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

[chaffin]

First of all, a big thanks to everyone who has worked on this, especially dfacto... the series of scripts you prepared have been a huge help.

I had the same problem as chaffin where the X server still wouldn't start. Long story short, the answer is already in fix-i915.sh. I had to manually copy the new i915.ko file from /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/extra/i915.ko to /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/i915.ko.

I couldn't remember reading that anywhere (and I've read all 29 pages ), but after copying the file over, running depmod and update-initramfs (also in the script), I rebooted to a very satisfying 1440x900 login screen.

Edit:

My apologies, here's the link to original .ko fix: Post 222

Thanks very much for this post! I too had lost this in the mass of information spread over 29 pages. After a clean install of oneiric and the post-install script, my MBA now runs Ubuntu at full 1440x900. I had to run fix-i915 once more after reboot, but everything seems to be working now.

Major thanks to dfacto, without whose script I would surely have foundered upon the rocks of Sandy Bridge. Good luck with wrapping everything up in time for graduation, and congratulations!

[dfacto]

Thanks Chaffin--glad everything is working now. Did you say you are using the 11" and if so, can you confirm trackpad, fn keys, and bluetooth are working?

[hueythecat]

Hey all.

I've successfully installed 11.04 on my mba 4,1
I chose /dev/sda4 as my boot partition for the "/" mount point

When I restart after install (second time now) - launching the tux option immediately after the tux splash I just get a black screen with the flashing cursor.

Any tips?

[morloch]

Do you happen to be on the 11"? I am curious if the patches make everything work for the 11".

Sorry, I've got the 13".

[chaffin]

Thanks Chaffin--glad everything is working now. Did you say you are using the 11" and if so, can you confirm trackpad, fn keys, and bluetooth are working?

I'm on the 13" too.

On an unrelated note, I've found excellent support for multitouch gestures in the package touchegg. The version found by apt-get isn't the most recent, but if you compile the 1.0 version from source, you can customize gestures to your heart's content. I disabled the mtrack driver and went back to the default by removing dfacto's xorg.conf --- then used a wrapper startup script to relaunch touchegg if it should fail, since there seem to be some errors in the current version that cause segfaulting. Here's the script I run on startup:

#toucheggwrapper
#!/bin/bash

if [ ! `pidof toucheggwrapper` ] ; then
while true
do
if [ ! `pidof touchegg` ] ; then
touchegg
fi
sleep 5
done
fi

Unity 3d has some annoying gestures enabled by default, and I haven't found any way to disable them, so for now I run unity 2d, and touchegg handles all my gestures, including two finger scrolling. If you miss compiz effects in unity 2d, you can create a startup script to have compiz steal the window manager when you log in.

[dfacto]

@chaffin Does it have inertial scrolling? That's what I'm missing the most (from the ten minute I suffered with Mac OS).

Also, there is an up-to-date PPA for this--you don't need to build anything.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:utouch-team/daily
sudo aptitude update -q2
sudo aptitude install touchegg

[hueythecat]

Hey all.

I've successfully installed 11.04 on my mba 4,1
I chose /dev/sda4 as my boot partition for the "/" mount point

When I restart after install (second time now) - launching the tux option immediately after the tux splash I just get a black screen with the flashing cursor.

Any tips?

Anyone else here using a MBA 11"?

I've had the same problem now twice again with the 11.10 daily as well

Install goes fine set grub boot to /dev/sda4

reboot - always two tux icons for some reason one hangs on the tux icon the other black screen flashing cursor...

[dfacto]

Are you using nomodeset when you boot?

[chaffin]

@chaffin Does it have inertial scrolling? That's what I'm missing the most (from the ten minute I suffered with Mac OS).

Also, there is an up-to-date PPA for this--you don't need to build anything.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:utouch-team/daily
sudo aptitude update -q2
sudo aptitude install touchegg

No kinetic scrolling; but you can configure all sorts of three finger gestures that are analogous to what you get with the four finger pinch in OSX.

Based on http://packages.ubuntu.com/source/oneiric/touchegg it looks like the version installed by aptitude is 0.3, not the 1.0 version available from the code project itself. I couldn't get the 0.3 version to work, but the 1.0 built with no problems.

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/...naptics.4.html indicates that there's a "coasting" feature in the synaptics driver which replicates the inerital scrolling of OSX, but installing that driver using aptitude in oneiric broke my unity 3d and 2d both and I couldn't fix it without a reinstall.

[hueythecat]

Are you using nomodeset when you boot?

Thanks for the reply

Yes the first time to do the install. Its phase two post install.

I don't get the opportunity as I never get to any screen where I can do this. i.e I'm not even getting to a Grub loader to press e or F6

Do the creation of all partitions pre-install ("/", "/home" & swap etc)
have to be made from OSX Disk Manager?