Installation on MacBook/MacBook Pro Intel Core 2 Duo (x86)

From openSUSE

These instructions cover installing openSUSE 10.2 on to an Apple MacBook Pro (MBP) so that it dual boots with Mac OS X (EDIT: These instructions are only tested on a MacBook Core 2 Duo, but reports say it should work the same on a MBP -31/01/07))... Note links to download pages for applications have not been included (just Google for them) and I assume that you know how to install applications in Mac OS X.

If you have any problems, you can occasionally catch me on the jacklab irc channel at irc.feenode.net as sus64er or email me at ben dot d dot bones at gmail dot com

Partitioning and basic installation

• (1) Download and install Boot Camp beta from the Apple site. This is used for resizing the Mac partition making room for Linux. You can, for example, shrink the Mac partition, leaving 30GB for Linux (but feel free to make even more/less room etc).

• (2) Resize partitions with Boot Camp

NOTICE: Boot Camp is no longer avalable as a free beta from Apple. Users who wish to use Boot Camp to partition the drive must find another solution, or use Mac OS X 10.5, "Leopard".

• (3) Download and install rEFIt. This is a boot menu program similar to GRUB on Linux and will allow you to later choose Linux to boot up/Mac OS X etc.

• (4) Shut down / reboot your MacBook Pro. Reboot with the openSUSE install DVD/CD ROM in drive.

• (5) Linux icon should appear in rEFIt screen representative of the install CD. Select it. openSUSE install CD boots. If it doesn't show, boot the MacBook to CD by holding "C" when you hear the Mac chimes upon starting.

***NOTE: Quite alot of the time, the keyboard fails to work with the openSUSE install menu (with install/rescue/ options) and it just hangs on the `Boot from Hard Disk option'. This is clearly a bug. However, about 1/5 times, the keyboard is indeed recognized allowing one to select the install option. Therefore just keep rebooting and repeating from step 4 until keyboard is recognized***

• (6) When keyboard finally works with menu select Install

• (7) YaST install process starts. Custom partition. You should see 3 partitions. Do not delete 1 and 2 unless you want to completely remove the Mac OS X. You should also see partition 3. This is reserved for Linux. Note that the EFI partitioning scheme used by apple allows only a max of 4 partitions. Partitions 1 and 2 are used by Mac OS X. Therefore we can do one of two things:

• • (a) Remove third partition and create one root partition and 1 swap partition. For this option /home will reside within the root partition.

• • (b) Remove third partition and create one root partition and 1 home partition. For this option, /home will reside within its own partition. However there will be no swap (but you can later set up a swap file).

I chose option a.

• (8) When you have your 4 partitions making sure to remember that 1 and 2 are *not* formatted (but clearly 3 and 4 will be as, say ext3 and swap), you can install as normal.

• (9) Under "Booting" Select "LILO" Boot loader. Then select "Convert Current Proposal". This will set up Lilo by default while it is installing.

• (10) When finished up reboot

Installation of LILO boot loader

• (10) When rEFIt menu opens, select the small icon (not the big Mac OS X or Linux CD launch icon) referring to partitioning. It will say something about syncing the partitions together. Select yes.

• (11) Reboot and select Linux CD boot. When you have gotten keyboard to work, select rescue from menu. This will launch a rescue shell. When you have shell and logged in as root do as follows within the shell:

• • (i) mount linux partition:

 mount /dev/sda3 /mnt

• • (ii) mount proc and dev

 mount -t proc none /mnt/proc
 mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev

• • (iii) chroot in to environment

 chroot /mnt /bin/bash

• • (11b) copy partiion table info to mtab:

 grep -v rootfs /proc/mounts > /etc/mtab

• (12) Now we are in the Linux environment. We can install our bootloader. For this we will require LILO. If, like when I installed I forgot to install lilo, we can install it from install dvd:

 cd /mnt
 mkdir cdrom
 mount /dev/hda /mnt/cdrom
 cd cdrom 
 cd suse/i586/ 
 rpm -Uvh lilo-22.7-43.i586.rpm (This is for OpenSUSE 10.2)

• (13) Create lilo.conf script. This should reside in /etc directory. Therefore:

 cd /etc
 touch lilo.conf
 vi lilo.conf

• (14) edit lilo.conf. Create as follows... (this is not correct I hope to have the correct lilo.conf file up in a minute hang in there.)

 boot=/dev/sda3
 prompt
 default=Linux
 timeout=5
 label=Linux
 image=/boot/vmlinuz initrd=/boot/initrd
 read-only
 root=/dev/sda3

• (15) Save lilo.conf.
  • (a) press escape then type ":wq" This will save your file and quit the vi editor.
  • (b) Install lilo by simply running

 lilo

This will put bootloader on to /dev/sda3

• (16) Hopefully it'l report something like added linux.

Screen resolution

• (17) Reboot. Select linux from rEFIt menu. SuSE should boot.

• ( 18) Although the screen resolution might be reported at 1280x800 this is a falacy and is actually only 1024x768. To get maximum screen resolution, you need to login as root and use the utility 915resolution. This is installed as default.

• (19) Issue the following command as root:

 915resolution -

This will list all of the available resolutions. Note the number you require

• (20) To get proper resolution, do

 915resolution 58 1280x800

...or whatever one you want

• (21) To have correct resolution at boot-up add the above command to your /etc/rc.d/boot.local file

Now, you should be able to enjoy openSUSE on your Mac.