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

[audiohobbyist]

Has anybody been able to get the Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter to work on Ubuntu 12.04? I have a Macbook Air 4.2.

[cargath]

I'm trying to install Ubuntu 11.10 on my MBA (i need exactly this version, the software i'm going to work on for my diploma thesis doesn't work with a newer version of Ubuntu), but i can't get it to boot from a live USB drive.

I created a bootable USB drive using the app from penguintosh.com. It enables me to select the USB drive as my startup partition when restarting the Mac. With 12.04 everything seems to work fine. With 11.10, after a terminal screen telling me "booting Linux kernel, this may take a while" all i get is a black screen.

The installation guide says "When booting from the USB stick, it is necessary to edit the boot parameters to achieve a usable graphical login: press F6 at the initial menu and add 'nomodeset' before the final '--'. If you're comfortable with the command line, this step isn't necessary - simply press ctrl-alt-F1 to gain a login prompt."

I don't even know what initial menu is meant - the screen goes black before any menu appears.

[jonny]

I'm trying to install Ubuntu 11.10 on my MBA (i need exactly this version, the software i'm going to work on for my diploma thesis doesn't work with a newer version of Ubuntu), but i can't get it to boot from a live USB drive.

I created a bootable USB drive using the app from penguintosh.com. It enables me to select the USB drive as my startup partition when restarting the Mac. With 12.04 everything seems to work fine. With 11.10, after a terminal screen telling me "booting Linux kernel, this may take a while" all i get is a black screen.

The installation guide says "When booting from the USB stick, it is necessary to edit the boot parameters to achieve a usable graphical login: press F6 at the initial menu and add 'nomodeset' before the final '--'. If you're comfortable with the command line, this step isn't necessary - simply press ctrl-alt-F1 to gain a login prompt."

I don't even know what initial menu is meant - the screen goes black before any menu appears.

If you're seeing "booting Linux Kernel", you've gone too far. You need to stop things when you first see any sign of life (from memory, I think that a keyboard icon comes first) by pressing any key and then using one of the menu options to edit the boot command.

Alternatively, wait until you see the black screen and your USB stick has stopped flashing, and press ctrl-alt-f1 to log in using the command line.

[YannBuntu]

Hello
Has anyone managed to boot MacOS from GRUB? if yes, how?

[mr_manny]

Has anybody been able to get the Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter to work on Ubuntu 12.04? I have a Macbook Air 4.2.

If you need Ethernet, you might have better results with a USB adapter:

http://pcfolkcom.wordpress.com/2012/...x-workstation/

[thorsten-by]

Hi,

I've some problems with OS/X since I've Linux on a secound partition on my mba. I'd like to know if anybody else experienced such problems.

Linux works fine with partitions and fs but on OS/X I had some problems deleting partitions when I had to reinstall OS/X the last time. Now I wanted to upgrade to 10.8 but the OS/X installer says that It can't boot from "Macintosh HD". Unfortenately it won't tell me why it can't boot from this drive.

Does anybody know if this could have been caused by the repartitioning for linux? I dont think so because I created all partitions with the OS/X diskutility so that the linux installer only had to format them. But I cant figure out why the installer wont start.

[Marvin Stodolsky]

For my 2011 MacBookAir bought in May 2012, the Mac diskutils was used to shorten the Mac partition. rEFIt installation was routine.
Then Ubuntu Precise was installed from a USB stick, standard install. As reported by parted, the resultant partitions are:
------
Model: ATA APPLE SSD TS128C (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 121GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 20.5kB 210MB 210MB fat32 EFI system partition boot
2 210MB 80.2GB 80.0GB hfs+ Customer
3 80.2GB 80.8GB 650MB hfs+ Recovery HD
4 80.8GB 80.8GB 1000kB bios_grub
5 80.8GB 117GB 36.3GB ext4
6 117GB 121GB 4201MB linux-swap(v1)
-----
All devices seem to work OK, including the wireless using the wl.ko driver. The partition 4 was presumbably created to support the Ubuntu installation and (per below) is not essential.

The recent Mac upgrade from Lion to Mountain Lion was successful,
BUT it is 1st Essential to run EFI partition Inspector/Manager available under the bootup EFI choices, to synchronize GPT and MBR style partition records.

Apple next provided a firmware update. After installation Ubuntu did NOT boot, with an accompanying complaint from EFI about the partition 4. Also EFI would not attempt to synchronize the GPT and MBR style partition records. Using the Precise installation UBS stick to boot, the MAC "disk" Ubuntu installation seemed to be intact. It could be mounted and files read with cat.

The previously mentioned partition is not present on an older Nacbook. So crossing toes and fingers, gparted was used to delete this partition 4 from the MacBook. After which:
---------
Model: ATA APPLE SSD TS128C (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 121GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 20.5kB 210MB 210MB fat32 EFI system partition boot
2 210MB 80.2GB 80.0GB hfs+ Customer
3 80.2GB 80.8GB 650MB hfs+ Recovery HD
5 80.8GB 117GB 36.3GB ext4
6 117GB 121GB 4201MB linux-swap(v1)
------

Upon the following bootup managed by EFI, the partition inspector/manager did read and update the partition tables.

The 1st trial to boot Ubuntu was aborted by a poweroff, as it was taking inordicnately long. But subsequent Mac and Ubuntu boots have been trouble free.

Concerning the original Partition 4, I presume it had been partially overwritten, during the Mac firmware update, including an extension or replacement of the original Recovery partition 3.
Using gparted to examine the Mac "disk", there is now NO free space reported between partitions 3 & 5.

MarvS

PS I have checked to ascertain which drivers can be unloaded,
with the successful efforts summarized in the following script.

#!/bin/sh
sudo modprobe -r joydev
sudo modprobe -r wl
sudo modprobe -r uvcvideo
sudo modprobe -r applesmc
sudo /etc/init.d/networking stop
sudo modprobe -r rfcomm
sudo modprobe -r btusb
sudo modprobe -r bnep
sudo /etc/init.d/pulseaudio stop
sudo modprobe -r snd-hda-intel
sudo modprobe -r parport_pc
sudo modprobe -r ppdev
sudo modprobe -r snd_seq_midi
sudo modprobe -r mei
sudo modprobe -r lp
sudo avahi-daemon --kill
sudo /etc/init.d/cups stop
sudo /etc/init.d/resolvconf stop
modprobe -r michael_mic
modprobe -r arc4
modprobe -r snd_hda_codec_hdmi
modprobe -r snd_hda_codec_cirrus
/etc/init.d/pppd-dns stop
/etc/init.d/resolvconf stop
# end

[Dr.Paneas]

I'm trying to install Ubuntu 11.10 on my MBA (i need exactly this version, the software i'm going to work on for my diploma thesis doesn't work with a newer version of Ubuntu), but i can't get it to boot from a live USB drive.

I created a bootable USB drive using the app from penguintosh.com. It enables me to select the USB drive as my startup partition when restarting the Mac. With 12.04 everything seems to work fine. With 11.10, after a terminal screen telling me "booting Linux kernel, this may take a while" all i get is a black screen.

The installation guide says "When booting from the USB stick, it is necessary to edit the boot parameters to achieve a usable graphical login: press F6 at the initial menu and add 'nomodeset' before the final '--'. If you're comfortable with the command line, this step isn't necessary - simply press ctrl-alt-F1 to gain a login prompt."

I don't even know what initial menu is meant - the screen goes black before any menu appears.

What if you install 12 and then downgrade to 11 via apt-get ?

[Dr.Paneas]

I followed the wiki and I discovered that the script provided for USB Flash preparation has lot's of error and its also outdated. So I made some modifications:

#!/bin/bash

# Joshua V. Dillon
# jvdillon (a) gmail (.) com
#
# Script to make Mac bootable USB.
#
# Copyright (c) 2011 Joshua V Dillon
# All rights reserved. See end-of-file for license.

# Sun Dec  4 13:23:50 PST 2011 - 01_add-nomodeset-to-usb-iso.patch (poliva)
# Sun Dec  4 13:27:58 PST 2011 - 02_usb-iso-sanity-checks.patch (poliva)

# Modified by Panos Georgiadis at 2/8/2012
# Added Ubuntu 12.04 and fix some bugs in the code

# plug in USB drive and obtain device name:
# dmesg|tail
# unmount it if it was  mounted

 wget http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/12.04/release/ubuntu-12.04-desktop-amd64+mac.iso
 
# update these:
UBUNTUISO="/home/panos/Downloads/ubuntu-12.04-desktop-amd64+mac.iso"
USBDEV="/dev/sdb"
# NOTE: the USBDEV should not have any numbers in it. Replace 'X' with the
# appropriate LETTER ONLY.

# 0) sanity checks
mount | grep "${USBDEV}" | awk '{print $1}' | xargs -n1 sudo umount 
[ ! -f "${UBUNTUISO}" ] && \
    { echo >&2 "ERROR: Can't find ${UBUNTUISO}";exit 1; }

# 1) format the usb thumb drive
sudo mkfs.vfat "${USBDEV}" -I

# 2) mount the iso
sudo mkdir /media/iso
sudo mount -o loop "${UBUNTUISO}" /media/iso

# 3) mount the usb drive
sudo mkdir /media/external
sudo mount "${USBDEV}" /media/external

# 4) copy the iso contents to usb drive
sudo rsync -avPh --stats /media/iso/ /media/external/

# 5) prep for syslinux
sudo mv /media/external/isolinux /media/external/syslinux
sudo mv /media/external/syslinux/isolinux.cfg /media/external/syslinux/syslinux.cfg

# 6) add nomodeset to grub parameters (needed for 2011 MBA)
sudo sed -i "s/quiet splash/quiet splash nomodeset/g" /media/external/boot/grub/loopback.cfg
sudo sed -i "s/quiet splash/quiet splash nomodeset/g" /media/external/syslinux/txt.cfg

# 7) unmount
sudo umount /media/iso
sudo umount "${USBDEV}"

# 8) make disk bootable
sudo apt-get install syslinux mtools
sudo syslinux "${USBDEV}"

# 9) Remove folders
sudo rm -rf /media/external/
sudo rm -rf /media/iso

#  Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or
#  without modification, are permitted provided that the
#  following conditions are met:
#   * Redistributions of source code must retain the above
#     copyright notice, this list of conditions and the
#     following disclaimer.
#   * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above
#     copyright notice, this list of conditions and the
#     following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other
#     materials provided with the distribution.
#   * Neither the name of the author nor the names of its
#     contributors may be used to endorse or promote products
#     derived from this software without specific prior written
#     permission.
#  
#  THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY JOSHUA V DILLON ''AS IS'' AND
#  ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED
#  TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR
#  A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL JOSHUA
#  V DILLON BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL,
#  SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT
#  NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES;
#  LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
#  HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN
#  CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR
#  OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
#  SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. 

[Dr.Paneas]

Sorry for posting once again in a row.

Can you help me to make windows move using 3 fingers ? Have anyone managed this ?