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

[berryman77]

The lowest I've gotten the power to under Linux is 7W and I haven't heard of anyone doing better on the Macbook Air. Under OSX, I can get it down to 4W.

I'm running Cinnamon (with compositing) on Ubuntu and all the latest stuff from xorg-edgers.

Here are my sensor readings for comparison.

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Physical id 0: +58.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 0: +59.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 1: +57.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)

applesmc-isa-0300
Adapter: ISA adapter
Exhaust : 2005 RPM (min = 2000 RPM)
TB0T: +34.8°C
TB1T: +34.8°C
TB2T: +31.5°C
TC0C: +57.5°C
TC0D: +56.8°C
TC0E: +57.8°C
TC0F: +59.5°C
TC0P: +53.0°C
TC1C: +56.0°C
TC2C: +56.0°C
TCGC: +56.0°C
TCSA: +56.0°C
TH0F: +249.0°C
TH0J: +250.0°C
TH0O: +250.0°C
TH0o: +24.0°C
THSP: +47.8°C
TM0P: +54.0°C
TPCD: +69.0°C
Ta0P: +57.8°C
Th1H: +38.0°C
Tm0P: +48.8°C
Tm1P: +55.5°C
Ts0P: +32.2°C

I have no idea what's drawing the extra power. I've tried shutting down the radios (wifi and bluetooth) and unloading as many modules as possible.

I think the ZenBook can get under 5W, but it has its own issues:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbook

Please post if you make any progress in this area. I get the impression that most people here are content with the higher power draw and heat or don't know that the hardware is capable of better power conservation. I'm willing to try new ideas.

[pindar]

Here are my sensor readings for comparison.

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Physical id 0: +58.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 0: +59.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 1: +57.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)

I have no idea what's drawing the extra power. I've tried shutting down the radios (wifi and bluetooth) and unloading as many modules as possible.

Please post if you make any progress in this area. I get the impression that most people here are content with the higher power draw and heat or don't know that the hardware is capable of better power conservation. I'm willing to try new ideas.

I was going to post that Ubuntu 12.10 handles the MBA better, but after one hour of light use, I get temperatures in the 90˚C range. I had hoped that the kernel 3.5 would make progress in this area, but alas... I'm not willing to risk frying my MBA, so I guess I will delete the linux partition.

[jonkue]

I installed Debian wheezy and Ubuntu 12.10 on my Macbookair 4,2.
On both systems I had temperature problems until I installed under Debian the kernel 3.5.5 from the experimental Repisitories (they removed it some days later from the repistory). In Ubuntu I tested 3.5.5, 3.6.0 and 3.6.3 and some days ago there was a update from 3.5.0.17 to 3.5.0.18.

With the standard kernel 3.5.0.17 I had some crashs. Nothing really chrashed, but I got a popup message. I thried the other kernels but didn't use them because of no wlan support.

Now I got an external USB-Wlanstick. So, I tested the Kernel 3.6.3 and the temperature is ok (watch a flash video 10 minutes ago):

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Physical id 0: +64.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 0: +61.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 1: +65.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)

applesmc-isa-0300
Adapter: ISA adapter
Exhaust : 2012 RPM (min = 2000 RPM)
TB0T: +36.5°C
TB1T: +36.5°C
TB2T: +33.8°C
TC0C: +63.2°C
TC0D: +61.0°C
TC0E: +65.5°C
TC0F: +66.5°C
TC0P: +56.5°C
TC1C: +64.0°C
TC2C: +64.0°C
TCGC: +63.0°C
TCSA: +54.0°C
TH0F: -5.5°C
TH0J: -6.0°C
TH0O: -6.0°C
THSP: +42.5°C
TM0P: +54.2°C
TPCD: +60.0°C
Ta0P: +51.0°C
Th1H: +38.2°C
Tm0P: +44.2°C
Tm1P: +51.2°C
Ts0P: +32.8°C
Ts0S: +40.0°C

This is the good news. But the bad is, that I don't get the internal wlan to work. In debian with kernel 3.5.5 it works.

Tried to reinstall the module (ignore the german words ) :

sudo apt-get install --reinstall bcmwl-kernel-source
....
Vorbereitung zum Ersetzen von bcmwl-kernel-source 5.100.82.112+bdcom-0ubuntu3 (durch .../bcmwl-kernel-source_5.100.82.112+bdcom-0ubuntu3_amd64.deb) ...
Removing all DKMS Modules
Done.
Ersatz für bcmwl-kernel-source wird entpackt ...
bcmwl-kernel-source (5.100.82.112+bdcom-0ubuntu3) wird eingerichtet ...
Loading new bcmwl-5.100.82.112+bdcom DKMS files...
Building only for 3.6.3-030603-generic
Building for architecture x86_64
Module build for the currently running kernel was skipped since the
kernel source for this kernel does not seem to be installed.
ERROR: Module b43 does not exist in /proc/modules
ERROR: Module b43legacy does not exist in /proc/modules
ERROR: Module ssb does not exist in /proc/modules
ERROR: Module bcm43xx does not exist in /proc/modules
ERROR: Module brcm80211 does not exist in /proc/modules
ERROR: Module brcmfmac does not exist in /proc/modules
ERROR: Module brcmsmac does not exist in /proc/modules
ERROR: Module bcma does not exist in /proc/modules
FATAL: Module wl not found.
update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated)
Trigger für initramfs-tools werden verarbeitet ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-3.6.3-030603-generic

Anybody with simular problem or with a hint?

[jonkue]

wifi now works. Had to install the packages:

• linux-headers-3.6.3-030603-generic_3.6.3-030603.201210211349_amd64.deb
• linux-headers-3.6.3-030603_3.6.3-030603.201210211349_all.deb

and reinstall:

• bcmwl-kernel-source

[pindar]

wifi now works. Had to install the packages:

• linux-headers-3.6.3-030603-generic_3.6.3-030603.201210211349_amd64.deb
• linux-headers-3.6.3-030603_3.6.3-030603.201210211349_all.deb

and reinstall:

• bcmwl-kernel-source

This sounds promising. Did you get the kernel and these debs from the kernel-mainline ppa?

[jonkue]

Yes, got them from here:
http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa...3.6.3-quantal/

downloaded them and installed with "open with" Softwarecenter. First installed the ...all.deb package, because the ...amd64.deb depends on the ...all.deb.

Maybe you can add the ppa to the apt. In the german documentation http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Mainline-Kernel , it is stated that you have to download the packages manually.

[pindar]

Maybe you can add the ppa to the apt. In the german documentation http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Mainline-Kernel , it is stated that you have to download the packages manually.

Thank you. Looks like the ppa is structured in a way that it cannot directly be added, but downloading manually and installing via dpkg worked, and first tests were good: max temperature around 91 degrees, but goes quickly down as soon as there's less load on the cpu. I'll have to look into it more thoroughly.