Debian SID on MacBook Core 2 Duo

by Esteban

Be careful, this page is not finished yet.

I got a brand new MacBook Core 2 Duo 2 GHz, 115 GB hard drive, 1 GB RAM.

I wanted a dual boot machine with:

• 14 GB MacOSX partition (HSF+),
• 10 GB Debian SID partition (ext3),
• 90 GB shared data partition (HSF+).

I gave up the swap, as this kind of install seems to be limited to 4 primary partitions.

I got started booting on the MacOSX Tiger CDROM. I created my 3 HFS+ partitions (Debian's modified later).

Under MacOSX, I:

• downloaded and rEFIt, burned 32 bits (because of Flash and wireless)Debian CDROM,
• installed rEFIt (including ext3 drivers, missing in the standard install),
• used the enable-always.sh command:

# sudo /efi/refit/enable-always.sh

• rebooted.

What a nice rEFIt boot menu! Then I booted on Debian CDROM.

Nb: no need for Bootcamp!

Hello to my Debian welcome screen (sometime freezes, don't worry, just reboot), and let's start.

I erased my HSF+ Debian partition, and replaced it with ext3 where / is mounted.

Classical Debian install, with two particularities:

• I skipped GRUB installation, and choosed LILO (installed on sda).

• I skipped user creation, using root only for a while (in order to share a partition).

After reboot, I updated partitions tables with rEFIt tool.

Let's move to SID.

# vi /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free

# aptitude update
# aptitude dist-upgrade

I prefer the true VI:

# aptitude purge vim-tiny
# aptitude install vim

For ACPI support:

# aptitude install acpi-support

Audio:

# aptitude install alsa-utils

First, I created my main user that is “common” with OSX.

# adduser --uid 501 mainuser
# adduser mainuser <groups>

I added mainuser to the following groups: dialout, cdrom, audio, src, video, plugdev, powerdev.

The biggest partition may be used by both OSX and Debian. It is automaticaly mounted in OSX. To have the same in Debian, I added in:

# vi /etc/fstab

the following line:

/dev/sda4    /home/mainuser    hfsplus    defaults    0    0

My big data parition is now automatically mounted in my home directory at startup. No rights issue.

# aptitude install xserver-xorg-video-i810
# aptitude install x-window-system-core

Widescreen support:

# aptitude install 915resolution

GUI:

# aptitude install gnome-core gdm

In:

# vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf

I changed the following section:

Section "Input Device"
  Identifier  "Generic Keyboard"
  Driver  "kbd"
  Option  "CoreKeyboard"
  Option  "XkbdRules"  "xorg"
  Option  "XkbdModel"  "macintosh"
  Option  "XkbdLayout"  "fr"
EndSection

Then I choosed “MacBook” in Gnome's keyboards window.

Just installed and configured pommed, Light and sound keys (F1-F5) work like a charm.

NB: Pommed README file says:

Kernel version requirements:
- on the MacBook and MacBook Pro
  + kernel >= 2.6.19 at least
  + kernel >= 2.6.20 recommended

TBC

TBC

At this stage, I've got an unusable Linux laptop (mainly because of the lack of wireless support).

• http://wiki.debian.org/MacBook
• http://gentoo-wiki.com/Macbook
• http://www.mactel-linux.org/wiki/Dual_Booting
• http://zongo.be/wiki/MacBook/DebianEtch