grub2 EFI boot loader internal/external booting

[tschuliaen]

yap just figured that out myself

Well the patch did not change anything either. I think I'm giving up... It's probably best to wait some time until things mature

In the meantime I guess I have to continue using refit and leave a partition for mac os x... or is there any way to single boot using bios/mbr start without having to go through refit?

Thanks again metatech for your patience!

[metatechbe]

Well the patch did not change anything either. I think I'm giving up... It's probably best to wait some time until things mature

Indeed with EFI booting it's still unpredictable to tell whether it will work with a specific configuration or not…
You could try as a last attempt with different video drivers (for instance "nv" or "nouveau").

Regards,

metatech

[tschuliaen]

Indeed with EFI booting it's still unpredictable to tell whether it will work with a specific configuration or not…
You could try as a last attempt with different video drivers (for instance "nv" or "nouveau").

Regards,

metatech

Ok I didn't give up now and gave it another go
Fresh install of ubuntu 10.10, corrected the resolution in linux-source/drivers/video/efifb.c for my macbook 4,1 which is 1440x900 and compiled it. Then installed the nvidia drivers the easy-ubuntu way and they work of course using mbr boot!

trying again with grub-efi I get in the kern.log:

[   21.999903] Xorg:1098 conflicting memory types c0000000-c0546000 write-combining<->uncached-minus
[   21.999906] reserve_memtype failed 0xc0000000-0xc0546000, track write-combining, req write-combining

would this mean something?

The Xorg.log gives me this:

[    26.038] (II) NVIDIA(0): NVIDIA GPU GeForce 8600M GT (G84) at PCI:1:0:0 (GPU-0)
[    26.038] (--) NVIDIA(0): Memory: 524288 kBytes
[    26.038] (--) NVIDIA(0): VideoBIOS: 60.84.49.03.00
[    26.038] (II) NVIDIA(0): Detected PCI Express Link width: 16X
[    26.038] (--) NVIDIA(0): Interlaced video modes are supported on this GPU
[    26.038] (--) NVIDIA(0): Connected display device(s) on GeForce 8600M GT at PCI:1:0:0:
[    26.038] (--) NVIDIA(0):     Apple (DFP-0)
[    26.038] (--) NVIDIA(0): Apple (DFP-0): 330.0 MHz maximum pixel clock
[    26.038] (--) NVIDIA(0): Apple (DFP-0): Internal Dual Link LVDS
[    26.046] (WW) NVIDIA(0): Unable to find any of the requested display device "DFP-1" in
[    26.046] (WW) NVIDIA(0):     the list of available display devices "DFP-0".
[    26.053] (II) NVIDIA(0): Assigned Display Device: DFP-0
[    26.053] (==) NVIDIA(0): 
[    26.053] (==) NVIDIA(0): No modes were requested; the default mode "nvidia-auto-select"
[    26.053] (==) NVIDIA(0):     will be used as the requested mode.
[    26.053] (==) NVIDIA(0): 
[    26.053] (II) NVIDIA(0): Validated modes:
[    26.053] (II) NVIDIA(0):     "nvidia-auto-select"
[    26.053] (II) NVIDIA(0): Virtual screen size determined to be 1440 x 900
[    26.062] (--) NVIDIA(0): DPI set to (110, 108); computed from "UseEdidDpi" X config
[    26.062] (--) NVIDIA(0):     option
[    26.062] (==) NVIDIA(0): Enabling 32-bit ARGB GLX visuals.
[    26.062] (--) Depth 24 pixmap format is 32 bpp
[    26.069] (II) NVIDIA(0): Initialized GPU GART.
[    26.073] (II) NVIDIA(0): ACPI display change hotkey events enabled: the X server is new
[    26.073] (II) NVIDIA(0):     enough to receive ACPI display change hotkey events.
[    26.081] (II) NVIDIA(0): Setting mode "nvidia-auto-select"
[    26.407] (EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to allocate video memory
[    26.408] (EE) NVIDIA(0):  *** Aborting ***

thanks

[tschuliaen]

HURRRRRAAAAAA!
it works
all I had to do was put a nopat at the end:

menuentry "Linux (with bios dump)" {
set debug=fb
insmod efi_uga
 root=(hd0,3)
  search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set f8411c44-edb1-402c-a621-18ed0605d8b8
  loadbios /boot/vbios.bin /boot/int10.bin
  linux	/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35.7.1 root=/dev/sda3 video=efifb nopat
  initrd	/boot/initrd.img-2.6.35.7.1
}

sadly two things aren't yet perfect:

after grub I get a "no argument specified" and "press key to continue"

and brightness keys don't work

[tschuliaen]

HURRRRRAAAAAA!
it works
all I had to do was put a nopat at the end:

menuentry "Linux (with bios dump)" {
set debug=fb
insmod efi_uga
 root=(hd0,3)
  search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set f8411c44-edb1-402c-a621-18ed0605d8b8
  loadbios /boot/vbios.bin /boot/int10.bin
  linux	/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35.7.1 root=/dev/sda3 video=efifb nopat
  initrd	/boot/initrd.img-2.6.35.7.1
}

sadly two things aren't yet perfect:

after grub I get a "no argument specified" and "press key to continue"

and brightness keys don't work

Ok first I commented root=(hd0,3) so without this it works without "no argument specified"

and second I added the mactel ppa (https://launchpad.net/~mactel-suppor.../ppa/+packages)
and installed mbp-nvidia-bl-dkms and nvidia-bl-dkms (dunno which one did it... (either nvidia-bl-dkms or both)

so now I have the nice brightness keys working with the steps like in mac (not like standart ubuntu or windows)!

Well I should probably write all the steps down which I've done with my macbookpro 4,1 in a wiki... where should I do that?

cheers tschuliaen

[metatechbe]

all I had to do was put a nopat at the end:

tschuliaen, congratulations for your dedication on this problem...

I do not understand what you changed in your configuration between these 2 error messages :

Nov 20 18:33:39 joesmbp kernel: [ 37.878147] NVRM: RmInitAdapter failed! (0x30:0xffffffff:86

[   21.999903] Xorg:1098 conflicting memory types c0000000-c0546000 write-combining<->uncached-minus
[   21.999906] reserve_memtype failed 0xc0000000-0xc0546000, track write-combining, req write-combining

Were they both caused by the "Page Attribute Table" feature ?

Thanks,

metatech

[m3tro]

Hi, yesterday I got to install only Ubuntu on my Macbook. I booted the system "without BIOS dump" and always got an error saying:

error: no suitable mode found
booting however

And the system booted and worked perfectly. But today, I decided to try and boot it "with BIOS dump" just to see what happened. I got the message:

error: file not found
...press any key to continue...
error: no suitable mode found
booting however

But this time the screen stayed like that and didn't boot at all.
The problem is that now when I try to boot it "without BIOS dump" I get the same "no suitable mode, booting however" but it stays like that and doesn't boot either.

So now I have no way of booting my installation. How come I broke it by only trying "with BIOS dump"? How could I fix it? I really have no idea...

[metatechbe]

How come I broke it by only trying "with BIOS dump"? How could I fix it? I really have no idea...

Is it really the only configuration you changed ?
Did you keep the exact same kernel version/parameters, or file system it was installed on ?
Also, did you do a "really" cold reboot afterwards ? (power off, wait at least 15 seconds, then power on again)

metatech

[m3tro]

I didn't change nothing, really. Just tried that option, and it didn't boot ever again. But I guess I didn't try a cold reboot (I didn't know it existed) because I probably turned it on again before 15 seconds.

But nevermind, I booted again from a live usb key, changed to a completely new grub.cfg ant it works again. It gives me some new errors and the "booting however" but works without any trouble.

[tschuliaen]

Hi, yesterday I got to install only Ubuntu on my Macbook. I booted the system "without BIOS dump" and always got an error saying:

error: no suitable mode found
booting however

And the system booted and worked perfectly. But today, I decided to try and boot it "with BIOS dump" just to see what happened. I got the message:

error: file not found
...press any key to continue...
error: no suitable mode found
booting however

But this time the screen stayed like that and didn't boot at all.
The problem is that now when I try to boot it "without BIOS dump" I get the same "no suitable mode, booting however" but it stays like that and doesn't boot either.

So now I have no way of booting my installation. How come I broke it by only trying "with BIOS dump"? How could I fix it? I really have no idea...

Stupid question, but did you create the two boot images?