[SOLVED] Mac Pro?

[brenth]

Has anyone gotten a Mac Pro yet and installed any form of linux on it? So far the install how-tos for MBPs aren't working.
Brent

[stmiller]

The dual-core powermacs (not dual CPU; dual core) just recently got support in the Linux kernel. This past year. They didn't work before that.
So it will take probably a few months for Linux to run out-of-the-box on this new Mac Pro. Unless you are a kernel hacker...

[n00bWillingToLearn]

I really have no expertise in this at all but have you tried the 64 bit version of Ubuntu? Does the liveCD boot OK? Also be VERY sure that you have thermal management. If you don't have the fans and temperature sensors working then you may just melt your nice new Mac Pro. I would love to hear more about how this goes as I will probably never be able to afford a mac pro. Keep us posted :)

[Jeroen Vernooij]

>"So far the install how-tos for MBPs aren't working."
Where do you get stuck?
Since the Mac Pro's are just x86 Xeons (Quad :cool: ) it should just install like on a non-Mac system. Just make sure you can boot off the CD-ROM.

[brenth]

Hey all, thanks for the responses. So far I have tried a few different distros, and seem to get the similar issues on all. I am trying to boot from the liveCD and it gets to the boot screen, I hit enter, and it starts to boot, but then I get alot of errors and a kernel panic.

It stops at: " Looking for CD-ROM at /newroot/dev/hda..."

and then waits a bit, then gives a bunch of these errors;
" hda: cd-rom_PC_intr: The drive appears confused (ireason = 0x01)"

then a bunch more errors ( can type them out if necessary), then;
" Kernal panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init~"

As I say, I get similar issues from other distros ( fedora 5 for example).

Thanks for any help everyone. I gotta say, this is one fast box:), OSX boots in like 3 seconds flat, it's unreal!

Thanks,
Brent

btw, I am xposting this to the mactel-linux-users list, sorry for the duplicate if your on that list :)

[simmons]

Brent,

As far as I can tell from Googling around, you may be the first person to attempt to install Linux on a Mac Pro! Please post back with news if you have any further success or failure with this endeavor. The Mac Pro sounds like an incredible machine, even for its price tag, and I'd almost be tempted to pick one up if I could run Linux on it. (My work requires Linux.)

It sounds like Linux is having trouble with the IDE hardware (or possibly the CD-ROM). The tasks that occur before your problem (loading the boot menu and loading the kernel into memory) are no doubt performed using the machine's firmware for accessing the CD-ROM. The first time Linux tries to access the CD-ROM on its own, it fails. This will probably be solved eventually by some kernel hacker writing a driver for whatever special IDE hardware exists in the Mac Pro.

David

[3rdalbum]

One tack you might want to try is installing Linux onto a flash drive, assuming the Mac Pros can start up from USB. That would hopefully bypass the SATA/DVD-drive issues.

Or you could possibly try passing one of the following as kernel arguments:

atapicd
pnpbios=off
acpi=off

Yeah I'm just reading off a Knoppix cheat sheet ;-)

[madgamer]

brenth: You are not alone. I got my Mac Pro yesterday and have not been able to install Linux on it. I tried Gentoo, Ubuntu and even Knoppix. The Live CD loads but it doesnt get past the part where it searches for the CD-ROM drive to load from.

I do have some ideas though. I'm going to try to install from a USB drive. I am fairly sure that the Mac Pro can boot from USB although I'm not 100% sure. Can anyone confirm or deny this? I will go ahead and try anyway. Sadly, I only have a 128MB USB drive but thats where DSL (http://damnsmalllinux.org) comes to the rescue ;)

I will let you guys know how my experiment works out. Wish me luck!

=======
EDIT:
Well I created a LiveUSB of DSL but I can't figure out how to actually boot from it. I tried holding Option/Alt and also holding CMD-OPT-SHIFT-DEL but it didn't work. One other way around this could be to connect remotely to the system and try to install that way but I'm not sure how well that will work.

This really sucks, because Linux is my main OS of choice! Although I love Mac OS X, I prefer doing my programming projects in Linux. I will see if I can figure this out..

[hazelb030]

Have you tried to install ubuntu with the new version of BootCamp (make a XP Partition and then boot from cd ?)

[madgamer]

Have you tried to install ubuntu with the new version of BootCamp (make a XP Partition and then boot from cd ?)

I have been following this tutorial:
http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Triple_Boot_via_BootCamp

Well, all Boot Camp really does is let you make a Windows drivers CD and handles the partitioning. I have already done the partitioning using diskutil in the terminal (just like the tutorial said). In fact, the tutorial says NOT to use Boot camp to make partitions because Bootcamp assumes you only want windows and can cause trouble for triple booting.

I would just use Parallels Desktop Beta (http://www.parallels.com) but that doesn't work on the Mac pro yet either! ](*,)

If only I could boot from USB then my problem might be solved. But I don't think my Kingston 128MB USB key is bootable. If it was I would see it as a boot option when I hold Alt at bootup (right?).

If anyone can figure out how the heck to get Linux on a Mac Pro I will send you a cookie.. seriously. I'm not joking :)

[hazelb030]

I thought that in addition to building the driver cd and handling the partition procedure boot camp in fact emulates something like a bios so windows can be installed.

So in my opinion even for a dual boot installation with linux you should use boot camp :confused:

Perhaps the following links will help you to proceed

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=198453
http://www.mactel-linux.org/wiki/Dual_Booting

I know that these instructions aren't written explicitly for a MacPro but it should be worth a try.

[gwhanson]

I recieved my Mac Pro wednesday of last week. played with OSX for 2 days then decided to install ubuntu. I followed the directionns at bin-false http://bin-false.org/?p=17

The only problem that I recall was that with the new bootcamp, refit can't find some file or other to start ubuntu (after it has been installed), but I can use bootcamp (hold down the option key and coose the "windows" drive at startup)

I am currently upgrading to edgy with this machine.

[simmons]

I, too, recently bought a Mac Pro and successfully installed Ubuntu on it following the bin-false.org instructions. I'm not sure why the original poster is running into boot-time troubles that we aren't seeing. Perhaps the MacOS updates I installed also updated the firmware?

My only problem installing Ubuntu was that I couldn't seem to get it set up to boot from a second drive. I bet that would be easy when using the entirely legacy-free boot stack (i.e. elilo), but I hear that the proprietary Nvidia driver doesn't work unless you boot using the BIOS compatibility mode.

David

[Peter Hartley]

I, too, recently bought a Mac Pro and successfully installed Ubuntu on it following the bin-false.org instructions. I'm not sure why the original poster is running into boot-time troubles that we aren't seeing.

I too have a Mac Pro and when I try to install Ubuntu (eft knot 2) I'm getting the same "The drive appears confused (ireason=0x01)" error as described above -- even if I boot with irqpoll, which the message suggests I do. Self-compiled kernels have the same problem. All this is 64-bit (amd64), though -- have the people who've got it to work been using 32-bit (i386)?

Peter

[simmons]

All this is 64-bit (amd64), though -- have the people who've got it to work been using 32-bit (i386)?

I installed the 32-bit version of Dapper without any problems. I did not try installing a 64-bit version.

[daedius]

I'm not sure if there is some huge misunderstanding on this thread here or what. But Ubuntu is most definitely not working on Mac Pro. I think some of these guys think we are talking about "MacBook Pro". I've tried gentoo, ubunto, sabayon all without success in either x86 or amd64. The bios for the cdrom just isn't emulated correctly. Apple needs to get off butts to either fix it, or parallels comes up with a proprietary solution. Until then, sit tight, enjoy the OSX and windows glory. Mmm, yah. I'm hoping there is some OSX update by Sept. 12th that aids some of these problems.

[simmons]

I'm not sure if there is some huge misunderstanding on this thread here or what. But Ubuntu is most definitely not working on Mac Pro. I think some of these guys think we are talking about "MacBook Pro".

While I have seen some people confuse "Mac Pro" with "MacBook Pro", I can assure you that I'm running Ubuntu 6.06 on a Mac Pro. By which I mean the tower dual-processor Core 2 Duo (the so-called "quad") system released last month.

Maybe not all Mac Pro machines ship with exactly the same BIOS version or optical drive? I'm posting my Mac's MacOS "About This Mac" information below (the "Hardware" and "Hardware->ATA" pages). Let me know if anyone wants me to post more information (dmesg, etc.).

Hardware Overview:

Machine Name: Mac Pro
Machine Model: MacPro1,1
Processor Name: Dual-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 1.33 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MP11.005C.B00
SMC Version: 1.7f6

ATA Bus:

SONY DVD RW DW-D150A:

Model: SONY DVD RW DW-D150A
Revision: 1.MD
Serial Number:
Detachable Drive: No
Protocol: ATAPI
Unit Number: 0
Socket Type: Internal
Low Power Polling: No

[daedius]

Thanks for your info simmons. I'm not really sure what to say other than I'm amazed =P When I get home from work i'll verify some of your info against my own. You sir, are a most lucky MacPro owner.

Random questions:

1) Did you encounter any really long startup times with ubuntu x86?
2) Did you have to use irqpoll,noapic, etc to boot up?
3) you use an refit/boot camp 1.1 beta setup?
4) Your not part of some apple developer program and getting some secret updates we are not ;)
5) In the meantime while we suffer, how do you like linux on MacPro?

[daedius]

-- dupe post --

[daedius]

Lastly, one more thing. What driver are you using for your cdrom driver on your linux bootup? Does it show up as /dev/hda*? I know i'm asking tons of stuff, but a dmesg could be helpful as well =P

Thanks in advance!

- Daedius :)

[daedius]

Whoa. . Our specs are different for the CDROM.


Machine Name: Mac Pro
Machine Model: MacPro1,1
Processor Name: Dual-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 3 GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 1.33 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MP11.005C.B00
SMC Version: 1.7f6

ATA Bus:
PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-111D:
Model: PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-111D
Revision: AB09
Detachable Drive: No
Protocol: ATAPI
Unit Number: 0
Socket Type: Internal
Low Power Polling: Yes
Firmware Revision: AB09
Interconnect: ATAPI
Burn Support: Yes (Apple Shipped/Supported)
Cache: 2000 KB
Reads DVD: Yes
CD-Write: -R, -RW
DVD-Write: -R, -RW, +R, +RW, +R DL
Burn Underrun Protection CD: Yes
Burn Underrun Protection DVD: Yes
Write Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-SAO, CD-Raw, DVD-DAO
Media: No


Are you using an external cdrom?

[BobSongs]

I'm not sure if I'm in the wrong category or not but I just purchased a MacBook Pro.

I downloaded the Parallels Demo and successfully installed Windows XP Pro SP2 and Ubuntu 6.06.1 i86. The MacBook isn't a week old. It has the Intel dual-core and 2 Gb RAM.

I've seen somewhere else that dual-booting Linux on a Mac has been possible for a while. I'm just hoping a new release of Dapper will support the Intel chip.

[daedius]

More importantly, there appears to be a firmware update. I wonder if this will help fix anything.

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Firmware/SingleModel.aspx?DriveId=1300

It looks like the new firmware was just released 01 Sep 2006. I hope firmware can be applied through windows.

[breuerp]

I had similar problems installing on some non-standard 64-bit processors. Namely the sync issue. The following worked for me. Add this bootup parameters in grub: nomce nosplash

Let me know if it works.

[daedius]

So here are some updates.

1. I can't install the firmware updates through windows. I think because i'm in emulated bios ( or possibly the EFI is just wacked ) that its impossible at the moment.

2. using nomce and nosplash do nothing to help the boot on both gentoo or ubuntu.

3. There is an application out there called DVRFlash for OSX that lets you update the firmware of your PIONEER DVRs. I'm not sure how damaging this might be to the system. Theres probably a reason the Pioneer DVR has a custom firmware.

So tonight i'm gonna borrow an external CD rom drive (usb) and try booting off of that. It seems the safer option for me to try before a firmware update. Once i'm in linux and can poke around with drivers more, i'll be able to determine the next step. Thanks for everyones help so far, if anyone has any other news. Please post =)

- Daedius

[DylanRE]

I'm not sure if I'm in the wrong category or not but I just purchased a MacBook Pro.

I downloaded the Parallels Demo and successfully installed Windows XP Pro SP2 and Ubuntu 6.06.1 i86. The MacBook isn't a week old. It has the Intel dual-core and 2 Gb RAM.

I've seen somewhere else that dual-booting Linux on a Mac has been possible for a while. I'm just hoping a new release of Dapper will support the Intel chip.

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=198453

There are instructions for dual-triple booting the MacBook Pro.

They're pretty simple, and it works great.

[daedius]

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=198453

There are instructions for dual-triple booting the MacBook Pro.

They're pretty simple, and it works great.


This thread has nothing to do with MacBookPro. Please avoid posting links or information on MacBookPro to avoid misinformation/confusion.

- Daedius

[simmons]

1) Did you encounter any really long startup times with ubuntu x86?

No excessively long startup times. The LILO kernel loading may be a tad slower than usual. (Although it's been a long time since the last time I used LILO.) I don't recall any particular slowness in booting from the DVD.

2) Did you have to use irqpoll,noapic, etc to boot up?

I have never specified any custom kernel arguments on this machine.

3) you use an refit/boot camp 1.1 beta setup?

The Ubuntu disc booted up right away without refit or boot camp. I was pleasantly surprised, since I was expecting to run into the problem that others have posted. I was anticipating doing some driver debugging/tweaking to get Linux on this machine. :)

I did end up installing refit and Boot Camp 1.1 beta in the process of trying to get Linux installed on a second hard drive. I eventually gave up and used Boot Camp to create a 30GB "Windows" partition onto the first drive, which I used to install Ubuntu.

4) Your not part of some apple developer program and getting some secret updates we are not

Nope. This is the first real Mac I've owned, and I've never done any Apple development. I always intended to install Linux on this machine, since I need Linux for work. I read about the optical drive problems people were having, and took that as a challenge. :)

5) In the meantime while we suffer, how do you like linux on MacPro?

It screams! GNOME comes up REALLY fast after I log in. Subsequent logins (i.e. all the GNOME stuff is still in the buffer cache) are almost instantaneous. A software project I'm working on takes about 30 minutes to build on my Pentium-M 1.5Ghz notebook, but it compiles in about 5 minutes on the Mac Pro with "make -j 4". (And it's not 100% optimized for parallelized builds.)

I've posted my dmesg output here: http://davidsimmons.com/files/macpro-dmesg.txt

It's interesting that the last line in that dmesg output is:
[4322109.062000] hda: cdrom_pc_intr: The drive appears confused (ireason = 0x01)
...which is the same message others are talking about. The drive seems to work, though. I tested reading data from a Kororaa LiveCD, and playing a video from a DVD-ROM of video files.

I've posted "lspci" and "lspci -vv" output here:
http://davidsimmons.com/files/macpro-lspci.txt
http://davidsimmons.com/files/macpro-lspci-vv.txt

Is your Ubuntu disc a CD or a DVD? I've been using a DVD.

David

[daedius]

Thank you so much Simmons for your information! =P I really hope I can try to put this to good use. I haven't been using the DVD version myself. Hehe, though I doubt missing out on a few packages isn't a huge deal. I'm going to give this external cdrom drive a try tonight. *crosses fingers* Ti'll then, i'll be browsing through these infos you sent me to get some ideas. Thanks again for all your help! =)

- Daedius

[simmons]

Whoa. . Our specs are different for the CDROM.
...
Are you using an external cdrom?

No, I'm using the internal optical drive that came with the machine. That's weird! I noticed that you have the 3.0Ghz version of the Mac Pro. I wonder if they're using different optical drives in those. I picked my Mac Pro up at CompUSA (instead of an Apple store). I don't know if that makes any difference.

What driver are you using for your cdrom driver on your linux bootup? Does it show up as /dev/hda*?

The cdrom shows up as /dev/hda.

I haven't been using the DVD version myself. Hehe, though I doubt missing out on a few packages isn't a huge deal. I'm going to give this external cdrom drive a try tonight.

I was wondering about the disc type not so much because of the extra packages on the DVD, but because the disc type and/or the particular ISO9660/UDF variant/extensions might be triggering an issue. That's a pretty far-fetched idea, but perhaps it's a variable to consider if you find yourself scraping the bottom of the barrel.

David

[daedius]

So, apparently Mac can detect and use external cdrom drive in OSX and Windows, but cannot boot from it. I dallyied with fate by attempting to upgrade my PIONEERS firmware and was met with a nastygram. Apparently I have a pioneer cdrom drive that looks like a PIONEER DVR-111D but under the hood is a completely other beast. I'm running out of options and it seems like Apple only has the solutions.

My last chance to check is to try booting up and try telling the kernel to use a more generic ATAPI DVD drive. Of course, i have to figure out how to do that first...

[daedius]

So, more updates. Apparently I was using the generic drivers. I just tried booting up from a little usb stick using gentoo liveusb instructions and that did not work. Bootcamp did not even detect it, rEFIt detected it but did not know how to boot it. I'm at the point where all options are starting to get exhausted.

[daedius]

Forgot to mention that last night, I randomly tried the mactel-linux livecd (based of ubuntu). That project seems way dead. No luck with it. At this point I have this feeling that the only option left ( assuming I didn't do anything wrong in the previous steps ) is to try to figure out how to somehow use elilo. If that fails, all I can do is wait.

[simmons]

daedius -

A few ideas spring to mind. Maybe you could borrow an internal CD-ROM drive and put it in the Mac temporarily to boot and install Ubuntu? The Mac Pro has a great case and it's easy to swap out components.

Also... It's my understanding that you can load and execute the kernel from a CD; the problem is when the loaded kernel needs to use the CD-ROM drive to mount a filesystem. Perhaps a kernel could be loaded from the CD, and instructed to mount a filesystem from another device such as the USB stick? That would require the usb_storage driver, and possibly others. These extra drivers would probably need to be compiled into the kernel.

David

[daedius]

Hey there Simmons,

Thanks for the ideas. I think you may be on the right track with the swapping out cdroms. Last night I took apart my old computer and my girlfriends computer. Unfortunately I only found another pioneer ( which strangely enough exhibited the same problem ) and my GF's Sony DW-U10A was practically bolted on in her G5. Part of my confusion in this whole problem is i'm just completely not aware of what Apple supports and to what level. Its all undocumented. I think it may be time for a pilgramage to Fry's to see if I can find some Sony DVD-r that fits my need.

I wish there were another solution at the moment, but my options are becoming slim. Elilo just isn't a clear solution to this problem from my experience last night.


Edit & Update
- so far, i've tried 4 hard drives, only 1 (the Pioneer) seemed any where near successful ( but I kept getting the EXACT same cdrom errors I get with the DVR-111D

You know, its funny you mentioned that solution about booting from cd, then loading from USB. I experimented with that a little yesterday with a liveusb I made. It looked like it tried to boot up something, but ran into path errors. Who knows, maybe its worth another look.

- Daedius

[forkbeard]

If anyone is still wondering how to get their Macs to boot off a USB drive, I had to go into DiskUtility (either from the OSX install cd or from within OSX) then repartition the USB drive. When you repartition though, you have to hit the "Options" button and select the GUID partition scheme. After that it'll be perfectly bootable by any Intel Mac afaik.

I've tested this on Intel iMacs, MacBooks and MacBook Pros but not Mac Pros, although the partition schemes across all four lineups are exactly the same so it should work with them too.

[daedius]

Thanks forkbeard, I can try to verify this over the weekend. I've not had much time to do liveusb boot testing, but what little I saw it looked optimistic.

[daedius]

On another note, it appears Apple has made is practically impossible to find any internal optical drives other than the lame poorly EFI supported Pioneer DVR-111D.I called a local apple store, the online apple store, applecare, sony store, and the sony parts department. Its like the Sony DW=D150A just doesn't exist. It must be some OEM deal that just kept completely away from the market, that, or i'm barking up the wrong tree with the name. Maybe theres an OEM in Retail's clothing.

[daedius]

So after work today I went down to Fry's to pick up a DRU-810A, I stick it in, ok, it comes up in apple. I boot up on it "cannot detect boot medium", for chance I try again to boot on the sony, if finds it this time, and I get those same "device looks confused messages!" (grar). Then something interesting happens....

After I rebooted, there is a part where it takes forever to "::mounting CD to tmpfs /dev/hda".. and I randomly decided to eject and re-enject the machine. It finds the cd! if only for a few seconds, it found it, and proceeded to try to load it over to tmpfs. Then something just stalled big time. I rebooted and i never saw that happen again (maybe I was just lucky). Anyhow, this weekend I continue the battle most noble.

This round!: Revenge of the LiveUSB

- Daedius

Edit:

In other news, I had very good indian food tonight at Taj Mahal in Houston

[daedius]

w007! Linux is GO GO GO!~!~!

I figured out a way to trick the gentoo boot into working even though the cdrom is hosed. I create a partition on the hard drive, dd the minimal image to the hard drive, burn an iso to, boot the cd, on boot up the bootloader will take the image from the hard drive rather than the cd. And your in business! I used the sabayon linux distro and was able to see instantly amazing stuff, long live linux! Thankyou for all your help! I probably would have returned my MacPro if not for your encouragement!

- Daedius

[kwanghui]

Just to let you know that I just tried the recently updated Parallels Desktop with my Mac Pro (dual 2.66 woodcrest xeon with 2gb RAM... NOT the macBOOKpro).

it installs and runs ubuntu 6.06 fine.

Just save the ubuntu ISO file on your mac hard drive, then point to it as the boot cdrom instead of the actual cdrom. Create a linux2.6 VM, then boot the livecd and install. Works really nicely, and a good way for you to bypass these problems with the hardware.

At least on my setup, the ethernet bridging didn't work. However, host-based networking worked, and I used systempreferenes->sharing->internet from osx to allow ubuntu to access the internet.

Best regards.

[daedius]

yah, I used parallels too. I prefer the real thing though. For the benefit of people who want to work on linux open source on real drivers.

[daedius]

Simmons, if your still around. I have another question for you about your setup. Which boot loader to you use and could you send us any configs (lilo.conf / grub.conf ) and any manual step you did to get it to work =)

thanks as always,

- Daedius

[simmons]

Simmons, if your still around. I have another question for you about your setup. Which boot loader to you use and could you send us any configs (lilo.conf / grub.conf ) and any manual step you did to get it to work =)

I used LILO. Here's my lilo.conf:

boot=/dev/sda3
default=Ubuntu
map=/boot/map
delay=20
image=/vmlinuz initrd=/initrd.img
root=/dev/sda3
label=Ubuntu
read-only


I pretty much followed these instructions for installing Ubuntu 6.06:

http://bin-false.org/?p=17

I installed Boot Camp, made a "Windows" partition to install Linux on, and played around with the rEFIt tool for syncing the GUID partition table with the legacy partition table. I did a lot of extra work and fooling around trying to get Linux to boot off the second hard drive, but I ended up giving up on that and installing to a partition on the first hard drive.

To boot into Linux (if I've been in MacOS), I have to hold down the option key at startup and select "Windows".

That's about all I can recall.

David

[daedius]

Thanks a bunch simmons! I was unaware that refits partition tool did anything other than partition. After it synched up the disks, penguins were flying! :D

- Daedius

[DarkDave]

I had some success getting the installer to run on my Mac Pro and mount the Superdrive, finally!!!

Try adding the following boot switches to the command line at boot time:

irqpoll acpi=off

Using these options, the installer mounted the DVD without the interrupt or DMA error messages.

[daedius]

DarkDave, do you have a Pioneer? =) I could have SWORN I tried these. I remember getting kernel lockups right at the very beginning when it was loading its core sata modules.

[DarkDave]

Yes, I have the Pioneer drive in mine.

Actually, the line I posted is not quite correct, oops!

Try this one:

irqpoll acpi=force

The acpi=force makes all the difference in the world. With these options I had no problems with the HD or the DVD.

[daedius]

Strange, I have no lcuk with this method either. Wonder whats different.

[DarkDave]

I had better luck with a Fedora Core 5 installation DVD. The Kubuntu 6.06 Live CD was giving me fits with the SATA driver still.

One thing to try would be to place the Kubuntu installation files onto a second drive in the system, either another SATA drive, or an IDE drive in the spare Superdrive bay.

[toddbyrne]

Any have any luck getting more then 2GB of ram to show up?

I am not sure if I have something wrong my kernel config or what. Any help would be appreciated.

[DarkDave]

I'm running a Mac Pro with Fedora Core 6 Test 3. *I've noticed several people have had problems with IDE/SATA and their DVD drives under Linux. *I have been working to resolve some of these issues, and have had good success, as well as making some compromises.

First, there seems to be an issue with the standard Linux IDE DMA drive and the Intel 5000X chipset. *Upon loading of the driver, the kernel gets hit with interrupts with IRQ #90, which is the legacy IDE controller on the ESB2 chip. *The kernel usually ends up disabling the IRQ, and any hope of accessing any device on the controller. *This affects all DVD or CDROM devices hooked up, not just the Superdrive that comes with it.

The workaround at install time is to add the kernel command line parameters:

acpi=force irqpoll

This works for the Fedora Core 6 installer, other distros maybe, maybe not. *Gentoo 6.06 didn't work. *And the irqpoll setting seems to screw up the CPU spinlocks when booting an SMP kernel. *So that won't work after installation.

Once you do get Linux installed either via DVD or HD image, then there's another issue. *The ESB2 is detected as the 4 port SATA device in the ICH6, not the 6 port SATA controller it really is. *ESB2 is an offshoot of one of the ICHes.

For this, two things must be done. *First is to edit and re-build the AHCI driver. *Edit the file ahci.c and add the following line in the Dev ID list:

{ PCI_VENDOR_ID_INTEL, 0x2680, PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID, 0, 0, * * * * *
board_ahci }, /* ESB2 */

This will tell the driver to claim Dev ID 0x2680, which is the AHCI controller ID in the Mac Pros. *According to the ESB2 datasheet, the ID could be 0x2680, 0x2681, 0x2682, or 0x2683 depending on the fusing options. *In this case, 0x2680 was not claimed by default in the AHCI driver.

Also, when you rebuild the AHCI driver, it's a good idea to either not build the ata_piix driver in your kernel, or delete the module altogether. *It won't work, and it's really the wrong driver for the ESB2 chips. *We only need the AHCI driver here, the ata_piix is for older chipsets like ICH5, ICH5, etc. *The ata_piix tries to claim the 0x2680 Dev ID, which is the ID
presented in these older chipsets for their 2 or 4 port SATA controllers.

Now rebooting with the fixed AHCI driver should report all 6 SATA ports on boot, yea!!!! *Those two SATA connectors on the motherboard just below the first hard drive bay are now usable.

Now for the second major problem. *The DVD drive still won't work on the IDE controller. *The kernel reports:

ESB2: 100% native mode on irq 90

I've read on other forums that the IDE controller might not be getting set to the legacy or compatible mode, and thus the IDE driver is trying to set it up incorrectly. *Also, I don't know how to change the controller mode in the EFI firmware.

Until there's driver update for this or an EFI update, here's two things you can do. *First is to swap it out with a SATA DVD drive. *OS X will see it and use one just fine, and you can use one of the extra SATA connectors on the motherboard to hook it up. *

Alternatively, (and much cheaper) you can buy a SATA to IDE bridge card that will allow you to connect an IDE device to one of the extra SATA connectors. *I did this, but be careful to make sure the bridge card you buy physically fits between the DVD and the power supply. *There's only about 2 inches of room in there. *I had to bend the IDE 40 pin connector up to a 45 degree angle to get it to fit.

Let me know if you have more specific questions, or you have some other ideas that have worked for you.

[cbetancourt]

Hello All,

We recieved a MacPro where I work last week and have been trying to put linux
on it since getting it. My first inclination was to try Fedora, but I wasn't having any luck. When that didn't work I decided to try Ubuntu. Here is
where things get interesting. When I boot the live cd version I get no
no video, just a blsck screen. BUT if I wait for the cd drive to quiet down
(so that I can be sure it's done booting) I can drop into a virtual terminal,
log in, and start issuing commands. I know this works because I used 'eject'
to open and close the cd drive. Any thoughts on how to get the video
working?

Also should mention, it's got one of the pioneer drives.

Thanks for your time,
C. Betancourt

[simmons]

cbetancourt -

That's a new one on me! What video card do you have in your Mac Pro?

DarkDave -

I'm surprised there are issues with the chipset on the Mac Pro. I'm wondering if my Mac Pro (which Linux installed on fine) has a different chipset. (It definitely uses the Sony optical drive instead of the Pioneer, which seems to be some sort of a clue.) The following is what my lcpci reports with regards to IDE/SATA hardware:

0000:00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation Enterprise Southbridge PATA (rev 09)
0000:00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation Enterprise Southbridge SATA cc=IDE (rev 09)

Numeric vendor/device id's are:

0000:00:1f.1 0101: 8086:269e (rev 09)
0000:00:1f.2 0101: 8086:2680 (rev 09)

David

[daedius]

Amazing investigations DarkDave. I'm happy this thread isn't ending off in these hacks to try to install linux. You certainly know your stuff and the available options. I do think our end goal would be to get linux stable atop MacPro -- no modification or special hacks required. I'd really like your opinion on what the next step and options are. As I see the assertions throughout this thread, there are a few issues:

- linux IDE DMA with x5000
- 6 port SATA drives being improperly detected
- unclear state of large memory

We need to define which of these issues are limitations(bugs?) of linux operating system ( and could possibly included as fixes within future kernels ), and which of these are corrections that need to be made within the EFI/SCM and should be notified to Apple. I'm not as technically familiar with the Linux operating system, so your help would be greatly appreciated to answering these questions. I'll gladly search for what I can.

[sergiez]

Hi all!

I am following this thread from the begning. I assume all the errors related to the superdrives comes installing the Ubuntu Dapper x86_64 bits version. I have bin able to install the x86 distro (32bits) without problems. Just solving the issue with the instalation of lilo instead of grub at the system partition, not the MBR.

Actually my system is currently instaled, up and running the 686-smp kernel.

I can reproduce the same problem as the rest of the people when trying to install the 64bits version. I tried with acpi=force irqpoll but no way. The DVD drive stoped mounting the root filesystem. And that´s all.

I know this is not too much... in fact it is nothing, but well, that´s how the things are. I will continue trying with 64 bit distro.

[sergiez]

Hi all!

I am following this thread from the begning. I assume all the errors related to the superdrives comes installing the Ubuntu Dapper x86_64 bits version. I have bin able to install the x86 distro (32bits) without problems. Just solving the issue with the instalation of lilo instead of grub at the system partition, not the MBR.

Actually my system is currently instaled, up and running the 686-smp kernel.

I can reproduce the same problem as the rest of the people when trying to install the 64bits version. I tried with acpi=force irqpoll but no way. The DVD drive stoped mounting the root filesystem. And that´s all.

I know this is not too much... in fact it is nothing, but well, that´s how the things are. I will continue trying with 64 bit distro.

[cbetancourt]

simmons,
sorry for the dellay in this, but the specs reported by OSX are:
ATI Radeon X1900 XT:

Chipset Model: ATY,RadeonX1900
Type: Display
Bus: PCIe
Slot: Slot-1
VRAM (Total): 512 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x7249
Revision ID: 0x0000
ROM Revision: 113-A52027-140
EFI Driver Version: 01.00.140
Displays:
Cinema HD:
Display Type: LCD
Resolution: 1920 x 1200
Depth: 32-bit Color
Core Image: Supported
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Quartz Extreme: Supported
Rotation: Supported
Display:
Status: No display connected
But I don't suppose it matters too much for me anymore, the powers that be have decided to just run with OSX:(

[DarkDave]

cbetancourt -

That's a new one on me! What video card do you have in your Mac Pro?



My Mac Pro has the Nvidia GeForce 7300 GT card in it. I bet there's some issue going on with the ATI cards then, perhaps the driver in the installation image isn't working with it.

[DarkDave]

Amazing investigations DarkDave. I'm happy this thread isn't ending off in these hacks to try to install linux. You certainly know your stuff and the available options. I do think our end goal would be to get linux stable atop MacPro -- no modification or special hacks required. I'd really like your opinion on what the next step and options are. As I see the assertions throughout this thread, there are a few issues:

- linux IDE DMA with x5000
- 6 port SATA drives being improperly detected
- unclear state of large memory

We need to define which of these issues are limitations(bugs?) of linux operating system ( and could possibly included as fixes within future kernels ), and which of these are corrections that need to be made within the EFI/SCM and should be notified to Apple. I'm not as technically familiar with the Linux operating system, so your help would be greatly appreciated to answering these questions. I'll gladly search for what I can.


One thing I'd like to try is to get ahold of another 5000X chipset machine and correlate the Linux behavior on it. This would help to isolate any issues due to EFI, and determnine whether or not the memory and IDE issue we see might be due to motherboard differences or driver issues.

It's very interesting that the 32bit kernel version in Ubuntu works fine with the IDE controller. I'll take a look at running a i686 compiled kernel on my machine.

Dave

[SealFriend]

Hi,

Good job man on getting Ubuntu on MacPro. It appears you did not have to do anything special like loading a new reflt or something.

Just used bootcamp to create a windows partition and booted Ubuntu off that ?

No changes to LILO settings nothing ?

[sergiez]

Hi,

Good job man on getting Ubuntu on MacPro. It appears you did not have to do anything special like loading a new reflt or something.

Just used bootcamp to create a windows partition and booted Ubuntu off that ?

No changes to LILO settings nothing ?

Hi,

In fact nothing speciall is needed to boot the LiveCD (talking about 32bits version). The only problem I got was with the Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Bluez-utils makes them not working so when gnome starts it looks frozen. I noticed this because the first Ubuntu I try to install was n custom liveCd build by the Open Source Group of the Catalonian Open University. This custom LiveCD boots with no problems. Then, when I try the standard LiveCD, the keyboard and the mouse didn´t work. So I install the custom CD and I install the ubuntu-desktop package later. As soon bluez-utils was installed, the mouse and the keyboard stop working. I think if you have both USB devices there will be not problems to install the standard LiveCD. If you have the wireless Apple keyboard and mighty mouse you can use reconstructor to build your own custom Ubuntu liveCD (reconstructor.aperantis.com).

I installed rEFIt, but I think it is not necessary at all. In fact some people of this forum has Ubuntu installed on the MacPro and they are not using rEFIt. They said that is possible to boot the linux system jus keeping pressed the option(alt) key during the booting time. Then select the windows partition as you say. I did not try this point.

Yes. There are few issues when installing lilo. First of all, lilo does not come in the liveCD. The steps to follow in order to install lilo in the boot sector of the ubuntu partition are here (http://bin-false.org/?p=17).

[cbetancourt]

DarkDave,
I'm not sure that it's necessarilly a driver issue as it does it with
whatever cd's I try. Granted, I've only tried Ubuntu and Fedora,
but since they both behave the same way I'm going to assume that
it's an EFI issue. on the other hand you know what they say about
assumptions...

[sergiez]

Hi all,

Yestarday I was trying with Edgy 64bits. The LiveCD boots with the irqpoll option and giving the error messages such "device confused" or something like this. But finally it runs gnome... but the blutooth bug is still there so I was unable to do anything. I will take a USB mouse and keyboard from my workplace today in order to try with them during the weekend.

Has anyone try to boot from a HD partition build with dd and the liveCD?

[daedius]

Yes, I currently dd a livecd iso of gentoo to a partition, and boot off a livecd cd. I suspect you could do the same thing with an ubuntu livecd.

[daedius]

10.4.8 came out today. I wonder if any of our problems have been changed.

[sergiez]

Yes, I currently dd a livecd iso of gentoo to a partition, and boot off a livecd cd. I suspect you could do the same thing with an ubuntu livecd.

I have been looking for instructions on how to dd a iso livecd to a partition and then make it booteable but I didn´t find it. Can you please post the steps you follow or a url as reference?

[daedius]

Hmm, sorry if I came off vague, my steps are pretty simple:

1) download gentoo livecd iso ( I like the Sabayon distrobution[gentoo based] )
2) insert a blank cd
3) "hdiutil burn <NAME OF ISO>.iso" to burn the cd
4) "sudo if=<NAME OF ISO>.iso of=/dev/diskXsY" where X and Y correlate to a free disk partition (i.e. disk0s5 )
5) install refit 0.8 ( which has specific support for mac pro)
6) reboot and boot from the cd, hit alt+f1 to get into the console mode, and it should say that it found the CD image on /dev/sdaX

[daedius]

considering the chances that Apple may never fix the EFI problem, I wanted to put a call out for information on the cdrom drives.


A) We know for certain there have been reports that the SONY DVD RW DW-D150A works for linux cd boots. Does anyone have an sources for where these can be purchased. I called up and down sony and apple to try to find these, but had no luck. If anyone has any knowledge on where to get these, sharing would be appreciated.

B) There've been some posts about using SATA cdrom drives and or SATA->IDE conversion. If anyone has success with this method, could you please post your setup method and specifically the cdrom model you used.

Thanks.
- Daedius

[sergiez]

Hmm, sorry if I came off vague, my steps are pretty simple:

1) download gentoo livecd iso ( I like the Sabayon distrobution[gentoo based] )
2) insert a blank cd
3) "hdiutil burn <NAME OF ISO>.iso" to burn the cd
4) "sudo if=<NAME OF ISO>.iso of=/dev/diskXsY" where X and Y correlate to a free disk partition (i.e. disk0s5 )
5) install refit 0.8 ( which has specific support for mac pro)
6) reboot and boot from the cd, hit alt+f1 to get into the console mode, and it should say that it found the CD image on /dev/sdaX

OK! I did it! I dd the sabayon liveCD to disk0s4 and everything goes as you said. I install the distro to /dev/sda3 but it takes a very long to boot. It did not crash, but looks like thinking too much analysing all volumes. As it was too late (1am) I decided to reboot in OSX (CTRL+ALT+DEL) and will try again today. This was so strange because the clone liveCD was booting without problems.

Unfortunately the ubuntu LiveCD does not boot in the same way as sabayon. It stops when the dvd drive is dissable because its confussion so after clone the liveCD to a HD partition I have to find the way to make this partition booteable. I think configuring lilo to boot it will be enough. Has someone try this point?

[daedius]

My experiences are the same as yours Sergiez, long boot up times. I think the volume detection slowdown must be a problem with shoddily supported hard-drive SATA drivers in linux, because I have an intel mac mini that just zooms past those parts. DarkDave suggested a fix that will get all 6 sata drives up and running, perhaps this fix makes SATA detection faster on bootup?

[Kunimodi]

Hi, folks. I've been following this thread and would like to know if anyone has had any success installing Ubuntu (or another distro) on a second drive. I have three drives in my Mac Pro and am trying to install Ubuntu on either the second of third drive. I initially was trying with RAID, but now am simply trying to do one drive and have been able to install the OS and lilo, but on boot it gives a ton of file/directory not found messages and is stuck at the BusyBox login prompt. Has any one seen this and found a work around? Thank you very much.
Cheers,
Kunimodi

[DarkDave]

considering the chances that Apple may never fix the EFI problem, I wanted to put a call out for information on the cdrom drives.


A) We know for certain there have been reports that the SONY DVD RW DW-D150A works for linux cd boots. Does anyone have an sources for where these can be purchased. I called up and down sony and apple to try to find these, but had no luck. If anyone has any knowledge on where to get these, sharing would be appreciated.

B) There've been some posts about using SATA cdrom drives and or SATA->IDE conversion. If anyone has success with this method, could you please post your setup method and specifically the cdrom model you used.

Thanks.
- Daedius


I don't have any clue as to why the Sony drives might be working. In addition to the Pioneer DVR-111 drive, I have also tried my older BenQ 1620 DVD writer in the Mac Pro. This drive also reported the same IDE failures as the Pioneer.

With the SATA to IDE adapter, I have had success with every device I've tried hooking up to it, even when running under Mac OS X. Hard drives and DVD drives seem to work great with the adapter.

As for the boot speed, the only booting delay I saw was due to the DVD drive when hooked up to the IDE connector. The kernel had to time out and disable the IDE IRQ #90 before continuing on with the boot process. Ever since I have switched to the AHCI drive and moved my DVD to SATA, I don't see any slowdown on boot anymore.

Dave

[DarkDave]

Hi, folks. I've been following this thread and would like to know if anyone has had any success installing Ubuntu (or another distro) on a second drive. I have three drives in my Mac Pro and am trying to install Ubuntu on either the second of third drive. I initially was trying with RAID, but now am simply trying to do one drive and have been able to install the OS and lilo, but on boot it gives a ton of file/directory not found messages and is stuck at the BusyBox login prompt. Has any one seen this and found a work around? Thank you very much.
Cheers,
Kunimodi

I could never get lilo to work on my Mac Pro. I ended up using GRUB instead.

I would suggest switching to GRUB as the bootloader. The secret to getting GRUB to work is not running the EFI partition sync tool from rEFIt or the command prompt when installing Linux.

As long as your Linux boot partition is listed as a Linux (0x83) type in the legacy partition table (not the EFI GPT table), then GRUB will have no issues detecting partitions or booting Linux. Also, if you set your grub.conf to boot=/dev/sda, then when running grub-install, GRUB will update the MBR, but only the MBR of the legacy partition table and won't corrupt the GPT.

GRUB seems to work great with rEFIt with the following steps:

1. At install time, and before rebooting after the install tool is finished, drop to a shell prompt. Run fdisk, and make sure the Linux boot partition is set to a non EFI GPT type, so that the type is either 0x83 (Linux) or vfat depending on your install. Save table and exit.

2. Now run grub-install or grub with install commands, and make sure that you install grub to the MBR of /dev/sda. This is safe since it will only update the legacy partition table, not the GPT table. This should not ever hose the GPT table. If successful, GRUB will complete without any errors. If it hangs or errors when installing, then most likely the partition type didn't get updated.

3. Reboot, and do _not_ run the rEFIt partition sync tool. This tool will try and fixup the Linux boot partition to a GPT partition type, usually 0xEF.

4. Boot to Linux partition from rEFIt. GRUB should boot normally after that.

Dave

[Kunimodi]

Thank you, Dark Dave. Last night when I fiddled with Grub it got to Stage 2 and told me to wait, but after a few minutes I got impatient and went back to trying with lilo as it seems like most people have had success with that. I'm glad it works for you and I would think this is how it should be integrated into the Ubuntu installer.

Anyhow, I just tried a simple idea to get Ubuntu running on its own drive: swapping the drive so that it was in the leftmost (first) position. To my delight, this actually worked and now it is booting fine into Ubuntu Server 64-bit.

I expect there will be some rough edges as I get video, sound, etc working (I intend to use it as a workstation and not a server, but I like to build everything by hand), but that's the fun of it. :)

[xpediant]

I'm attempting a install of just Ubuntu straight ( No dual boot). I don't have the CD's for OS X so solutions requiring running OS X i've been unable to attempt. The problem is after installation and reboot to run Ubuntu the system hangs on loading second bootloader. A small window pops up alternating with a picture of a question mark and a picture of a outline of two faces (i'm assuming this is a Mac thing). The system then reboots. This cycle continues with the system appearing to run harder with each cycle ( Fans speed up incrementally with each boot.)
The system is a a1047 model G5.
2.0 dual core processor
160gb HD
single optical drive ( not sure of the model but the optical drive didn't seem to be an issue.)

I'm using the latest Dapper Drake Cds. The install works correctly with the Mac install disc and the x86 disc is not even recognized(tested x86 disc in another PC to make sure it burned correctly).
I've read up on the Ubuntu forums and the general net. I've used mac-fdisk with the b option to create the bootloader partition. I've used the c option and created a 16MB partition for the bootloader as one forum mentioned the 800K size was not large enough for GRUB.
I've reconfigured yaboot to to see the bootload correctly.
I've run out of ideas as to what is going on ](*,) and i'm hoping that someone could clue me in. Thanks:)

[sergiez]

My experiences are the same as yours Sergiez, long boot up times. I think the volume detection slowdown must be a problem with shoddily supported hard-drive SATA drivers in linux, because I have an intel mac mini that just zooms past those parts. DarkDave suggested a fix that will get all 6 sata drives up and running, perhaps this fix makes SATA detection faster on bootup?

Not only long boot time, but also crashed after more than 30 minutes. I will check for DarkDave fix as soon I can.

Thank you again.

[sergiez]

The system is a a1047 model G5.
2.0 dual core processor

So it is not a MacPro and not even an Intel based Mac so it is not the correct thread to post this question. Even that, I can´t help you. I have no acces to G5 PowerPC based Mac right now.

Sorry.

[daedius]

sergiez,

Hmm. I do not experience crashing at all =/ You might wanna look into that.

[belphanior]

Hi everyone!

I just thougt I'd pop in here, because I've gotten the CD-Drive on my MacPro to work :)

Once you have linux installed you simply need to upgrade your kernel to 2.6.19-rc1, which now includes the libata-base PATA drivers. If you then use that new driver for the PATA ports (it's called CONFIG_PATA_MPIIX in menuconfig) instead ov the "classical" IDE drivers the CD drive works fine.

Now someone will just have to make a livecd that includes this driver :p :p :p


Other things to note:
I installed linux on a seperate hdd and partitioned it with the traditional MBR partition scheme, no GPT at all. This allows me to have as many partitions as I want.

Sound does not work. It is detected (Intel HDA with Realtec ALC885 codec), but I get no sound.

Edit:
Btw: Linux boots like lighning, no slowdowns at all when detecting volumes.

[DarkDave]

Hi everyone!

I just thougt I'd pop in here, because I've gotten the CD-Drive on my MacPro to work :)

Once you have linux installed you simply need to upgrade your kernel to 2.6.19-rc1, which now includes the libata-base PATA drivers. If you then use that new driver for the PATA ports (it's called CONFIG_PATA_MPIIX in menuconfig) instead ov the "classical" IDE drivers the CD drive works fine.

Now someone will just have to make a livecd that includes this driver :p :p :p


Other things to note:
I installed linux on a seperate hdd and partitioned it with the traditional MBR partition scheme, no GPT at all. This allows me to have as many partitions as I want.

Sound does not work. It is detected (Intel HDA with Realtec ALC885 codec), but I get no sound.

Edit:
Btw: Linux boots like lighning, no slowdowns at all when detecting volumes.

Good to know some of the IDE fixes have been integrated into 2.6.19-rc1. I couldn't tell from the changelog what was integrated, so I'll have to try it out.

I've been able to get the ata_piix driver in 2.6.18 to recognize the legacy IDE controller, but it won't detect any devices. Looks like rc1 has the fix we need.

Still, we should be using the AHCI driver for the SATA ports, I'll check and see if they added the Mac Pro ESB2 PCI dev id to it.

Sound does work, just not through the speaker jacks. For some reason the current ALSA driver doesn't control the audio outputs correctly. This is a known issue and hopefully will be resolved soon. The optical output plug works, and I currently use this to get sound through an amplifier. Just make sure the IEC958 port is turned on in alsamixer.

Dave

[SealFriend]

Hi everyone!

I just thougt I'd pop in here, because I've gotten the CD-Drive on my MacPro to work :

[/FONT]
Once you have linux installed you simply need to upgrade your kernel to 2.6.19-rc1, which now includes the libata-base PATA drivers. If you then use that new driver for the PATA ports (it's called CONFIG_PATA_MPIIX in menuconfig) instead ov the "classical" IDE drivers the CD drive works fine.

Now someone will just have to make a livecd that includes this driver :p :p :p


Other things to note:
I installed linux on a seperate hdd and partitioned it with the traditional MBR partition scheme, no GPT at all. This allows me to have as many partitions as I want.

Sound does not work. It is detected (Intel HDA with Realtec ALC885 codec), but I get no sound.

Edit:
Btw: Linux boots like lighning, no slowdowns at all when detecting volumes.

-[FONT="Fixedsys"] Congratulations - that too on a second harddrive. Exactly what I am looking for. My naive question is how did you install linux on the second hdd if the cd driver was not even recognized during boot of the linux?
Did you follow the steps to dd an iso of a ubuntu/gentoo onto the second hdd and boot the first version off that ? I am tryin to follow the steps on the gentoo-wiki by daedius for loading on Mac Pro - did you follow similar steps of install reFIt and levergaging bootcamp ?
Also this new version of the kernel is it 32-bit x86 or the amd64bit ?

[belphanior]

Congratulations - that too on a second harddrive. Exactly what I am looking for. My naive question is how did you install linux on the second hdd if the cd driver was not even recognized during boot of the linux?
Did you follow the steps to dd an iso of a ubuntu/gentoo onto the second hdd and boot the first version off that ? I am tryin to follow the steps on the gentoo-wiki by daedius for loading on Mac Pro - did you follow similar steps of install reFIt and levergaging bootcamp ?
Also this new version of the kernel is it 32-bit x86 or the amd64bit ?

Right. I partitioned the harddisk under OS X (you can simply select MBR partitioning in diskutil).

My partitioning scheme (which I've used elsewhere for a long time) is:
Primary 1 (sdb1): 100 MB ext2 /boot
Primary 2 (sdb2): 100 GB windows
Primary 3 (sdb3): 2 GB swap
Logical 1 (sdb5): 5 GB reiserfs /usr/portage
Logical 2 (sdb6): 15 GB reiserfs /
Logical 3 (sdb7): 100 GB reiserfs /home
leaving ~80GB free (it's a 300 GB hdd)

Then I installed refit into the efi partition (the small fat32 partition on the original hdd). The benefit of this (as opposed to a standard refit install) is that i can update refit or change it's settings without having to boot into OS X. The steps to do so can be found here (http://felipe-alfaro.org/blog/2006/09/19/installing-refit-on-the-hidden-efi-system-partition/)

I dd'ed the gentoo amd64-minimal iso onto my future windows partition. Then I did a normal stage1 amd64 gentoo install.
So obviously I built a 64-bit kernel. The driver should work just as well in 32bit, but I'm not sure why you'd want a 32bit kernel.

As my linux bootloader I installed grub into the /boot partition
The most recent version of grub in portage includes a fix that allows it to work, however I couldn't use a background image, because that made grub's menuscreen stay blank. Still, I like grub a lot more than lilo...

Then I installed bootcamp on OS X, used it to burn a windows XP driver disk, but didn't do any partitioning or anything else.

Then I inserted an XP CD and installed XP. I found that this caused XP to become the default boot disk, I had to hold down alt while booting to get into refit again. I found that this can be changed via a control panel applet.
I seem to recall that I had to repeat the steps to install refit after that...

[daedius]

Hi everyone!

I just thougt I'd pop in here, because I've gotten the CD-Drive on my MacPro to work :)

Once you have linux installed you simply need to upgrade your kernel to 2.6.19-rc1, which now includes the libata-base PATA drivers. If you then use that new driver for the PATA ports (it's called CONFIG_PATA_MPIIX in menuconfig) instead ov the "classical" IDE drivers the CD drive works fine.

Now someone will just have to make a livecd that includes this driver :p :p :p


Other things to note:
I installed linux on a seperate hdd and partitioned it with the traditional MBR partition scheme, no GPT at all. This allows me to have as many partitions as I want.

Sound does not work. It is detected (Intel HDA with Realtec ALC885 codec), but I get no sound.

Edit:
Btw: Linux boots like lighning, no slowdowns at all when detecting volumes.
Thats great news! You just made my day =)

[simmons]

Earlier in this thread, someone was asking about how to replace their Mac Pro's Pioneer optical drive (which seemed to be Linux-phobic) with the Sony DW-D150A drive that my Mac Pro came with (which works fine, but it's an oddball model number that you can't buy in stores). Since my Mac Pro works fine, I haven't been following the thread too closely to see if the Pioneer issue has been resolved.

However, Engadget had an interesting article today about this drive:

http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/09/how-to-supersize-your-mac-pros-superdrive/

It turns out that the Sony DW-D150A drive is actually a rebranded NEC ND-4570A drive, only with a firmware tweak that makes it slower.

David

[daedius]

Hi everyone!

I just thougt I'd pop in here, because I've gotten the CD-Drive on my MacPro to work :)

Once you have linux installed you simply need to upgrade your kernel to 2.6.19-rc1, which now includes the libata-base PATA drivers. If you then use that new driver for the PATA ports (it's called CONFIG_PATA_MPIIX in menuconfig) instead ov the "classical" IDE drivers the CD drive works fine.

Now someone will just have to make a livecd that includes this driver :p :p :p


Other things to note:
I installed linux on a seperate hdd and partitioned it with the traditional MBR partition scheme, no GPT at all. This allows me to have as many partitions as I want.

Sound does not work. It is detected (Intel HDA with Realtec ALC885 codec), but I get no sound.

Edit:
Btw: Linux boots like lighning, no slowdowns at all when detecting volumes.

I tried out linux kernel 2.6.19-rc1 last night and recieved no more errors in detecting PATA/SATA. W00h00! I used gentoo and I had some trouble when building my nvidia drivers, but I just had to modify my sources Kbuild.include to get things to compile properly without violating the sandbox. Everything seems to be running smoother than ever. I'm going to attempt to smoothe out my kernel to only what I need in the next few days, and see if I can figure out why udev is taking so long to get started. Do any of you who have udev have that problem? Thanks to everyones help =)

[belphanior]

However, Engadget had an interesting article today about this drive:

http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/09/how-to-supersize-your-mac-pros-superdrive/

It turns out that the Sony DW-D150A drive is actually a rebranded NEC ND-4570A drive, only with a firmware tweak that makes it slower.

David

I've just done this, it worked fine. I've been testing the flashed drive with Nero CD-Speed under Windows (the best cd-drive testing tool I know of ... anyone know of something equivalent for linux?), reading & burning both went to 48x. Writing a CD in 3 minutes is nice :)

Write-speed benchmark (http://dthaler.de/benchmark-write.png) (Forgot to change the UI language for this one ...)
Read-speed Benchmark (http://dthaler.de/benchmark-read.png)

[daedius]

hmm, soo I have CONFIG_PATA_MPIIX and scsi support on, but still no luck on getting the cdrom going. I get some wierd message on it at the end of every boot.

hda: lost interrupt
hda: lost interrupt
ide-cd: cmd 0x3 timed out
hda: lost interrupt
hda: request sense failure: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hda: request sense failure: error=0x44 { AbortedCommand LastFailedSense=0x04 }

I've tried various things, but i'm getting errors with my PIONEER. Does anybody have a workable config to share? Reading through the previous posts i'm reminded of the indication that these PIONEER drives may still need that sata-PATA-adaptification.

[belphanior]

hmm, soo I have CONFIG_PATA_MPIIX and scsi support on, but still no luck on getting the cdrom going. I get some wierd message on it at the end of every boot.

hda: lost interrupt
hda: lost interrupt
ide-cd: cmd 0x3 timed out
hda: lost interrupt
hda: request sense failure: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hda: request sense failure: error=0x44 { AbortedCommand LastFailedSense=0x04 }

I've tried various things, but i'm getting errors with my PIONEER. Does anybody have a workable config to share? Reading through the previous posts i'm reminded of the indication that these PIONEER drives may still need that sata-PATA-adaptification.

That's because you still have the old IDE driver in your kernel and it's claiming the IDE interface instead of the new driver.
When the new driver is active your cd drive will be called /dev/sr0.

I'd be interested to know how everyone else is configuring their kernel? My config is here (http://dthaler.de/macpro_config_2.6.19-rc1).

[DarkDave]

On 2.6.19-rc1, I compiled my kernel much the same way, turning off the legacy IDE layer, and only using the ATA drivers, but I've been compiling them as modules. I noticed under 2.6.19-rc1 on my machine, the pata_mpiix driver module never gets loaded. This driver might not be needed at all to get the IDE ports working.

I still prefer to compile in the AHCI driver since this one fully supports the SATA features in the ESB2 chip. To do this, you have to still edit the ahci.c driver to claim the 0x2680 PCI device ID, and edit the ata_piix.c driver to not claim the 0x2680 device ID. This is the only way you can detect devices on all six SATA ports. After patching, both the ahci and ata_piix drivers will co-exist, with the ahci controlling the SATA ports, and the ata_piix controlling the IDE ports.

With 2.6.19-rc1 I was still not able to get the Pioneer DVR-111D drive working, but my old BenQ DVD+RW and other misc hard drives worked just file.

There is a firmware update out there from Pioneer for this drive. This might help. I believe the latest version was 1.29. I'll need to find a Windoze machine to upgrade the firmware as the update file is a Windoze executable. I doubt it'll run under wine.

Here's a link to the Pioneer page:

http://wwwbsc.pioneer.co.jp/product-e/ibs/device_e/dev00001r_e.html

Dave

[daedius]

My experience is the same DarkDave

[daedius]

DarkDave, random question, did you see that 6 sata issue again with 2.6.19? Also, whats the highest memory configuration thats been successfully tested out there?

[DarkDave]

DarkDave, random question, did you see that 6 sata issue again with 2.6.19? Also, whats the highest memory configuration thats been successfully tested out there?

Yes, the 6 port SATA problem is due to the fact the base ahci driver file does not claim the PCI device ID entry for the Mac Pro ESB2 SATA controller. On the Mac Pro, this shows up as ID 0x2680. The driver does try and claim devices 0x2681, 0x2682, 0x2683. By the same token, the ata_piix driver tries to claim 0x2680. I think this is because other ICH based chipsets present their 4 port SATA controllers on device ID 0x2680, but I'm not 100% on this. I'd have to search through some Intel ICH user guides. According to the ESB2 guide, the lower 3 bits of the PCI device ID are set by the fuse bits in the chip.

With an unmodified build of the drivers, the ata_piix driver will end up claiming the legacy IDE controller on ID 0x269e, and the SATA controller on ID 0x2680. This will work, but only the first four SATA ports will get probed.

I'd like to see a patch in the driver for this, but I don't know if this will break other ICH chipsets. ICH6 supposedly uses 0x2680. I don't know if the other ones that use ID 0x2680 support the AHCI functionality.

As for memory support, I only have 1GB in my Mac Pro, and I haven't heard any reports of issues with more memory. The expansion boards can support up to 64GB.

Dave

[belphanior]

Yes, the 6 port SATA problem is due to the fact the base ahci driver file does not claim the PCI device ID entry for the Mac Pro ESB2 SATA controller. On the Mac Pro, this shows up as ID 0x2680. The driver does try and claim devices 0x2681, 0x2682, 0x2683. By the same token, the ata_piix driver tries to claim 0x2680. I think this is because other ICH based chipsets present their 4 port SATA controllers on device ID 0x2680, but I'm not 100% on this. I'd have to search through some Intel ICH user guides. According to the ESB2 guide, the lower 3 bits of the PCI device ID are set by the fuse bits in the chip.

With an unmodified build of the drivers, the ata_piix driver will end up claiming the legacy IDE controller on ID 0x269e, and the SATA controller on ID 0x2680. This will work, but only the first four SATA ports will get probed.

As far as I can tell, what PCI-ID the ESB2 reports for SATA depends on some setting made by the firmware at boot time.
The PCI class code changes with the PCI ID; 0x2680 sets the class code to "IDE", ie it makes the contoller look like a PATA device. ID 0x2681 would apparently have the SATA class code. I'm not sure about the others, could be RAID and SCSI.

It doesn't make any (noticable) difference to how the chip operates though. For example the ahci driver reads in the class code, prints it out and the ignores it completely :D

I'd like to see a patch in the driver for this, but I don't know if this will break other ICH chipsets. ICH6 supposedly uses 0x2680. I don't know if the other ones that use ID 0x2680 support the AHCI functionality.

As for memory support, I only have 1GB in my Mac Pro, and I haven't heard any reports of issues with more memory. The expansion boards can support up to 64GB.

Dave

64? I thought 32 :)
Not that it matters; I have 1 GB also because I wasn't willing to buy RAM from Apple: it seemed overpriced.
I expect I'll be getting some elsewhere fairly soon

[DarkDave]

As far as I can tell, what PCI-ID the ESB2 reports for SATA depends on some setting made by the firmware at boot time.
The PCI class code changes with the PCI ID; 0x2680 sets the class code to "IDE", ie it makes the contoller look like a PATA device. ID 0x2681 would apparently have the SATA class code. I'm not sure about the others, could be RAID and SCSI.

It doesn't make any (noticable) difference to how the chip operates though. For example the ahci driver reads in the class code, prints it out and the ignores it completely :D



64? I thought 32 :)
Not that it matters; I have 1 GB also because I wasn't willing to buy RAM from Apple: it seemed overpriced.
I expect I'll be getting some elsewhere fairly soon

I wonder if we can modify the rEFIt code to program up the correct PCI ID before booting. This would solve our issue without having to patch the ahci driver.

Dave

[daedius]

Sorry if this is just a real lamer question, but I purchased a IDE/PATA to SATA adapter (http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16812206002), I have it plugged into the back of my dvd-drive. I cannot see where to connect a SATA cable at all. I've honostly never had a computer that had SATA and i'm not immediately seeing 2 available slots when I open the box. Any advice?

- Daedius

Update: Ok, so I see what looks like a SATA connector port. Unfortunately it is behind the massive fan unit. Hmm, from the posts on this thread it sounded alot easier ;P

[sergiez]

Well. Finally I had succes installing Ubuntu Edgy Eft RC 64bits in my MacPro!! It was late on night and I still have the problem that I can not access to my user account. Maybe was a problem with the keyboard and the password. I will try to solve this point tonight. But the important thing is that is possible to boot the x86_64 Altenate CD just with the irqpoll option when booting the kernel. Then the installation process is quick (not so quick as if the DVDROM drive was running in the correct way) but it take me half an our or so.

The process is basically the same as explained in http://bin-false.org/?p=17 for the MacBook Pro but pressing F6 at boot time and adding "irqpoll" at the end of the line of the kernel parametres. Then follow the installation process taking care of the partitioning process (Manual partitioning to keep safe the OSX system). When finisihing it will give an error installing Grub. At this point we have to select "Go Back" (RETROCEDER in spanish which is my default language) and select something like "open a terminal" in the menu (I don´t remember exactly the name of the option, and also it was in spanish). In the terminal just follow the instructions of http://bin-false.org/?p=17 to chroot into the installed system partition.

I was not able to edit lilo.conf (nano was not working... now I am thinking that maybe nano was not installed by default... I will check tonight) but installing lilo with -b was OK for booting the system.

If you have an Apple wireless keyboard and mouse you must remove bluez-utils before reboot. Do "aptitude remove bluez-utils" into the chroot system. Then Exit twice and abort the installation proces from the menu.

If you have rEFIt already installed then you will be able to boot your new Ubuntu Edgy system!! In my case, rEFIt is a little bit confused and it is showing 2 linux icons for booting from the Hard Drive. The first one is not running. I must select the second one in order to boot Ubuntu.

That´s all.

P.D. One time during the installation process, a message appears saying that the CDROM was not munted and suggest to try to mount it again. I just answered yes to this point.

[daedius]

So tonight I have been trying something new. After digging into the innards of my MacPro, I finally got a sata enabled PIONEER 111D. It shows up perfectly fine in OSX. Linux, bootcamp, and refit however are another story. Boot camp does not register bootable cds with the sata enabled drive. Neither does refit. And i've been having difficulties within the linux kernel getting any recognition of the drive at all on boot ups with the various SATA drivers. Any help out there?

[shaninho]

Hello, I have read this thread several times in order to get my Mac Pro ubuntu setup working on my machine, so first of all, thanks.

I installed 6.10 from the CD. I am experiencing performance issues, however - the mouse/keyboard input is excruciatingly slow. has anyone seen this/know a fix?

Thanks in advance.

shaninho

[daedius]

Hey there =) I know this thread drifted off into a bit of oblivion, but I found some useful information the other day related to MacPro and audio.

http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.alsa.devel/42774

Apparently some people are really close to having a functional solution with alsa.

[sergiez]

Hey there =) I know this thread drifted off into a bit of oblivion, but I found some useful information the other day related to MacPro and audio.

http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.alsa.devel/42774

Apparently some people are really close to having a functional solution with alsa.

That is a great new. In fact, sound is the only reason why my Mac Pro is not fully running Linux.

I have to say that Ubuntu 64 bits can run on this machine using the kernel 2.6.19 downloaded from kernel.org and compiling it with the Intel PATA and SATA support and deselecting the ATAPI/IDE classic driver (as explained in an old post of this thread).

Doing this no more problems with the sony DVD drive and no perfomance issues.

daedius: Did you try the alsa patch? I can´t wait to try this until new alsa releases. I will try it as soon I can and repport back on comments.

Thank you again for the good news and the link.

[daedius]

Nope =) haven't tried it yet. Been a busy week! =P I'm excited bout it though.

This weekend I'll probably give it a shoot. Hopefully by then my
NEC ND-4570A ( sony mac drive clone ) will have arrived too. My big issue still is with the Pioneer 111D optical >_<

Glad to hear your machine is up and running near full capability linux wise, Sergiez! <('')< >('')>

- Richard

[sergiez]

Yeah!!

I got sound!!! It is low, but it sounds enough to listen the music while working.

I just applied the patch (I really don´t know if I did it right) to the alsa drivers. Compiled it and installed it.

It looks like almost everything is running almost at 100% ;-)

[daedius]

w007@! =) Congratz sergiez! I'm so excited, today I get my NEC ND-4570A ( the true identiy of the sony super drive!) I can't wait to burn up some Sabayon and boot it up. =P

[sergiez]

w007@! =) Congratz sergiez! I'm so excited, today I get my NEC ND-4570A ( the true identiy of the sony super drive!) I can't wait to burn up some Sabayon and boot it up. =P

You will be able to boot from the Ubuntu edgy 64 bits alternate CD (I think you will be able to boot also form the liveCD) passing "irqpoll" to the kernel at boot time. At least I did it several times. It is quicker than booting with the sabayon liveCD (even stored in a separate HD partition). Maybe you prefer sabayon to ubuntu. Then it is OK ;-)

[ububug]

sergiez
could you describe a bit how you got sound working?
what kernel do you use? what patch do you use (there are 4 on the homepage linked above)?
sound is the only thing not working for me yet, and the patches dont work properly on kernel 2.6.19.1 for me
/thnx

[sergiez]

sergiez
could you describe a bit how you got sound working?
what kernel do you use? what patch do you use (there are 4 on the homepage linked above)?
sound is the only thing not working for me yet, and the patches dont work properly on kernel 2.6.19.1 for me
/thnx

I am using the kernel 2.6.19.1
I used the last patch of the page aginst the alsa-driver-1.0.14rc1 driver.

If edgy is running fine for you with the 2.6.19.1 kernel:
1. download the driver from here (ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/driver/alsa-driver-1.0.14rc1.tar.bz2)
2. Copy the patch file to the directory where the alsa driver has been uncompressed.
3. Apply the patch with the command "patch -p1 < MacPro.patch.bin "
4. Then configure and install the driver with the commands:
./configure
make
sudo make install
5. restart.

In fact the sound is very low. I have to turn high the wheel of my speakers almost to max to have a normal sound.

Note that I have the speaker conected to the analogic line in.

That's all!

[daedius]

You will be able to boot from the Ubuntu edgy 64 bits alternate CD (I think you will be able to boot also form the liveCD) passing "irqpoll" to the kernel at boot time. At least I did it several times. It is quicker than booting with the sabayon liveCD (even stored in a separate HD partition). Maybe you prefer sabayon to ubuntu. Then it is OK ;-)


Hey their sergiez, =) are you saying you've had success with ubuntu 64- bit and NEC ND-4570A? I unfortunately have had no luck with NEC ND-4570A and Sabayon. I get the exact same messages I do with my Pioneer.

[sergiez]

Hey their sergiez, =) are you saying you've had success with ubuntu 64- bit and NEC ND-4570A? I unfortunately have had no luck with NEC ND-4570A and Sabayon. I get the exact same messages I do with my Pioneer.

Yes, at least with the edgy 64 bits alternate cd. I was not able to boot from the sabayon liveCD neither.

Try with edgy. The alternate CD was booting passing the "irqpoll" to the kernel (press F6 when grub appears at booting time and add irqpoll at the end of the kernel options line). Then you can install the system.

[mflaig]

Hi there,

I', running Edgy on the Macpro and Debian Etch. Both are amd64
My MacPro ist
2 Dual Core Xeons at 2,66
2 x 250GB Disks (setup with Raid, LVM and DM_Crypt)
2048 Megs Ram
Radeon X1900
Sony DVD
Cinema (you know which one ;-))

What I know so far:
the ireason error is a problem with the sony dvd drive. It is fixed in 2.6.19.1 (debian etch with a custom kernel image works smoothly)

Edgy 2.6.17
- ireason problems with sony dvd
- installation from a external usb drive does work
- installation from sony dvd does not (at least for me)
- addititonaly the MacPro stops working frequently to think about

Edgy 2.6.18
- When booting 2.6.18 gets drive seek errors and that was it. Will never come up

Edgy 2.6.19.1 (custom image)
- Working on an kernel package for 2.6.19.1 (debian package already done)
- One question: Where can I find information on how to build a linux kernel image the ubuntu way (means: which patches to use, how to get the bootsplash, etc.)

With Debian etch I had quite success, the kernel image of 2.6.19.1 works nicely. It is still missing patches from mactel-linux. Haven't checked if sound works corretly.

I'm still having a problem to get 2560x1600 resolutions with xorg to run on the ATI Radeon (fglrx is installed and kernel module present). If I start in 2560x1600 even with correct modeline for the cinema I get only 1280x800 :-(

Anyone got ATI+Cinema working at 2560x1600?

My Debian kernel image and some additional notes can be found on http://macpro.netzblock.org

Thanks,

Michael

[daedius]

I just wanted to be the first to notify everyone that I have successfully booted from live cd out-of-the-box no special configuration with Sabayon Linux 3.25 (http://www.sabayonlinux.org) ( with backports of PATA drivers from the 2.6.20 kernel -- among other great and wonderful things ). I am running this on my Mac Pro with NEC ND-4570A CDROM drive. Sound problems still exist, but as noted above, they are quickly on the way out to being solved. Today is a great success for for free software and a great way to start off the new year. Thank you to everyone for their support and effort!

[sergiez]

I just wanted to be the first to notify everyone that I have successfully booted from live cd out-of-the-box no special configuration with Sabayon Linux 3.25 (http://www.sabayonlinux.org) ( with backports of PATA drivers from the 2.6.20 kernel -- among other great and wonderful things ). I am running this on my Mac Pro with NEC ND-4570A CDROM drive. Sound problems still exist, but as noted above, they are quickly on the way out to being solved. Today is a great success for for free software and a great way to start off the new year. Thank you to everyone for their support and effort!

Great news!!

It is time to give Sabayone a chance, even if my Edgy is running great with the custom 2.1.19.1 kernel.

Thank´s daedius!!

[daedius]

Got sound working using the patch from the website http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.alsa.devel/42774 . Sound is still a little too soft =) and the headphones not working right. But I did notice it was louder than it has ever been. =) I mark this as a semi-success!

[SRS2]

Hi all,

Im thinking about buying a Mac Pro to use as a home / dev server:

- Install 64-bit linux
- Install VM ware Server
- Run Windows XP or 2003 Server, Solaris etc. as virtual machines

This means that I dont really need graphics, audio etc, only basic functionality:

- Software RAID
- Dual boot - OSX and Linux
- ReiserFS
- USB, Firewire

Anyone know if this setup might work?

[AntonioRubio]

i've got my mac pro running nicely under the 2.6.15-27-686 kernel. the on-board sound card doesn't work but i was able to get a USB soundcard working well (Creative Labs Audigy).

i worked off of http://bin-false.org/?p=17, making appropriate changes for hardware. if people are interested i'll post more details.

[zbittner]

I was able to get my Mac Pro to boot using the 6.10 live cds for both x86 and x86-64 (the only thing I had to do was type in the irqpoll command). There was more documentation on getting Intel Macs to boot using the 32 bit version, so I went with that, and was able to follow the directions, except when I pick the Linux partition in rEFIt, I get a blinking cursor, and then a message that says, "Unabe to load Operating System".

I had Mac OS X on the stock hard drive, and I was trying to run Linux and Windows on a second drive. I originally had Windows working through boot camp, but it stopped working. I got the same message from Windows that I did for Linux through rEFIt. Is this a problem with using two hard drives?

Anyways, I decided to put a Mac OS X boot partition on the second drive, and link the User stuff to my current user profile on the original drive. When I have time, I'll follow the triple boot instructions again, and see if I can get something working while triple booting from one hard drive.

I have no idea if my on-board sound card is working or not, but my USB speakers work fine.


I don't exactly know what I'm doing, so if someone who did could give me a few pointers, that would be greatly appreciated.

[sergiez]

i've got my mac pro running nicely under the 2.6.15-27-686 kernel. the on-board sound card doesn't work but i was able to get a USB soundcard working well (Creative Labs Audigy).

i worked off of http://bin-false.org/?p=17, making appropriate changes for hardware. if people are interested i'll post more details.

Hi Antonio,

Yes, it is posible to instal older 32 bits ubuntu version on the Mac Pro. You will have no sound and the DVD drive will run but not fine.

We were having problems instaling 64 bits linux versions. Now the problem is known. There was problems with the older IDE/ATAPI drivers. New kernel versions solve this problems, but they are still not available for the stable ubuntu distro. So latest version of sabayon linux includes the most recent kernels and they boot from the Live DVD without problems (no irqpoll). There are patches to make the internal Intel HDA audio card run under linux. Link to it is posted in previous messages.

[sergiez]

Hi all!

God news also from ubuntu! 64bits of Feisty Herd 2 is able to be installed in the Mac Pro without problems. Everythings looks to run fine except sound (it should be patched).

Well, things are getting better.

[incubus]

Hi all!

God news also from ubuntu! 64bits of Feisty Herd 2 is able to be installed in the Mac Pro without problems. Everythings looks to run fine except sound (it should be patched).

Well, things are getting better.

Hi sergiez,

Did you get everything else working? What about the touchpad, the right click and scrolling? Did you patch the ALSA drivers? I'm thinking about following the same track you pursued, installing Ubuntu 64bit.

Thanks,
incubus

[sergiez]

Hi incubus,

Note that the Mac Pro is a tower computer. It has not touchpad. There is no problems with the mighty mouse and the right click, but scrolling using the little ball is not running. Sound is working just downloading and installing the last alsa drivers.

But I think you ask for an Apple laptop, isn´t it? so you are in the wrong thread.

[sjatkins]

Please give the details of exactly how to bypass the cd by using dd, iso to dmg or whatever to boot from something other than cd. The above claim is not easy to parse. Thanks.

[ssergio]

Hi

I'm new to Linux in general.
I've made an install of Feisty Herd 4. I chose to install it on one of the 4 hard drives in my Mac Pro (2 HFS+, 1 NTFS XP, 1 dedicated to Linux). The problem is I don't know how to boot it since bootcamp doesn't see it as a bootable disk. What is the right way to do it ?

Thanks for your help

[sergiez]

Hi ssergio!

That's easy! Just reboot and keep pressed the key ALT.

[sjatkins]

I just wanted to be the first to notify everyone that I have successfully booted from live cd out-of-the-box no special configuration with Sabayon Linux 3.25 (http://www.sabayonlinux.org) ( with backports of PATA drivers from the 2.6.20 kernel -- among other great and wonderful things ). I am running this on my Mac Pro with NEC ND-4570A CDROM drive. Sound problems still exist, but as noted above, they are quickly on the way out to being solved. Today is a great success for for free software and a great way to start off the new year. Thank you to everyone for their support and effort!

That is pretty darn odd. I try installing the same thing on a Mac Pro that is brand new and it fails on mounting the cdrom just like all the other distros I have tried. I am beginning to wonder if Apple made it difficult to install linux on the hardware (directly) on purpose. I have been fighting with this for an outrageous amount of time now. I tried Ubuntu on a netboot from a USB stick but it did not want to deal with that either. Very odd and starting to really tick me off.

[ssergio]

sergiez

That's what I did, I pressed the Alt Key. I even tried rEFIt but it didn't work.
the Alt key didn't see my Linux hard drive and rEFIt sees several Linux bootable partitions but GRUB doesn't start. I must have done something wrong ... might the partitioning under OS X.
Now I have two HFS disks and two free disks. How to configure one of them to be able to install lInux on it and easily boot it. I've tried UBuntu, SLED and Fedora without sucess.

[sergiez]

sergiez

That's what I did, I pressed the Alt Key. I even tried rEFIt but it didn't work.
the Alt key didn't see my Linux hard drive and rEFIt sees several Linux bootable partitions but GRUB doesn't start. I must have done something wrong ... might the partitioning under OS X.
Now I have two HFS disks and two free disks. How to configure one of them to be able to install lInux on it and easily boot it. I've tried UBuntu, SLED and Fedora without sucess.

Well... first of all, did you install boot camp? I supose the answer is yes.
Did you finish the installation of Ubuntu Feisty without errors?
Did you sincronize the partion table with with rEFIt?
So you have 4 physical dsiks on your MacPro and you are trying to install ubuntu in the third one, isn´t it? When trying to boot from one of the penguined partitions with refit, which is the error message it tells yo? Something like "there is no operating system"? or it just hangs?

In my case, my ubuntu is installed in the first partition of the second physical disk. Even that, GRUB was not able to boot the linux system untill I modified it. I had to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and change the lines "root (1,0) to root (0,0) as if linux was in the first physical disk. Then it boots without problems.

I don´t know why it happends. I also have noted that disk0s0 or disk0s1 or disk1s0... is changing in Mac OSX as well, but no problems to boot OSX.

[sergiez]

That is pretty darn odd. I try installing the same thing on a Mac Pro that is brand new and it fails on mounting the cdrom just like all the other distros I have tried. I am beginning to wonder if Apple made it difficult to install linux on the hardware (directly) on purpose. I have been fighting with this for an outrageous amount of time now. I tried Ubuntu on a netboot from a USB stick but it did not want to deal with that either. Very odd and starting to really tick me off.

Did you try with the LiveCD of the Ubuntu Feisty Herd 5? It has also the kernel 2.6.20 and it is booting my Mac Pro without problems.

Try and tell us!!

[zbittner]

Has anybody been able to triple boot on their Mac Pros. I have the SONY optical drive with the default SONY firmware(the region free NEC firmware seemed to cause problems). I tried Edgy a few weeks ago, and whenever I installed it following MacBook/MacBook pro triple boot instructions (with lilo) it wouldn't boot, and it would break my Windows install.

Drive Bay 1:
232.6 GB HFS+ Partition (OS X Boot disk)
Drive Bay 2:
74 GB HFS+ Partition (Extra room for media stuff)
74.7 GB NTFS Partition (XP)

I currently have Windows installed (via bootcamp) on a partition on a second HDD, and I'd like to take 20 GB out of my Windows partition and install Ubuntu(Feisty), but I have a few questions.

1. Is this possible?
2. Does the new version of GRUB support the EFI?
3. Which drive should I have GRUB install on(The one I'm installing Linux on(HD1), or my OS X drive HD0)?
4. Should I just yank my OS X drive out before installing it?
5. Should I use the 32 bit version of Ubuntu, or is there adequate driver support for the AMD64 version?
6. I already have rEFIt installed on the drive I boot OS X from. Should I remove it and install it on my HFS+ partition on the drive I'm installing Linux on?

I'm a bit of a linux newbie, but after playing around with it in VMWare, I would like to try a real install.

If I need to wipe my Windows partition, I don't really care. All I use Windows for now is playing X3, and that is coming to Linux.


I have a pair of USB speakers (Harman/Kardon Soundsticks) and they work fine with the live CD. A lot of companies make USB headsets, so if there is a problem with the audio chipset drivers, the easiest thing to do seems to be to bypass it.

Edit: Will I still need to type in irqpoll to boot from a live cd?

[sergiez]

1. It is possible to triple boot using bootcamp.
2. No. Grub does not support EFI but... you are using bootcamp so... there is no problem. I have noted and improve in the Grub version of Feisty. It is not guving errors during installation anymore. I thought the problem before was with the MBR and GRID (or somthe like this) kind of partition tables. Even that, booting from boot is still giving some problems as I described few posts before this.
3. I thing it does not matter. I have it in the second one.
4. It is not necesary. But may be will be better if you do it.
5. For a linux newbie I think is better to use 32 bit versión. You will have more available software.
6. No. In fact, rEFIt is not needed. But if you have it installed, keep it like it is.

The problem with the sound looks like will be solved in next Feisty previews. But is good to know that are other solutions.

[zbittner]

I pulled my OS X drive, and booted using the Live CD. When I try resizing my NTFS partition in gparted, it fails, and it says check filesystem for errors. I rebooted my computer, and without the OSX drive in, it went right into Windows, and found problems with the filesystem on boot so it fixed them and restarted where I then held down C to boot back onto the live cd, and I tried resizing the partition again and got the same message. I'm going to shut down, put my main hard drive back in, and see if I can get stuff sorted out.

Edit: Problem solved (in a sense). I tried again, and gparted destroyed my windows partition while attempting to resize it. Now I have 2 working Fat32 partitions to work off of.

Edit 2: I couldn't get Linux to boot even after changing the menu file. Anyways, I'm back to having both drives formatted as HFS+ Drives.

Sergiez, did you have both Windows and Ubuntu installed, or just Ubuntu, and to get Ubuntu to work, did you just use Boot Camp to partition your drive and to start the installer(as if it was Windows)? Thanks for your help.

[sergiez]

zbittner: I have 3 OS in the Mac Pro (OSX, Windows and Ubuntu). Which is the Grub error message you get when booting?. I assume that you can see the message Bootin grub... if not just let me know.

You said that you change the lines in the menu.lst file of your installed system, so Ubuntu was correctly installed. But I don´t understand why finally you have 2 fat32 partitions. At least one of them must be typed as a linux partition (not FAT32). May be the problem is there. You can check this point with gparted and change the partition type using fdisk.

[ssergio]

Hi sergiez

Bootcamp is installed.
I've tried Feisty Herd 5. This time, the installation finished with an error trying to remove some sort of mouse package at 98%. Anyway, I installed rEFIt on one of my HFS hard drive, tried to boot the Linux HD partition and got a "no bootable partition" message.
What do you mean by synchronizing the partition table with rEFIt ? How do you do this ?

I then boot from the CD again and below is my /boot/grub/menu.lst file

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.20-9-generic
root (hd3,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-9-generic root=UUID=7388e9d9-6a70-4a46-b9d9-d59b29e87d4f ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-9-generic
quiet
savedefault

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.20-9-generic (recovery mode)
root (hd3,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-9-generic root=UUID=7388e9d9-6a70-4a46-b9d9-d59b29e87d4f ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-9-generic

title Ubuntu, memtest86+
root (hd3,0)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet

Thanks again for your help

[sergiez]

ssergio:
To sync the partion table with rEFIT you must acces to the partitioning tool in the refit menu. Then say yes to sync.
did you check if grub was installed during the installation?
The menu.lst file is the one placed at /boot/grub directory of the first partition on your 4th physical disk? If so try changing "root (hd3,0)" to "root (hd0,0)".

If grub was not installed try booting again from the LiveCD and from a terminal type:
- sudo mkdir /mnt/ubuntu
- sudo mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/ubuntu/
- sudo mount -t proc none /mnt/ubuntu/proc
- sudo mount -o bind /dev /mnt/ubuntu/dev
- chroot /mnt/ubuntu /bin/bash
-grub-install /dev/sda (may be /dev/sdd will work better to install grub on the mbr of the 4th disk. Other option is try with /dev/sdd0 to install it in the boot sector of the first partition of the 4th disk).

Then try to reboot and select the linux partition. If Grub boots but shows an error message (a message from grub, not from you Mac Bios/EFI) then change again your menu.lst file will be necesary.

I hope it will help.

[zbittner]

I just split a fat32 partition into 2 fat32 partitions.

I ended up getting rid of everything and starting over. I broke 60 GB off with bootcamp and installed Linux. I restarted but the cd didn't eject, so it restarted back to that so I chose boot from first hard drive, and the three options came up, but it wouldn't boot. I was able to edit the configuration, and saw the line Root(1,3). I changed it to Root(0,3) and it booted fine. I'm in Ubuntu now doing updates. After the updates finish, I'll reboot and see if I can boot from rEFIt to Ubuntu.

Can I just use gparted to create room for Windows?

Edit: I installed Beryl and the NVidia drivers, but it doesn't let me set my resolution to 1440x900, my panel's native resolution. My other question is about screen spanning. Is there an easy way to do this?

Edit2: After booting back up in OS X, and then trying to boot back into Linux, I get the "Missing Operating System" message right after selecting that drive to boot from. GRUB doesn't even begin to load. I went into rEFIt and according to it, the partition tables are already synced. I reinstalled GRUB, but that didn't do anything.

[sergiez]

zbittner: Well, at least you have booted once in ubuntu! You are in the right way!

1. Remember: You must check your menu.lst file every time you update the system. In case there is a Kernel uptade, ubuntu will reinstall grub and it will update the menu.lst file. Take this in account.

2. You can create fat32 partitions with gparted without problems. And resize them and a lot of things more.

3. May be you will need to modify the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file in order to achieve resolution of 1440x900. If you don´t find the way I will look for it later (now I don´t have any xorg.conf file to check it). I don´t know anything about screen spanning. Sorry.

4. Be sure that menu.lst file is correctly modified. Then try booting without rEFIt. Just press key ALT at boot time. It will show the bootcamp boot menu. If you have OSX, Windows and Linux installed it must show you 3 big hard drive icons. 2 of them will have the name "windows". One of them will be your Linux booting partition. Try it. In case bootcamp menu does not show you the big windows hard drives or only the windows installation, then is possible that the partition type where linux is installed is wrong. You can check this with Disc Utility in your OSX or with gparted in the ubuntu LiveCD. Try to be sure that this partition type is a Linux one.

[ssergio]

Hey Sergiez

Happy to report that I now have an Ubuntu bootable partition, no need to go through rEFIt to boot it. What is weird is I am able to boot it from the bootcamp menu, not from the rEFIt menu. Anyway, it does'nt matter after all.

Two more things :-) (no Jobsian announcement here)
The 7300 GT doesn't seem to be recognized (1024x768, very slow windows movement, ). Where can I get this driver ?
Is there a way to get the root under Ubuntu, I indeed might to i