MBA 11" 2012 with 12.04

[eee.c]

Got the newest Macbook Air 11" with 8gb memory and wanted to report my results.

tl;dr It is possible to install, though there are at least a few things not working.

The biggest hurdle that I encountered was the install CD halting with:

kernel panic not syncing timer doesn't work through interrupt-remapped io-apic

I was able to work around by adding "nointremap" to the boot options. From what I've read about that option, it is not a good thing to use, but it allowed the install CD to work (manually edited the boot options) and it allows the OS to boot once installed.

That is, instead of:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 resume=/dev/sda5"

I am using:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nointremap i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 resume=/dev/sda5"

I have a superdrive, so I cannot speak to USB install, but I would guess that it still works.

I ran through the post-install script manually and most of it worked. In particular, the updated wl network drivers still work for quick connectivity.

What is not working:

• applesmc. Modprobe-ing that results in an input-output error. I'm not sure how big a deal that is.
• Keyboard lights. I prefer them off so I have not investigated.
• Fn key to dim the screen (the brightness applet works). Oddly the fn key to brighten the screen does work.

What is working: suspend (mouse was messed up, but that could just be me), reboot, most keyboard functions, touchpad (with synaptics), wireless, camera, sounds.

Haven't tested yet: OSX partition access, microphone, fan control, extra power saving, external monitor (I don't use one).

All-in-all, I think this is going to be an excellent Ubuntu machine

[zaphod777]

How is battery life on it?

[poliva]

regarding the applesmc error, can you check if the dmi_system_id on your system matches the DMI_BOARD_VENDOR and DMI_PRODUCT_NAME set on the applesmc module? source is on linux/drivers/hwmon/applesmc.c

If unsure, please paste the output of this command:

 sudo dmidecode |egrep -i "(Product|Vendor)"

[eee.c]

$ sudo dmidecode |egrep -i "(Product|Vendor)"
	Vendor: Apple Inc.
	Product Name: MacBookAir5,1
	Product Name: Mac-66F35F19FE2A0D05

[poliva]

should be ok, it's a different problem then. Can you post the output when modprobing the module? I'd suggest adding printk's in the module and re-compile it to see how far it reaches, and where/why it fails.

[aviromanoff]

Hah, I was just Googling around and found this after commenting on a bug report for MBA not being supported with Lightum.

So I'll link to my comment there, which has the (fail) output from applesmc. https://github.com/poliva/lightum/is...omment-6445369

I don't know much about kernel hacking, but it seems to me like the API to interface with the SMC needs some updating for the new MBAs (I've got a 13'' 5,2 model).

[poliva]

@aviromanoff: thanks for the output, the applesmc module source is here: http://x90.es/applesmc from the log you posted it looks like it's failing at applesmc_init() because read_smc() doesn't work (the key values are clearly wrong).

You will get more verbose information from /var/log/kern.log (because the module uses pr_info() which is not logged on dmesg). If possible, please run the following using two separate terminals:

CONSOLE1: sudo rmmod applesmc
CONSOLE2: tail -n 0 -f /var/log/kern.log
CONSOLE1: sudo modprobe applesmc
CONSOLE2: hit Ctrl+C

When done, please paste the output of kern.log.

[aviromanoff]

Thanks for the explanation & detailed instructions. I've actually just upgraded to Mountain Lion (and successfully borked my Linux install in the process), so it'll be an hour or so before I can get that output.

EDIT: Wow, one hour on the nose.

CONSOLE1: http://paste.ubuntu.com/1050724/
CONSOLE2: http://paste.ubuntu.com/1050721/

Unfortunately it doesn't look to me like there's much more info in kern.log than in dmesg.

[poliva]

ok, no luck here either.

Let's start hacking the module source then

1. Install the required dependencies to build the modules:

sudo apt-get build-dep --no-install-recommends linux-image-$(uname -r)

2. Get the kernel source:

apt-get source linux-image-$(uname -r)

3. Edit applesmc.c to apply your changes:

cd linux-$(uname -r|cut -d- -f1)/drivers/hwmon
vim applesmc.c

I'd start by printing messages like this:

pr_warn("applesmc_whatever failed\n");

4. Compile the module:

make -C /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/build M=$(pwd) applesmc.ko

5. try the compiled module:

sudo insmod ./applesmc.ko

The messages you have inserted using pr_warn() will be printed in dmesg each time you insmod the module, start with the applesmc_init() function, it's like main() in a regular C program.

Good luck and let us know your progress! (I'm available via gtalk if you need any further help with this).

[poliva]

You might also want to have a look at this thread:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=924096