MacBookAir4,1 & MacBookAir4,2 (MBA 2011) support

[ipstacks]

Does the thunderbolt port work with Ubuntu/Linux?

EDIT: Yes, at some point anyway. http://linuxplumbersconf.org/2011/ocw/proposals/99

[dentifrice]

Does the thunderbolt port work with Ubuntu/Linux?

EDIT: Yes, at some point anyway. http://linuxplumbersconf.org/2011/ocw/proposals/99

There's a dedicated thread for that, with no more news unfortunately as of now: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1810273

[redil]

Hi Folks
I am considering to get a new macbook air to put ubuntu on it (we are a complete Linux shop) because I like the hardware. To help the decision I would like to run one of our applications as a benchmark on such a machine. So I wonder if someone would be willing to run this job for me on their ubuntu macbook air. The time it take is about one minute.
I could send a tar ball. and the its untaring and starting it on the command line.

any takers?


greetings

[dfacto]

Hi Folks
I am considering to get a new macbook air to put ubuntu on it (we are a complete Linux shop) because I like the hardware. To help the decision I would like to run one of our applications as a benchmark on such a machine. So I wonder if someone would be willing to run this job for me on their ubuntu macbook air. The time it take is about one minute.
I could send a tar ball. and the its untaring and starting it on the command line.

any takers?


greetings

Sorry but I don't think its a good idea to run untrusted code. You should probably post it for people to make sure its safe, if you are actually serious.

[redil]

Sorry but I don't think its a good idea to run untrusted code. You should probably post it for people to make sure its safe, if you are actually serious.

Yes, running untrusted code is generally speaking not a good idea. But I have written the code and know what it does.

But what do you mean by '... post it for people..'?

[ngativ]

Ok, any advance on this issue? Multitouch and video acceleration is all we need.

[dfacto]

nope; google "freedesktop hd 3000" and complain there

[dfacto]

So since it looks like a fix may come along slowly, I am now using VirtualBox and I am *very* happy with this setup.

I was able to make virtualbox use my existing Ubuntu partitions (both root and home) and can run at 1440x900 with 3D (although there are a few minor quirks). All of my pre-existing settings seem to work very nicely with virtualbox (once I remapped the host key to the right-alt).

It was a tad annoying to get both partitions to play nicely. This post proved very helpful (make sure to follow Steve Cheng's comments not the blogger's). At some point I will try to write-up a howto.

[rluble]

Yes, running untrusted code is generally speaking not a good idea. But I have written the code and know what it does.

But what do you mean by '... post it for people..'?

I know you trust your code, but why would anybody else?

[dfacto]

Here are the steps I took to get my Ubuntu partitions working in MacOS. This stop-gap measure gives me a nicely working Ubuntu on the Air which I will use until the Intel KMS bugs are sorted out. It is based largely on this blog post.

The following steps should be completed from MacOS.

1. Determine your partition information.
   

   $ diskutil list
   /dev/disk0
   #:                 TYPE NAME           SIZE      IDENTIFIER
   0: GUID_partition_scheme             *121.3 GB   disk0
   1:                  EFI               209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:            Apple_HFS Macintosh HD   32.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:           Apple_Boot Recovery HD   650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4: Microsoft Basic Data Linux Root     12.9 GB   disk0s4
   5:           Linux Swap                 6.4 GB   disk0s5
   6: Microsoft Basic Data Linux Home     69.1 GB   disk0s6

   For my Ubuntu setup I have root, swap, and home on partitions 4, 5, and 6. Partitions 1, 2, and 3 belong to MacOS.
   
   
2. Install ExtFS for Mac OS X 8.0. This allows you to have read/write access to the ext4 Linux partitions. It is not free but was the only driver I could find that has read/write support (it integrates seamlessly with MacOS and I think it worth the investment). The open source alternative ext4fuse doesn't seem to have write support.
   
   Note: this step may not be necessary--I did this before setting up VirtualBox so I don't know. It is definitely not necessary if your Ubuntu partitions are not ext4 (although they should be if you followed my set-up howto).
   
   Warning: Make sure to eject (unmount) the ext4 drives before using VirtualBox.
   
   
3. Install VirtualBox for OS X hosts.
   
   
4. Setup raw disk information.
   

   mkdir -p ~/VirtualBox\ VMs/Linux/
   cd ~/VirtualBox\ VMs/Linux/
   # set read/write access for the Linux related partitions
   sudo chown root:admin /dev/disk0s{4,5,6}
   sudo chmod g+rw /dev/disk0s{4,5,6}
   # copy the master boot record
   sudo dd if=/dev/disk0 of=gpt.vmdk bs=512 count=40
   # create a VirtualBox disk
   sudo VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename \
   Linux.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/disk0 -partitions 4 -mbr gpt.vmdk
   # restore owbership to $USER
   sudo chown $USER *.vmdk

   Note that in creating the vmdk, we only selected one of the partitions (in this case disk0s4, i.e., my root). We will correct this in the following two steps. We must follow this circuitous step as VirtualBox seems to only scan up to four partitions, hence additional partition information needs to be manually specified.
   
   
5. Collect partition data.
   

   $ sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0
       start       size  index  contents
           0          1         MBR
           1          1         Pri GPT header
           2         32         Pri GPT table
          34          6         
          40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328
      409640   62500000      2  GPT part - 48465300
    62909640    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74
    64179176       1048         
    64180224  135053312      6  GPT part - EBD0A0A2
   199233536   25163776      4  GPT part - EBD0A0A2
   224397312   12578816      5  GPT part - 0657FD6D
   236976128       2015         
   236978143         32         Sec GPT table
   236978175          1         Sec GPT header

6. Replace the "extent description" section of Linux.vmdk. I replaced my extent section with the following (which is based on the output of the previous step):
   

   # Extent description
   RW 40 FLAT "gpt.vmdk" 0
   RW 409600 ZERO
   RW 62500000 ZERO
   RW 1269536 ZERO
   RW 1048 ZERO
   RW 135053312 FLAT "/dev/disk0s6" 0
   RW 25163776 FLAT "/dev/disk0s4" 0
   RW 12578816 FLAT "/dev/disk0s5" 0
   RW 2015 ZERO
   RW 33 ZERO

   The second column corresponds to the size column of the gpt result. The first four rows of the gpt output are summed together (for a total of 40) as are the last two rows (for a total of 33). The order must be the same as that of gpt.
   
   
7. Set-up an Ubuntu VirtualBox session and select Linux.vmdk as a SATA drive. More details on setting up VirtualBox can be found in the manual.
   
   
8. After virtually booting Ubuntu I installed the VirtualBox 4.1.2 Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack and I also installed VBoxGuestAdditions.iso.

A word of caution: make sure to never select the MacOS partitions from inside GRUB (from inside VirtualBox). This would result in a double mount and would be a very bad thing. Ideally I would set the MBR to avoid this, but things work and I don't want to fiddle with it any further.

Also note, you will need to set the disk0s{4,5,6} read/write access after every MacOS reboot.