Talk:Installation on MacBook Pro Intel (x86)

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How to install SuSE 10.2 on a macbook pro

I have just finished installing suse 10.2 on to a macbook pro (MBP) so that it dual boots with macosx(one of the new core 2 duo intel machines)...It took me a while to do so I thought I'd post these instructions. Note I have not included links to download progs (just google for them) and I assume that you know how to install stuff in macosx. 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

I am writing these instructions entirely from memory, so forgive me for any mistakes. I will double check them soon and make any corrections thereafter.

(1) Download and install Boot Camp beta from the apple site. The thing that this is good for is to resize the mac partition making room for linux. I shrunk the mac partition, leaving 30GB for Linux (but feel free to make even more/less room etc).

(2) Resize partitions with bootcamp

(3) Download and install rEFIt. This is a boot menu program similar to grub and will allow you to later choose linux to boot up/macosx etc.

(4) Shut down / reboot mac book pro. Reboot with SuSE install dvd/cdrom in drive.

(5) Linux icon should appear in refit screen representative of the install cd. Select it. SuSE install CD boots

NOTE

Quite alot of the time, the keyboard fails to work with the SuSE install menu (with install/rescue/ options) and it just hangs on the `boot from hard-drive option'. This is clearly a bug. However I found that 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) SuSE install process starts. Custom partition. You should see 3 partitions. Do not delete 1 and 2 unless you want to completely remove osx. 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 macosx. 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 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.

NOTE

The bit that tries to install grub will fail. Don't worry, we'll sort this out later. We'll use lilo, so forget about trying to install grub, for now

(9) When finished up reboot

(10) When refit menu opens, select the small icon (not the big macosx 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 lanch 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 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/ (I think this is the directory)
rpm -Uvh lilo......rpm (I forget the name of file - its something like that)

(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...(again this is from memory - check lilo and lilo.conf man pages for verification)

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

(15) Save lilo.conf. Install lilo by simply running

lilo

This will put bootloader on to /dev/sda3

(16) Hopefully it'll report something like "Added Linux *".

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

Marvell Yukon Ethernet

For the MacBook Pro (V3) that uses the Marvell Yukon 88E8058 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller you might need to get a new(er) network card driver. Get it from http://www.marvell.com/drivers/driverDisplay.do?dId=153&pId=38 and follow the instructions in the included README file. After that set up your network with yast and then do an online update. After the online update don't forget to run 'lilo' again if the update changed the kernel.

NVIDIA Graphics

If your MacBook Pro has an NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics card X doesn't work initially (you then need to boot into runlevel 3 at the lilo prompt). Get the latest nvidia driver from http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_display_amd64_100.14.11.html. You need to patch it with the patch from http://www.mail-archive.com/mactel-linux-users@lists.sourceforge.net/msg01501.html (-> sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-100.14.11-pkg2.run --apply-patch ./file-with-mac-patch.patch). Then run the produced -custom nvidia driver setup. Run sax2 to build your X config file after building and installing the patched nvidia driver. Resolution is 1440x900.

LCD-Backlight

Use http://modular.math.washington.edu/macbook/backlight/bl1.c to adjust the LCD backlight. It works nicely.

UPDATE 2007-08-30

Athera WLAN: Follow the instructions on http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkPad_11a/b/g/n_Wireless_LAN_Mini_Express_Adapter to checkout and compile the latest madwifi for your kernel. Follow the instructions on http://madwifi.org/wiki/UserDocs/FirstTimeHowTo section "Loading the MadWifi Module" to load the kernel module. Then use yast to set up the new network card.