had any luck install Arch on it (preferrably the 64 bit version).

I myself have managed to install Arch (64 bit version) mainly following the directions on the wiki with some changes, but I still haven't managed to get X up and running.

Any feedback from others having installed Arch is welcomed

Kind regards,
Simon

evdvelde

Member

From: Antwerp - BELGIUM

Registered: 2005-12-02

Posts: 57

Re: Macbook Pro 3 - success stories

Hi, any luck yet? Or other people with success stories.. I am thinking of buying a macbook pro but mainly for the great hardware and design, and not for mac osx... I fell in love with Arch

hjorthboggild

Member

From: Denmark

Registered: 2005-11-05

Posts: 89

Re: Macbook Pro 3 - success stories

Well, so far the biggest challenges have been X and sound, but X does work with the nv driver, and there's a patch for the nvidia driver, which is supposed to work, but I haven't tried that myself. As far as sound goes newest alsa development is also supposed to work. You can check out status at this ubuntuthread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=474144 or this wikipage: https://cbg.dyndns.org/wiki/ReadingCorn … MacbookPro

Regards
Simon

evdvelde

Member

From: Antwerp - BELGIUM

Registered: 2005-12-02

Posts: 57

Re: Macbook Pro 3 - success stories

Thank you for the reply.. Macbook here I come!

Pashov_D

Member

Registered: 2007-08-23

Posts: 11

Re: Macbook Pro 3 - success stories

The nvidia patch works !
But the performance in beryl (compiz-fusion) is sloow.
If you want to reduce the brightness you can use nvidia-settings

hjorthboggild

Member

From: Denmark

Registered: 2005-11-05

Posts: 89

Re: Macbook Pro 3 - success stories

Did you try patching alsa to get sound working?

Pashov_D

Member

Registered: 2007-08-23

Posts: 11

Re: Macbook Pro 3 - success stories

haven't tried alsa but  read it is supposed to work with some quirks as for example headphones and mic jacks are swapped or something. Actually the sound card is recognized and I can turn up and down the volumes and everything in alsamixer it's just that there is no sound coming out of the speakers(internal) it might play on the output though. I don't have anything to plug now to see if that is the case.

jcci

Member

From: China / Germany

Registered: 2007-06-10

Posts: 185

Re: Macbook Pro 3 - success stories

I tried to patch alsa with the Realtek patch from the Realtek site without result. In addition it messed up my alsa totally so I can not load any sound driver anymore :-(  Right now I don't know how to repair.
There is a Realtek patch in Arch's ABS Kernel section, but how to implement?

Nvidia's beryl performance is really poor - no fun here. Hoping for a better driver that also solves the NV/Nvidia workaround.

The display brightness works fine since the last "pommed" update.

hjorthboggild

Member

From: Denmark

Registered: 2005-11-05

Posts: 89

Re: Macbook Pro 3 - success stories

You can probably fix the alsa by reinstalling the kernel and alsa packages. I also tried the alsa patch but not to much avail. I had to modprobe snd-hda-intel with options model=mbp3 to get some sound. It only works with the speakers, headphones are not working for me.

Pashov_D

Member

Registered: 2007-08-23

Posts: 11

Re: Macbook Pro 3 - success stories

No need of recompiling. Just update everything and rn "alsaconf". Sound works just fine.

hjorthboggild

Member

From: Denmark

Registered: 2005-11-05

Posts: 89

Re: Macbook Pro 3 - success stories

alsaconf adds this to my modprobe.conf:

            alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
            alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel

but it doens't seem to help anything. When I do a modprobe snd-hda-intel dmesg outputs:

            hda_codec: Unknown model for ALC882, trying auto-probe from BIOS...

I'm wondering how did you have your sound working without patching alsa?

Regards,
Simon

Last edited by hjorthboggild (2007-09-03 17:59:02)

Pashov_D

Member

Registered: 2007-08-23

Posts: 11

Re: Macbook Pro 3 - success stories

I have the same lines in modprobe.conf but my card shows up as alc885 when I open alsamixer. I have Macbook pro 2.2 C2D with 128MB video (nvidia). Which is yours?
I deleted arch few days ago because I wanted to see if some other distros have comparative support and at the and I installed arch again. And the sound works out of the box with alsa-lib 1.0.14-5 (from the current repo).
Did you update the system?

hjorthboggild

Member

From: Denmark

Registered: 2005-11-05

Posts: 89

Re: Macbook Pro 3 - success stories

From the MacOSX System profiler:

Hardware Overview:

  Model Name:    MacBook Pro
  Model Identifier:    MacBookPro3,1

Pashov_D

Member

Registered: 2007-08-23

Posts: 11

Re: Macbook Pro 3 - success stories

I just read your first post. You have the 64 bit archlinux. Mine is 32. May be that has something to do with the problem.

Last edited by Pashov_D (2007-09-04 14:14:39)

jcci

Member

From: China / Germany

Registered: 2007-06-10

Posts: 185

Re: Macbook Pro 3 - success stories

Alsa: Just reinstall alsa from pacman didn't work. I tried this first of course. After download, compile and install alsa from alsaproject.org everything os OK again. Somwhere else I read the latst version of alsa solves the sound problem, but unfortunately I still have no sound on Arch64.

hjorthboggild: I can modprobe snd-hda-intel with Arch64 without error message. However, no sound.

evdvelde

Member

From: Antwerp - BELGIUM

Registered: 2005-12-02

Posts: 57

Re: Macbook Pro 3 - success stories

Please post it as a bug on bugs.archlinux.org... I am getting my macbook pro in two weeks and would love to have sound there
After its arrival, I will start posting bugs/solutions too, but now is a bit early

Last edited by evdvelde (2007-09-07 10:44:56)

jcci

Member

From: China / Germany

Registered: 2007-06-10

Posts: 185

Re: Macbook Pro 3 - success stories

I'm afraid this is no bug in Arch Linux, rather than an ALSA incompatibility with brand new hardware.
Beside ALSA and NVIDIA the Macbook works really nice. The NVIDIA problem is just an inconvenience and it seems there is a workaround out there. I will write my results after checking.
I'm listening music thrugh a very high quality DAC with USB connection, which works fine with the macbook. But for Skype and travelling I need the internal sound system.
The Macbook Pro (I have a high res 17'' type) is a very fine notebook! I'm afraid that most of santa rosa based notebooks may have the same problems.

INCSlayer

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2007-09-06

Posts: 296

Website

Re: Macbook Pro 3 - success stories

try writing:
options snd-hda-intel model=toshiba in modprobe.conf that works for me.
i dont have a mac but i have the same sound card on a santa rosa plattform and a laptop that isnt a toshiba so i think it might work

Last edited by INCSlayer (2007-09-17 15:14:31)

---

dovie andi se tovya sagain

jcci

Member

From: China / Germany

Registered: 2007-06-10

Posts: 185

Re: Macbook Pro 3 - success stories

Now my NVIDIA driver works right from the start! No more annoying NV driver ti NVIDIA workaround. One clever guy just changed the original NVIDIA driver! What a shame NVIDIA does not provide such simple solution themselves!

To all of you suffering the same trouble a copy of the howto:

1. Extracted the NVidia driver
# sh NVidia....100.14.11.run -x
2. go to src dir in the extracted folder and edit the "nv.c" file
* changed this routine:
__nv_init_sp = sp;

return 0;
------------------------- with this one:

__nv_init_sp = sp;
{
for (i = 0; i < num_nv_devices; i++) {
printk("Macbook Hack\n");
struct pci_dev *dev = nv_linux_devices[i].dev;
#define NV_WR32(p,i,d) (__raw_writel((d), (void __iomem *)(p) + (i)))

unsigned long mmio_start;
__u32 mmio_len;

mmio_start = pci_resource_start(dev, 0);
mmio_len = pci_resource_len(dev, 0);
volatile u32 __iomem *REGS;

REGS = ioremap(mmio_start, mmio_len);

if(REGS) {
NV_WR32(REGS, 0x1708, 0);
NV_WR32(REGS, 0x1900, 0);
NV_WR32(REGS, 0x1901, 0);
NV_WR32(REGS, 0x1902, 0);
NV_WR32(REGS, 0x1903, 0);
NV_WR32(REGS, 0x1904, 0);
NV_WR32(REGS, 0x1905, 0);
NV_WR32(REGS, 0x1906, 0);
NV_WR32(REGS, 0x1907, 0);

iounmap(REGS);
} else {
printk("Error mapping memory\n");
}
}
}

return 0;
----------------------
3. I installed the nvidia driver:
#./nvidia-installer -aN

4. I started X and everything is OK, but with some lost extentions.

5. I loaded the extmod module in the xorg.conf in the Modules section, so the external extensions are available for X.

Section "Module"
Load "dbe"
Load "extmod"
Load "fbdevhw"
Load "glx"
Load "record"
Load "freetype"
Load "type1"
EndSection

and that's it.

jcci

Member

From: China / Germany

Registered: 2007-06-10

Posts: 185

Re: Macbook Pro 3 - success stories

@INCSlayer: Thank you sharing your experience, bu it is not working for my Macbook Pro. The microphone works obviously (check on VU-meter), but no sound at all.

My to do list is not so long anymore:

1. Sound
2. Remote Control
3. Camera

Any ideas?
Early October I have to make sound presentations on a Tokyo High End audio show useing our USB-DAC. I would love doing this with my Arch-Macbook! At least I need to make the remote control work.

Last edited by jcci (2007-09-18 13:34:23)

jcci

Member

From: China / Germany

Registered: 2007-06-10

Posts: 185

Re: Macbook Pro 3 - success stories

...my list adds bluetooth :-(

Dear Arch Macbook users: Did you all sell your Macbook or are you guys using MacOSX now? No more movement here - pity!

evdvelde

Member

From: Antwerp - BELGIUM

Registered: 2005-12-02

Posts: 57

Re: Macbook Pro 3 - success stories

I am still waiting for mine... One month and counting

Pashov_D

Member

Registered: 2007-08-23

Posts: 11

Re: Macbook Pro 3 - success stories

I am using the 32bit ArchLinux on MacBook Bro V3 2.2GHz and most things work. The sound card is recognized as ALC885 (without any patching, just using the official repos) and has no problems (I guess the people above who have some problems are using the 64bit version). The built in microphone and speakers work (note: the volume for the mic in alsamixer is "Digital", not "Mic", I had to sped some time to find out). The videocard is NVidia 8600M GT 128MB GDDR3 VRAM and the latest driver 100.14.19-1 works without any patching. It gives me around 10 000 FPS in glxgears but beryl runs somewhat skippy. The bluetooth works fine. It was easy to set up a bluetooth mouse. Screen dimming and eject button work with pommed. The touchpad  is not so smooth as in MacOSX but it is usable (I am using it all the time). The cpu scaling works.When idle or slight load the cpu runs on 800MHz and scales up to 2.2GHz depending on the load. The sensors are detected correctly with lm_sensors. The wireless works with madwifi but from time to time drops and I couldn't get it up again without restart(I use wired connection mainly so it is not a huge issue at the moment). I haven't tried playing with the camera and the remote so I cannot say anything, also never tried to do suspend or hibernate.
So finally I wold say ArchLinux is viable alternative for that computer. I use Arch as my main OS. Very rarely I run windows to play one game and also rarely run macosx.

evdvelde

Member

From: Antwerp - BELGIUM

Registered: 2005-12-02

Posts: 57

Re: Macbook Pro 3 - success stories

@Pashov_D: Why are you using a 32bit Archlinux on the Macbook Pro which has a 64bit CPU?

Pashov_D

Member

Registered: 2007-08-23

Posts: 11

Re: Macbook Pro 3 - success stories

Because some thing are missing in the 64bit world and I will have to install some 32bit libraries (workarounds) to make them work and so on. And I am not so fond of the idea. I was using 64bit distro for some time an year ago and I didn't really see many advantages.
I wrote the previous post in response to that guy "jcci" , I wanted to say that there are some people using the computer with Arch, eventhough I understand that this thread is for the 64bit (as evident from the opening post).