Macbook Air 2013

frank604 · 2014-03-21 15:25:01

In terms of internet download/upload, I am seeing regular results in speed. 3 mb/s(bytes not bit) download, which is my internet max. I will try a wifi lan file copy and test it tonight if I get the chance.
Not sure if it matters but my router is http://routerboard.com/RB2011UiAS-2HnD-IN

matsjoyce · 2014-03-21 16:19:31

Internet upload/download for me is 5.7 and 1 MB/s (also bytes) using http://www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/.
Also: http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest … 2719463040

Last edited by matsjoyce (2014-03-21 16:45:57)

ryley · 2014-03-25 23:55:28

@mba116pwn/matsjoyce Using the current broadcom-wl module on the 2013 Air fully supports 802.11ac. I get the same performance within my WLAN with Linux as I do with OS X with both TP-Link and an Asus ac routers. I'm not sure why Broadcom hasn't updated that page, it's been about a year since the Air's 4360 wifi card has been supported.

mba116pwn · 2014-03-26 07:11:44

Thanks. Great news. ASUS RT-AC66U just arrived for testing .

mba116pwn · 2014-04-01 11:14:43

i am using thunderbolt (displayport) to hdmi adapter to connect external display (1920x1080) and it works great.

sometimes i want to clone/mirror output to have same picture on both displays (internal and external). but i want to have different resolutions. i want to have same picture on both displays but every one of the should have native resolution.

did anyone try this? none combination i tried worked

Last edited by mba116pwn (2014-04-01 11:21:48)

hobarrera · 2014-04-01 11:53:22

mba116pwn wrote:

i am using thunderbolt (displayport) to hdmi adapter to connect external display (1920x1080) and it works great.
sometimes i want to clone/mirror output to have same picture on both displays (internal and external). but i want to have different resolutions. i want to have same picture on both displays but every one of the should have native resolution.
did anyone try this? none combination i tried worked

I've tried several combinations and all of the worked fine for me. I did notice some wine games crash when using the native resolution on the external display for some completely unknown reason.

I've use arandr as a friendly gui to test out different resolutions and combinations, you might want to give it a try (if only to make sure everything works fine).

mba116pwn · 2014-04-01 12:35:00

i use arandr and it basically works. but if i select 1920x1080 on HDMI1 (external monitor) and use mirroring i see same picture on both displays but MBA shows only part of the desktop because is too big for MBA.

you are able to have 1366x768 on your macbook air (native resolution on 11.6) and 1920x1080 on external display and full mirrored content on both displays? if that works for you, could you please click on "Layout > Save" in arandr. that will create an one-line shell script. could you please post the content of that script here?

thanks a lot.

hobarrera · 2014-04-02 00:08:15

mba116pwn wrote:

i use arandr and it basically works. but if i select 1920x1080 on HDMI1 (external monitor) and use mirroring i see same picture on both displays but MBA shows only part of the desktop because is too big for MBA.

Of course, there's no way to fit a 1920x1080 image on the macbook's display.

mba116pwn wrote:

you are able to have 1366x768 on your macbook air (native resolution on 11.6) and 1920x1080 on external display and full mirrored content on both displays? if that works for you, could you please click on "Layout > Save" in arandr. that will create an one-line shell script. could you please post the content of that script here?
thanks a lot.

That's imposible. You want the external display to (a) mirror the builtin display (ie: run at 1366x768), and (b) use it's native resolution (ie: run at 1920x1080). There's no way you can do that.

---

Edit:

Regarding networks speeds: My 802.11n anthena on my router broke (along with the WAN ethernet port, due to a power surge), but with 802.11g I get 6.5 MB/s (that's megabytes). This was a 2GB file trasfer, from a wired server to the macbook. So it's a sustained speed, with a single client.

If you're getting LESS that that with 802.11n (or ac), there's something very wrong (it might be your setup, it might be the driver, it might be interference, I've no idea). If you did the transfer between two wireless clients that may explain the difference though.

Last edited by hobarrera (2014-04-02 00:12:36)

bepebe · 2014-05-02 00:36:54

Download/Upload speeds seem consistent to Mavericks when using broadcom-wl on Arch.

filoktetes · 2014-05-11 16:01:31

Just reporting that I have installed Arch on the Macbook Air 2014, which is practically the same as the MBA 2013, I think it just have a faster processor. I had the same issues as reported with the 2013, fixed with the advices I found here. Thanks!

iaculch · 2014-05-13 04:29:16

Just updated all packages and my keyboard no longer works, which means I can't log in. I have tried a USB keyboard, still not working. Haven't had time to debug yet, was wondering if anyone else encountered the issue?

filoktetes · 2014-05-13 20:30:30

iaculch: If you don't hear from me in a few minutes, you can assume I have the same problem...

...a few minutes later, after full system update: No problems occured, so happily this doesn't seem to be a general problem.

Last edited by filoktetes (2014-05-13 20:45:24)

hobarrera · 2014-05-14 00:22:15

iaculch wrote:

Just updated all packages and my keyboard no longer works, which means I can't log in. I have tried a USB keyboard, still not working. Haven't had time to debug yet, was wondering if anyone else encountered the issue?

Could not reproduce here either. Can you boot onto a bootable USB drive? Can you try the keyboard there?

iaculch · 2014-05-18 02:42:33

hobarrera wrote:

iaculch wrote:
Just updated all packages and my keyboard no longer works, which means I can't log in. I have tried a USB keyboard, still not working. Haven't had time to debug yet, was wondering if anyone else encountered the issue?
Could not reproduce here either. Can you boot onto a bootable USB drive? Can you try the keyboard there?

Keyboard works fine in OSX. I'll try the arch bootable USB and post results.

brainwave · 2014-06-06 05:45:46

Just completed a smooth *dual boot* install of arch on macbook air , 2013. Lots of info helped from this thread. Just a few points I have to make regarding my experience. This is going to be long.

The installation medium (a USB, typically) may not boot if you 'dd' it. It did not boot in my case (tried dd both from mac and another laptop running arch). The screen just blanks out gets stuck on the booting screen, after vmlinuz. I think this is because of lack the pendrive knowing where the rootfs is. Just like the linux efistub kernel, there may not be a way to pass kernel parameters such as "root = " while booting pendrive also. Many users have used dd successfully in past, so I do not know.
It boils down to this - 'if' your boot media doesnt work, a simple solution exists.
- Create new partition table, and just format the pendrive to FAT 32 (using mkfs or Gparted). I used gparted.
- Following this, mount the iso onto a mountpoint say /mnt/iso and the usb to another say /mnt/usb.
- Use recursive copy, cp -r /mnt/iso* /mnt/usb
The pendrive should boot fine.
Once the installation media boots, you should have no issues doing a regular arch install. Here's a useful tip. In EFI, there is no boot loader required, as is mentioned several times in this thread. The easiest solution to getting arch to boot using rEFInd
- Install rEFInd from OS X. For this, simply download rEFInd, and run install.sh. No issues if you don't need advanced options. You can install rEFInd from within Linux too, however I highly recommend doing it from Mac. It's hassle free and safe for Mac.
- After installation of refind, a rEFInd conf is generated in /EFI/refind/ directory (OS X). If you wish to have an arch fallback image then uncomment scan_all_linux_dir... line. If not, leave the file as it is.
Installation of arch
- The normal way. Do regular tasks and configuration, following arch wiki. For partitioning, I have used a 200MB /boot partition, formatted FAT32. And a 44GB / parition formatted ext4. You do not need an EFI partition if you are not using a bootloader. You can use mac's boot partition itself. It is /dev/sda1. (IMO, It actually makes no sense to use a bootloader. If linux kernel didn't support EFI then a bootloader makes sense. It does, so whats the point of going EFI firmware-GRUB-kernel when firmware-kernel is possible? KISS! )
- Follow arch wiki installation page, and install base, base-devel packages with pacstrap. Skip bootloader install, if you want to use efistub and rEFInd.
- Once base and base-devel are installed with pacstrap , and any other package you wish, chroot and do the normal configuration as described in arch wiki. After this, to boot arch what you are supposed to do is
  - Mount your boot partition to /boot
  - Create a /boot/efi directory
  - Mount /dev/sda1 into /boot/efi
  - Create a directory arch inside /boot/efi/EFI
  - Copy /boot/initrd....img and vmlinuz...into the /boot/efi/EFI/arch. Add .efi to the vmlinuz filename. Copy fallback image also, if you wish
  - Now you should have boot->efi->EFI->arch->vmlinuz efi , initrd image and (optional) fallback image.
  - Problem is, the linux efistub doesnt know what the root partition is. So you will have to specify this by creating a file refind_linux.conf inside /boot/efi/EFI/arch.
  - Inside refind_linux.conf all you have to do is add "Default Entry" "root=/dev/sdaX" line. Where sdaX is your root partition. If you have a UUID scheme then use UUID instead, it's more robust. Refer rEFInd documentation regarding config
  - Now you can easily boot as on the boot menu you should see Mac and Arch , side by side.
- It is advisable that you use one of the filesystems that supports TRIM as the macbook air 2013 has a SSD and TRIM prolongs SSD life. Ext4 does support trim. To use TRIM support, refer to arch wiki SSD page. You just have to edit fstab.
- Gnome install automatically has sound, keyboard backlight, backlight and multimedia keys on the apple macbook air keyboard
- You may wish to move browser profiles and other files frequently accessed onto ram, to save read/write cycles on SSD. Do this by creating a tmpfs on the ram, using fstab. There are AUR packages available to put browser profiles on this tempfs.
- Synaptics driver for touchpad had a SingleTapTimeout and ClickTime option that may cause a laggy response in touchpad. Configuring touchpad properly makes it very usable indeed
  
  These are my experiences in installation.

hobarrera · 2014-06-08 03:12:14

brainwave wrote:

Just completed a smooth *dual boot* install of arch on macbook air , 2013. Lots of info helped from this thread. Just a few points I have to make regarding my experience. This is going to be long.[...]

The forums don't seem to like quoting a post with that much formatting and attepting to reply inline.
So, anyway:

I don't know why you'd dd it, but the wiki explains that you need to do what you finally did to get the install media running.

The fact that no additionaly bootloader is necesary (and that how to use rEFInd, etc) is explaind in the wiki in several different locations already.

I never configured anything touchpad-related, and it worked out-of-the-box for me. Odd.

Regarding everything you did post-install: would you mind adding all the new information to the wiki, for posterity's sake? (it's bound to get lost in this thread sooner or later, saldy ).

brainwave · 2014-06-08 04:58:08

I didn't mind restating information already in this thread and the wiki since I was just chipping in my experience. Reason was that the info is widely spread and often confusing (at times!). For example -

dd'ing should work even for booting on efi, right? This is what I got from the uefi section. Could have been my bad. But that is why I said that part in the post. The wiki states 'in case the dd method doesn't work, you need to prepare it manually' I think. I posted that part to save other users the trouble of using dd first and then switching to the manual method.

The rEFInd section places a lot of stress and discusses at length about installing rEFInd from Linux. But mac boots better from an HFS+ partition, plus setting up rEFInd from mac is easier.That is why the post (stating Dual Boot!). Basically it's just me voicing out an opinion, that using rEFInd from mac partition works and is hassle free. Not meant to explain anything as such

On simply installing refind without refind_linux.conf, rEFInd works but you need to manually edit the boot options each time to boot successfully. This was meant to help out those who missed the refind_linux.conf section and were trying to figure out why arch isn't booting. Again, it's simply a mistake I made, so 'just' in case someone else makes that mistake. ;-)

It's isn't odd that your touchpad worked out of the box. Mine did too, but with the lag I mentioned. Just do this test (if you still have Mac OS X). Try to judge the time between click and click executing on a Mac vs Arch. The reason is also obvious, that the synaptics driver has a 180ms click time value and 100ms single tap timeout configured (check with synclient).
Which means that the click executes for 100ms, and the driver thinks that user takes 180ms to click. While true for buttons, this isn't true for the trackpad. Setting these 2 to 0 immediately solves this problem. (And creates a couple of others). I will repost after optimising my touchpad. The trackpad experience on Mac OS X is very good, with gestures and stuff. I will try to replicate that on arch and repost regarding touchpad.

Regarding everything I did post install - Yes. I wanted to add this section to the wiki but also needed views on the content from experienced users, like you. That's why I posted on the forum first. I will add it once a few don't object and find it fine!

brainwave · 2014-06-08 05:03:03

hobarrera, did you do take any steps to optimise the power performance and SSD operation? Post install? Those two things seem very necessary to get most out of arch on the right way. I am working on this but it would be much better if I got other's views, experiences and attempts too.

brainwave · 2014-06-08 10:29:58

Another issue I discovered.
Post installation, Initially, I enabled TRIM support by adding discard option to my arch root in /etc/fstab. But I had left the relatime option which was the default. I had CONTINUOUS write to the disk by journalctl. In 60seconds, it wrote a whooping 25MB of data whereas for other Linux users on SSD, it wrote merely 30k of data. On doing a journalctl -f (which shows latest journal messages), I saw that the ata link to SSD (I have no idea why it isn't PCIe link, but an ATA link) was constantly disconnected and reconnecting. Issue was described by neptuneK I believe, on the first pages of this thread.

This can be solved by changing the relatime to noatime, as is recommended in the wiki. The relatime option isn't supposed to do this, but it is. Change it post installation.

Last edited by brainwave (2014-06-08 12:12:45)

hobarrera · 2014-06-09 05:04:30

brainwave wrote:

hobarrera, did you do take any steps to optimise the power performance and SSD operation? Post install? Those two things seem very necessary to get most out of arch on the right way. I am working on this but it would be much better if I got other's views, experiences and attempts too.

Yes, but regrettably I don't recall everything. I think the most important thing was installing powerdown-git, from AUR. I may have followed wiki instructions, but I don't recall.
As a referencia, I currently get ~11-12 hours of battery, unless I run stuff like heavy games, movies or java (eg: eclipse).
Browsing, IM, email, and python coding will keep that 11hs mark. Since the huge difference is the CPU, it can vary a lot according to what you run.

brainwave · 2014-06-09 08:08:55

I am facing arbitrary freezes in my system, where nothing - not even the keyboard keys like caps lock or sysrq keys work. This (typically) happens 4-5 seconds before or after the gnome login screen is presented. Any other user also faced this issue?

It also happened today, when I attempted to start lightdm. One thing is lightdm fails to start, I dont know why. In one of my attempts to start lightdm, my system froze again. None of yo users are facing problems with arch install on macbook air? Freezes like this?

Last edited by brainwave (2014-06-09 15:53:05)

hobarrera · 2014-06-11 01:25:46

SUDDENLY my systems fails to start. After rEFInd's OS selections screen, the screen goes white and just freezes there. I tried over 15 times, no change.

I prepared an bootable Arch installation USB to try and find what was wrong. I was distracted and didn't select that media, and the system booted just fine from the notebook's OS.

So, I used the system just fine, and after turning it off and on again, the issue came back. I plugged in the USB, and it booted fine. It's really odd, since having the install media (with all it's EFI stuff) makes arch boot fine from the SDD's OS. If it's absent, it fails.

So I did something funny and copied over /EFI/boot from the Arch ISO onto my SDD (at /boot/efi/EFI/boot), and rebooted. The ISO's boot options were there (they don't work though, obviously), as well as booting from my disk. Nasty hack, but my system started fine again when I selected the original Arch option.

I tried deleting the newly copied files individually - if I delete all tree of them, the system goes back to not-booting. If I keep any of the three files it works. So I kept a .efi file that doesn't add a broken entry to rEFInd, but somehow makes it work.

$ tree /boot/efi/EFI/boot/
/boot/efi/EFI/boot/
└── HashTool.efi

This is a disgunstingly ugly hack. But I've no idea of the cause of the issue. Ideas? Should I report this upstream? Has anyone else had this issue?

brainwave · 2014-06-14 13:56:34

Did you update your system recently?

hobarrera · 2014-06-14 14:24:15

brainwave wrote:

Did you update your system recently?

Not when the issue starting presenting itself.
It's a laptop which I turn on and off frequently, and the issue didn't start right after any update, as far as I can recall.

brainwave · 2014-06-14 14:27:29

Could you also tell what parameters you pass to your kernel when booting? If you use refind then there will be a refind_linux.conf file where you would pass boot parameters to your kernel right? Also, is it a custom kernel compilation or the standard kernel that comes with arch?

Arch Linux

#151 2014-03-21 15:25:01

Re: Macbook Air 2013

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Re: Macbook Air 2013

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