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

[jebus_beler]

I've really been trying to just use ubuntu on my MBA but besides the display flickering problem I'm also having intermittent but consistent resume issues. Every few resumes (i.e. 3-4 times) comes back to a frozen X display. On some occasions I can go back to the console and do a clean shutdown but last time I just had to hard reboot. This is really unfortunate as a similar issue got me off linux on my Macbook Pro. Has anyone else had suspend issues (I'm not sure why I've been cursed to hit every possible problem on this machine).

Looking at the logs I see the pm-suspend log never got past the line:

Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/99video resume suspend

looking at this script there seem to be a whole lot of quirk workarounds but I'm not sure which one of them is causing the problem. Any idea which it might be or how to go about debugging? Also, anyone else had a similar problem?

[3 squared]

Firstly (on my first post none the less) Thanks out to dfacto and the others on here for putting this information together. I would not even attempt to get this working if it was not for your hard work!

I have learned quite a bit reading this thread, lots about hardware and how the software interacts, as well as understanding the scripts that have been provided. I am very grateful.

Alas I have questions, they are the most basic and are going to make me sound like a noob but I am.

I downloaded the install cd for ubuntu 11.10, burned it to a cd and popped it in my super drive. I have refit installed and it noticed the ubuntu cd so it gave me a tux with a disc. Thats as far as I can get. I hit enter on the tux and its blank screen. I figured I was rushing things, but I left it on that blank screen 4 different times for more than an hour on end no luck. Clearly I am doing something wrong. Any Ideas? I figured I'd give the usb script a try but when I run it I get a few "bad substitution" errors.

Can someone point me in the right direction? I love ubuntu its been my desktop of choice for 4 years now, and I love the air its a nice piece of hardware but osx is just not my personal cup o tea. Air + Ubuntu = Win.

Thanks again! and Thanks in advance.

[hueythecat]

@Huey was there a reason you switched off mtrack? I might go back to it since not being able to click and drag is annoying.

It was an xorg-edgers thing - the bleeding edge build broke mtrack at least for me on the 4,1 11" the fix was to purge the ppa(then remove the xorf.conf entry).

But that was a little while ago now and may have changed.

It could be time to reload it and enable the xorg.conf to test. If I do I'll post how it goes

[jebus_beler]

3squared:

Its been a while since I booted from a cd so I don't remember the details but I do remember that as soon as I saw something (I think the man = keyboard logo on the bottom) I had to hit a key to manually set nomodeset else I could never get further on the bootup.

I think these were the instructions i used to try to install the first go round:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...9&postcount=36

Are you at least getting to choose a language? If not maybe your cd is faulty and you should download/burn a new one.

Btw if you can get the usb stick working I would recommend it. Its much faster.

Also, read the instructions in that link very carefully...rushing a step can cause you lots of pain in the future (i.e. installing grub on the wrong partition or not bothering to partition with partition manager _before_ loading the ubuntu install program).

Good luck!

[3 squared]

Well my cd must be bad I cant get to the purple screen... (i have downloaded and burned a few different ones assuming that was the problem).

I keep reading that there is a MAC specific iso to burn, yet on ubuntus site I only find a "How to burn iso's on a mac" for dummies.... Clearly I'm the dummy is there a mac specific iso?

[preacher37]

Well my cd must be bad I cant get to the purple screen... (i have downloaded and burned a few different ones assuming that was the problem).

I keep reading that there is a MAC specific iso to burn, yet on ubuntus site I only find a "How to burn iso's on a mac" for dummies.... Clearly I'm the dummy is there a mac specific iso?

Here you go: http://cdimages.ubuntu.com/releases/...-amd64+mac.iso

[michele.b]

I fixed my issue with the touchpad, I don't know which of the several things I did actually fixed it, but one that surely wasn't working is the repository for xf86-input-multitouch: there's no oneiric folder, so I changed the URL to natty in the update manager (which I don't like, I prefer synaptic but...).

Then I edited xorg.conf (enabling the mtrack driver) and took the kernel-patching step again from the wiki. Now I get gestures (and thumb-scrolling too), no three-finger windows moving but I don't mind.

Still the mouse and touchpad dialog has no multitouch-related configurations, though..

[3 squared]

Here you go: http://cdimages.ubuntu.com/releases/...-amd64+mac.iso

Thanks for that, out of curiosity how would one find that iso on the ubuntu site?

Also I burnt it at 8x, on a good disc with a good dvd burner, it will not get me to a purple screen.. it just sits at a blank screen after refit. So in order for me to get this bootable usb can anyone tell me why I was getting the "bad substution" errors?

EDIT;

Error was a typo in my script, my fault switching from messenger over and typing away without noticing. Got the usb drive working and its installed! Thanks so much guys!!!

[3 squared]

Well I have everything running, I ran the post install script, rebooted... Nothing changed with the resolution. So I ran it again rebooted and again nothing.

So I ran it separate from the terminal... again no change.

Any ideas? I have a 2011 macbookair 4,2... Seems everyone else just ran the install script and it worked.

[preacher37]

Well I have everything running, I ran the post install script, rebooted... Nothing changed with the resolution. So I ran it again rebooted and again nothing.

So I ran it separate from the terminal... again no change.

Any ideas? I have a 2011 macbookair 4,2... Seems everyone else just ran the install script and it worked.

Don't fret, I had the same problem. It seems that for some the old modules are used instead of the new ones, or the new ones are placed in the wrong directory. Whatever, I didn't really troubleshoot this, I just moved them to the correct dirs.

On the top of my head (don't have my MBA right now), you need to move the i915-module from the "extra" dir to the correct one. That is if you have the same issue as I did.

cd /lib/modules/´uname -r`
ls extra

One of the files in "extra" should be i915_something.ko
Find the correct location for that module and copy it there:

find . -name i915_something.ko
cp -i extra/i915_something.ko /path/from/find/

Update initramfs once more:

  update-initramfs -u

Reboot, hopefully that helped. You can do the same with bluetooth-module if it's not working either.