Arch Linux

Lubron

Member

Registered: 2015-11-30

Posts: 3

Issues on MacBookPro 8.2 (late 2011)

Hi everybody! I'm a new user of Arch that, after installing it on his own desktop PC, wants to have it on his MacBookPro 8.2. Knowing that there could be problems with EFI boot i follow this guide :

http://zanshin.net/2015/02/05/arch-linu … installer/

It helps me a lot, expecially for the dual boot with MacOSX. My problems came at first when i put my USB installation pen in : i had to add the "nomodeset" everytime just to reach a tty, otherwise i got stuck without any possibility to switch to another tty or do everything else. Once i installed to system I download GNOME from pacman but, both using "startx" and "systemctl enable gmd.service" I can't reach the GNOME desktop: there some problems with the fact that inside my MBP i have 2 gpu : a radeon 6750m and an integrated Intel card ; i want to disable the radeon to use the integrated for powersaving, but,  also following the ArchWiki, I can't reach my main goal, that's to boot Arch and load the GNOME desktop directly. I could post every log you need.

Thanks in advance for attention!

respiranto

Member

Registered: 2015-05-15

Posts: 479

Website

Re: Issues on MacBookPro 8.2 (late 2011)

First, it is generally recommended to use the Arch Wiki as a guide, unless the Wiki does not cover your topic.

Anyways, to your current problem:

• startx needs a properly configured xinitrc file to work.

• Enabling a service will start it automatically after another specific service is started.
  Here, as in most cases, this means at startup.

What might be interesting for you:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xinitrc
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GNOME

Last edited by respiranto (2015-11-30 13:57:27)

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,480

Website

Re: Issues on MacBookPro 8.2 (late 2011)

First, it is generally recommended to use the Arch Wiki as a guide, unless the Wiki does not cover your topic.

Agreed.  Though I'd put a bit more of a point on this.  If you need help with a problem during installation when you are following some random blog post, you'll need to ask the author of that random blog post.  We cannot support their work here.

Do you expect us to read through that whole blog post to try to find where it went wrong?

I did take a quick look, and I'm not sure what the first command suggested is for, but it is most definitely not needed, and quite possibly could be a source of problems.  So my recommendation would be to start fresh and do the installation properly following instructions on the wiki.

---

"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

Lubron

Member

Registered: 2015-11-30

Posts: 3

Re: Issues on MacBookPro 8.2 (late 2011)

I obiously try first with ArchWiki but, as respiranto said, the Wiki doesn't cover my topic. However i gave a look to the xinitrc wiki and i add the .xinitrc e .bash_profile files in my home directory and tried to use "startx" : this is the Xorg log : https://ptpb.pw/-T4X.log

I also tried to switch off the radeon card using "echo OFF > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch" but I don't have vgaswitcheroo in debug folder

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,480

Website

Re: Issues on MacBookPro 8.2 (late 2011)

What do you think is not covered in the wiki?  That could be true, but it's just not clear to me what is missing.  There are articles devoted to macbook installs, there is an article on EFI booting, there are articles on hybrid graphics systems.

---

"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

Lubron

Member

Registered: 2015-11-30

Posts: 3

Re: Issues on MacBookPro 8.2 (late 2011)

Ok, my fault.  I formatted all the partition I had create and now start from scratch. So I divided my 500GB HD into 350 GB for MacOSX and 150GB using Disk Utility; always on MacOSX i create my USB pen for installation, Then , after inserting it, I reboot and entering in EFI boot. I choose to install ArchLinux without adding nothing in the kernel commands (where i usually insert "nomodeset"), press Enter and get stuck to black screen.

I don't know any other method except adding "nomodeset" to launch ArchLinux properly without crashing, and I thinks that's also the problem that I had before with the "custom" installation.

link

Member

Registered: 2004-04-30

Posts: 69

Re: Issues on MacBookPro 8.2 (late 2011)

I haven't run Arch on my MacBookPro8,2, but I did get Fedora 22 running with the Intel GPU; I'd imagine the steps are similar. I wrote a semi-guide/reminder on how to do it. You basically need to send some bytes to the gmux each time the laptop boots via grub's "outb" command. That will disable the radeon GPU, allowing the Intel GPU to be detected by the kernel and initialized. I believe this Intel GPU requires KMS to work, so don't boot with "nomodeset". You can edit the grub menu during the installer's boot to send the bytes to the gmux too; that might get you into a workable installation environment.

http://www.moxbant.net/fedora-22-on-macbook-pro/

Once you've edited your grub files, you'll need to regenerate the grug.cfg (I'm not sure how Arch supports that, so I'd suggest reading the wiki page on GRUB).