Slack on a Mac?

Benanzo · 05-05-2007, 12:08 AM

I've been following this thread for quite awhile now. I run Ubuntu Feisty on my MacBook Core Duo (not C2D or MB Pro). My system is fully working --wireless/isight/adv. keyboard/adv. touchpad/backlight/suspend-to-ram/hibernate(sorta) etc etc.

I have been running ubuntu as the sole OS for about 2 months, just using GRUB installed on the MBR block of the GPT. It boots fine after about 5 secs of EFI looking for a bootable disk. I really want to get Ubuntu to boot in a pure EFI/GPT environment. That is, without using GRUB on the protected MBR block and without any BIOS emulation business. My understanding is that I need an EFI bootloader, either GRUB2 or ELILO, as well as having an EFI-aware kernel to properly accept control and boot.

I have been reading on the Debian lists and it *seems* that the ia64 and even ia32 kernels have supported EFI for awhile. But, when I apt-get install elilo it pulls down a little utility called efibootmgr which is supposed to allow access to the EFI boot parameters. But, efibootmgr requires module efivars to be loaded. My kernel doesn't include efivars and nowhere have I been able to find it.

Am I understanding this right?? Should my ubuntu be able to boot directly from EFI via ELILO? I'm running the stock 2.6.20-15-generic that Ubuntu installed. I think there is a big conception that ELILO is for ia64 kernels only, since they apparently contain the necessary EFI code.

Any help or direction would be wonderful, thanks!

jong357 · 05-06-2007, 01:31 AM

never bothered looking into elilo efi stuff. There are a few posts on the mactel mailing lists about it tho..

http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/f...el-linux-users

Sorry I can't be of more help. The thread that's still on the first page has some good info... 'explanation of elilo' or something to that effect. Their server is being screwy lately so I'll post it from my inbox:

Quote:

Originally Posted by mactel-users

hi guys. i spent a bit of time looking into what elilo is, and have a
couple of questions.

1) why is rEFIt + lilo recommended in most how-to guides rather than
just using elilo?

2) what problems exist for using elilo on a MBP C2D?

3) are there any reasons to stick with rEFIt + lilo/grub rather than
switch to elilo?

thanks!
Nick

-----------------

Hello,

more precisely,
we can boot with EFI kernel,
but video needs BIOS data to works properly:
If I remember well, some information about it
can be fount at the rEFIt site.

hth,
Jerome
----------------------------------
> but video needs BIOS data to works properly:

Only if you want to use the proprietary ATI driver or the free VESA
driver. The framebuffer was working correctly for me (even if it was
slow and limited).

Bye,

Rousseau
------------------------------------
> Only if you want to use the proprietary ATI driver or the free VESA
> driver. The framebuffer was working correctly for me (even if it was
> slow and limited).

The Intel graphics driver requires a VESA BIOS, too. So, every Intel
Mac has only limited use without it (no hardware 3D, no smooth
fullscreen video etc.)

Regards,
Tino
-----------------------------------
> Only if you want to use the proprietary ATI driver or the free VESA
> driver. The framebuffer was working correctly for me (even if it was
> slow and limited).
>

On my macmini with a non efi kernel X stuff work fine,
with an efi kernel it no more true (I dot not care as I used it
as a number cruncher)

Jerome

Also, some more info concerning wireless.. madwifi is making more progress. wep and wpa should be working now..

svn checkout http://svn.madwifi.org/branches/madwifi-hal-0.9.30.13

I've gotten so used to having my cat5 cable plugged in that I haven't tried it yet...

Benanzo · 05-06-2007, 02:51 AM

thanks for the info, I'll keep snooping.