Installing Gentoo on my MacBook

This is a short overview of the steps I undertook to get a nice Gentoo installation on my brand new MacBook.

It’s far from complete — not even spell-checked — but could be useful anyway. :-) Please don’t hesitate to contact me with your suggestions, questions or remarks!

Prerequisites

• Get a MacBook. I got myself a black one with 2Gb of RAM, a dutch QWERTY keyboard and 80G of hard disk. I deliberately chose for a MacBook and not a MacBook Pro, because the INTEL video chipset in the MacBook has better free drivers than the ATI video chipset in the MacBook Pro.
• Get a Gentoo installation CD. A minimal one will suffice if you have a connection to the internet available.
• Inform yourself: a good resource for more information about what I’m about to write can be found at the excellent Gentoo documentation wiki on this subject. A good deal of help can also be found at #mactel-linux on irc.oftc.net.
• Install Boot Camp for legacy BIOS emulation (needed for a correct video card detection by X.org) and easy repartitioning of the harddisk.
• Install rEFIt, a nice EFI boot loader.
• Repartition your hard disk. Just make the OSX partition as small as possible and leave the rest unchanged. You can partition it later on.

Installation

• This should be the last time you see your OSX again. :-) But don’t worry. Your installation will remain untouched during the following process.
• I hope you are familiar with Gentoo installation. Get the great handbook for x86 and enjoy the ride… At a few points I’ll interfere with MacBook specific hints.

Where the Gentoo handbook can use some help

2.c. Download, Burn and Boot a Gentoo Installation CD

Don’t bother about wirefree internet for now. Just plug in a cable and enjoy the Gigabit connection with the sky2 module

4.b. Designing a Partitioning Scheme

You are limited to 4 partitions. 2 are already taken by your OSX installation, so 2 remain to be used for your favourite OS.

The handbook gives the (good) advice for partitiong your disk into , , and . This is not possible now, and I chose for the following scheme:

Output generated by

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1          26      204819+  ee  EFI GPT
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2              26        3812    30408704   af  Unknown
/dev/sda3            3812        7216    27342630   83  Linux
/dev/sda4   *        7216        9729    20192038+  83  Linux

Contents of

/dev/sda3               /home           ext3            noatime,user_xattr,data=writeback       0 2
/dev/sda4               /               ext3            noatime                     0 1
/swapfile               none            swap            sw                          0 0
/dev/hda                /mnt/cdrom      iso9660         user,noauto,ro              0 0
proc                    /proc           proc            defaults                    0 0
shm                     /dev/shm        tmpfs           nodev,nosuid,noexec             0 0

Output generated by

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda4              19G   14G  4.4G  76% /
udev                  998M  268K  998M   1% /dev
/dev/sda3              26G  1.6G   23G   7% /home
shm                   998M     0  998M   0% /dev/shm

As you probably noticed, I have a swapfile and no swap partition. With 2Gb RAM you hardly ever swap a page out anyway. :-) Create it as follows:

Creation of a 2G swapfile

dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/gentoo/swapfile bs=1024 count=2097152
mkswap /mnt/gentoo/swapfile
swapon /mnt/gentoo/swapfile

5.e. Configuring the Compile Options

A short overview of the fine fine fine MacBook hardware:

• The Intel Core Duo processor is from the Prescott family
• The display controller is an “Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller”
• The audio device is an “Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller”

Some entries from

CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-O2 -march=prescott -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
MAKEOPTS="-j4"
VIDEO_CARDS="i810 vesa"
SOUND_CARDS="hda-intel"
INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse joystick evdev"

7.b. Installing the Sources

It is advised to start your adventure with a Vanilla kernel and not with a Gentoo kernel. Additionally, at the time of writing (the latest stable version of the Linux kernel is 2.6.18), you’ll need to apply some kernel patches too. Let’s see how this goes.

Patch your vanilla kernel for the MacBook

# emerge subversion
# cd /usr/src
# svn co https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/mactel-linux/trunk/kernel/mactel-patches-2.6.18 mactel-patches-2.6.18
# cd mactel-patches-2.6.18
(remove 'efi_e820_all_mapped_fix.patch', 'version.patch' and 'sigmatel_audio.patch')
# ./apply /usr/src/linux

7.c. Default: Manual Configuration

There are some kernel configuration options you need to handle with care. For reference you can download my fully working, not-too-bloaty kernel config.

If you use this kernel configuration, don’t forget to (auto)load the following modules:

• uhci_hcd
• evdev
• appletouch
• usbhid
• mousedev

At least make sure to have the following:

• CONFIG_SCSI_ATA_PIIX=y or your kernel won’t be able to find your hard disk
• CONFIG_VM86=y or X.org won’t be able to initialize your video card via BIOS (read: no X and a lot of headache wondering why)
• CONFIG_FB_INTEL=y for the framebuffer to work at vga=792 (1024×786)
• CONFIG_SKY2=y for the built-in gigabit network interface to work
• CONFIG_X86_SPEEDSTEP_CENTRINO=y for frequency scaling to work

8.a. Filesystem Information

Because we have a swapfile instead of a swap partition, make sure to tell your system so through . Simply replace the swap partition with your swapfile in the first column.

10.b. Default: Using GRUB

Make sure you emerge . My looks like follows:

My

timeout 10
default 0
fallback 1
title  GNU/Linux Vanilla 2.6.18-mactel-bbb *SPLASH*
root (hd0,3)
kernel /boot/bzImage-2.6.18-mactel-bbb root=/dev/sda4 vga=792 splash=silent,theme:gentoo console=tty1
initrd /boot/initrd-fbsplash
title  GNU/Linux Vanilla 2.6.18-mactel-bbb
root (hd0,3)
kernel /boot/bzImage-2.6.18-mactel-bbb root=/dev/sda4

Also make sure to grub on your or partition — in this case that would be — and that that partition is marked bootable.

Configuration

Now the fun part can begin: getting all the hardware you paid for to work perfectly. :-)

Some useful information

First let me post some useful information, like dmesg, lspci, lsusb, lshal, lsdev and cpuinfo.

The hardware

Now let’s go through the hardware and see what we can get to work:

Networking

Gigabit networking over the cable works like a charm with the module, included in the kernel.

Wireless networking works fine as well with the , which you can find in portage in the ebuild. Make sure to enable the USE-flag.

X

I just enabled AIGLX and it is lovely. I’m already addicted to it. You’ll need to unmask some packages for X.org to get to work on your MacBook though.

First of all you need modular X 7.1:

Extract from my

# Modular X 7.1
<=x11-base/xorg-x11-7.1
<x11-base/xorg-server-1.2
<x11-drivers/xf86-input-evdev-1.2
<x11-drivers/xf86-input-mouse-1.2
<x11-drivers/xf86-input-keyboard-1.2
<x11-drivers/xf86-input-joystick-1.2
<=x11-proto/glproto-1.4.8
<=media-libs/mesa-6.5.1-r1
<=x11-drivers/xf86-video-vesa-1.2.0
<=x11-drivers/xf86-video-i810-1.6.0
<=x11-apps/mesa-progs-6.5

Then you’ll have to patch your video BIOS with the 1280×800 mode with 915resolution:

Extract from my

<=sys-apps/915resolution-0.5.2

My

replace=( "5c 1280 800" )
log="/var/log/915resolution"

At this point you should be able to get your X up and running.

Now let’s go on the next level: AIGLX. First, add the following to your X configuration:

Extract from

Section "DRI"
    Group 0
    Mode 0666
EndSection
Section "ServerFlags"
    Option         "AIGLX" "true"
EndSection
Section "Extensions"
    Option         "Composite"   "Enable"
EndSection
Section "Device"
    Option      "DRI"     "true"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
    Option      "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "true"
EndSection

Also make sure you don’t load the Mesa GLcore module. Now you’ll need a compositing window manager. Metacity will have this functionality from 2.16 on, but today we’ll use Compiz.

Extract from my

# AIGLX
<=x11-wm/compiz-0.2.0
<=media-libs/glitz-0.5.6

Emerge it and then run form the command line. Tzadaaam!

Keyboard

I have a Dutch QWERTY keyboard, but except for the key to the left of the !/1 it is — as far as I know — identical to an international QWERTY. Anyway, I just load the us keymap (both in console and in X) and that works for all other keys. I also found it useful to change the behaviour of to . Who ever needs anyway?

The special keys at the top row (brightness, volume, num lock and eject) work out of the box in X.org. In gnome 2.14 I could just assign them to their respective actions in Desktop > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts. I didn’t do anything to enable backlight brightness control yet. To eject a CD in console, emerge and use .

Probably you also want the to behave like a normal or key. This is easily achieved by changing the value of :

Extract from my

# have Fn react like the shift button
echo "Teaching \`\`Fn'' how to behave"
echo -n "0x02" > /sys/module/usbhid/parameters/pb_fnmode

Here’s my complete xorg.conf.

Touchpad

In console (gpm)

Just emerge and use the following settings:

My

MOUSE=ps2
MOUSEDEV=/dev/input/mice
APPEND="-l \"a-zA-Z0-9_.:~/\300-\326\330-\366\370-\377\" -g 1 -A60 -a 6 -d 5 -2"

This works very fine for me.

In X (synaptics)

The touchpad is recognised as synaptics hardware, so that makes things easy. Make sure you have the following modules loaded or compiled into your kernel: , , , , . Then, include the following part in your X configuration:

Extract from my

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier      "Configured Mouse"
    Driver          "mouse"
    Option          "CorePointer"
    Option          "Device"                "/dev/input/mice"
    Option          "Protocol"              "ExplorerPS/2"
    Option          "ZAxisMapping"          "4 5"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier       "Synaptics Touchpad"
    Driver           "synaptics"
    Option           "Device"           "/dev/input/mouse1"
    Option           "Protocol"         "auto-dev"
    Option           "LeftEdge"         "100"
    Option           "RightEdge"        "1120"
    Option           "TopEdge"          "50"
    Option           "BottomEdge"       "310"
    Option           "FingerLow"        "25"
    Option           "FingerHigh"       "30"
    Option           "MaxTapTime"       "180"
    Option           "MaxTapMove"       "220"
    Option           "MaxDoubleTapTime"      "180"
    Option           "VertScrollDelta"       "20"
    Option           "HorizScrollDelta"      "50"
    Option           "MinSpeed"         "0.79"
    Option           "MaxSpeed"         "0.88"
    Option           "AccelFactor"      "0.0015"
    Option           "SHMConfig"        "on"
EndSection
Section "Module"
    Load    "synaptics"
EndSection
Section "ServerLayout"
    InputDevice     "Configured Mouse"      "CorePointer"
    InputDevice     "Synaptics Touchpad"    "AlwaysCore"
EndSection

Tap-to-click, horizontal and vertical scrolling all work with no problems.

I assume you’re also interested in getting a middle and a right mouse button. For that, I use the — otherwise completely unuseful — apple keys. Try the following:

Extract from my

# emulating middle and right click
echo "Enabling middle- and rightclick"
echo 1 > /proc/sys/dev/mac_hid/mouse_button_emulation
echo 125 > /proc/sys/dev/mac_hid/mouse_button2_keycode # 125 = left apple
echo 126 > /proc/sys/dev/mac_hid/mouse_button3_keycode # 126 = right apple

Sound

First of all: forget about , move on to . The hardware in your MacBook is managed perfectly by the module. You can use the version included in the kernel, but there are some problems reported with them. I use the ebuild from portage. This works fine.