Testing On Macbook on enbug.org

Testing On Macbook on enbug.org

[Chris Murphy]

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re: http://grub.enbug.org/TestingOnMacbook
I am wondering who the author of this page is, and if it's possible to get a more clear step by step of how a Macbook Pro 4,1 – one of the testing configurations on that page – was configured to successfully boot Linux in EFI native mode. So far I have been unable to reproduce it based on the information provided on that page, and have found no other guides or resources indicating it's possible.

See Ben Skaggs take on this "I think you'll find the binary driver will also fail in this case with "NVRM: failed to copy vbios to system memory". Unless there's some other magic way of retrieving the VBIOS image on these machines, there's not a lot we can do."
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=493754#c12

An advantage of GRUB2 here is the ability to use loadbios. But I have not been successful at getting this to work as described.


Also see:
http://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=691609
Basically this problem blocks Live CD's from natively EFI booting a large class of EFI supporting hardware. But even if it's not possible to get this to work with Live CD, it would be nice if a clear step by step were documented with best practice to get this working after a e.g. text only installation (under EFI native booting) were performed.


Chris Murphy

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Re: Testing On Macbook on enbug.org

[Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko]

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On 31.03.2011 02:29, Chris Murphy wrote:
> re: http://grub.enbug.org/TestingOnMacbook
> I am wondering who the author of this page is, and if it's possible to
> get a more clear step by step of how a Macbook Pro 4,1 – one of the
> testing configurations on that page – was configured to successfully
> boot Linux in EFI native mode. So far I have been unable to reproduce
> it based on the information provided on that page, and have found no
> other guides or resources indicating it's possible.
>
From quick look on the page it seems that you're able to load Linux but
have trouble with graphical drivers. While some workarounds are possible
on GRUB level, it's not GRUB territory to fix those.
>
> An advantage of GRUB2 here is the ability to use loadbios. But I have
> not been successful at getting this to work as described.
>
loadbios is just a kludge. In perspective the settings currently
retrieved from 0xc000 (VGA BIOS) zone should be retrieved from PCI ROM,
using x86emu if necessary, or be in tables included in drivers.
Also note that for loadbios to work, you need a VGA BIOS dump obtained
while booted in *BIOS* mode.

-- 
Regards
Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko



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Re: Testing On Macbook on enbug.org

[KESHAV P.R.]

On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 05:59, Chris Murphy <bugzilla@colorremedies.com> wrote:
> re: http://grub.enbug.org/TestingOnMacbook
>
> I am wondering who the author of this page is, and if it's possible to get a
> more clear step by step of how a Macbook Pro 4,1 – one of the testing
> configurations on that page – was configured to successfully boot Linux in
> EFI native mode. So far I have been unable to reproduce it based on the
> information provided on that page, and have found no other guides or
> resources indicating it's possible.
> See Ben Skaggs take on this "I think you'll find the binary driver will also
> fail in this case with "NVRM: failed to copy vbios to system memory". Unless
> there's some other magic way of retrieving the VBIOS image on these
> machines, there's not a lot we can do."
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=493754#c12
> An advantage of GRUB2 here is the ability to use loadbios. But I have not
> been successful at getting this to work as described.
>

I do not know who started the page and wrote most of it, but i merged
http://grub.fsij.org/TestingOnEFI with
http://grub.fsij.org/TestingOnMacbook (since the latter had more info,
but the page itself is appplicable to both Apple and non-Apple
systems). Most of the troubleshooting part was written by
http://ubuntuforums.org/member.php?u=1121774 (nickname metatech). He
is active in http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=328 sub-forum.

You can try these instructions
http://www.rodsbooks.com/ubuntu-efi/index.html written by the author
of GPT fdisk (aka gdisk).

If loadbios does not work, you can try fakebios, although i cant help
you there since i have not used that option and i do not own a mac (i
did my testing in a proper UEFI 2.3 x86_64 firmware - non Apple
system).

> http://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=691609
> Basically this problem blocks Live CD's from natively EFI booting a large
> class of EFI supporting hardware. But even if it's not possible to get this
> to work with Live CD, it would be nice if a clear step by step were
> documented with best practice to get this working after a e.g. text only
> installation (under EFI native booting) were performed.
>
> Chris Murphy
> _______________________________________________
> Help-grub mailing list
> Help-grub@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-grub
>
>

Regards.

Keshav

Re: Testing On Macbook on enbug.org

[Chris Murphy]

On Mar 31, 2011, at 3:46 AM, KESHAV P.R. wrote:
> 
> I do not know who started the page and wrote most of it, but i merged
> http://grub.fsij.org/TestingOnEFI with
> http://grub.fsij.org/TestingOnMacbook (since the latter had more info,
> but the page itself is appplicable to both Apple and non-Apple
> systems). Most of the troubleshooting part was written by
> http://ubuntuforums.org/member.php?u=1121774 (nickname metatech). He
> is active in http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=328 sub-forum.

Something is lost because the Macbook Pro 4,1 is an explicitly mentioned test configuration and yet I can't get it to EFI boot with any of the information on the page.

Whether I use loadbios, fakebios, or delete that line entirely leaving only a linux and initrd line, I first get:

error: no suitable mode found
Booting however

This is not logged in dmesg or messages. I do not get this message if I use GRUB Legacy EFI. So it seems like a GRUB message. 

In all GRUB2 instances, with or without loadbios or fakebios, I get this in dmesg:

[    0.158510] [Firmware Bug]: ACPI: BIOS _OSI(Linux) query ignored

and in all cases: GRUB Legacy EFI, GRUB2 EFI with and without loadbios and/or fakebios I get:

[    5.690193] fb: conflicting fb hw usage nouveaufb vs EFI VGA - removing generic driver
[    5.757942] usb 3-1.1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3
[    6.028093] Console: switching to colour dummy device 80x25
[    6.047930] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Attempting to load BIOS image from PRAMIN
[    6.047944] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: ... BIOS signature not found
[    6.047948] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Attempting to load BIOS image from PROM
[    6.047958] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: ... BIOS signature not found
[    6.047962] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Attempting to load BIOS image from PCIROM
[    6.048060] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Invalid ROM contents
[    6.048104] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: ... BIOS signature not found
[    6.048107] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Attempting to load BIOS image from ACPI
[    6.048111] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: ... BIOS signature not found
[    6.048115] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: No valid BIOS image found

At which point the display console text has frozen and I can't see what I'm doing (text or graphics) even though the booting continues. So either the dd instructions to extract vbios.bin aren't valid for this machine. Or loadbios in GRUB2 isn't working. I don't see either fakebios or loadbios documented anywhere so I'm not sure I'm using them correctly.


> 
> You can try these instructions
> http://www.rodsbooks.com/ubuntu-efi/index.html written by the author
> of GPT fdisk (aka gdisk).

Yeah I'm able to boot fine, it's just 1/2 way through the screen update ends, and I'm flying blind. Nouveau is just not getting the right BIOS info to activate nvidea graphics on this hardware.


Chris Murphy

Re: Testing On Macbook on enbug.org

[Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko]

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On 01.04.2011 00:17, Chris Murphy wrote:
> error: no suitable mode found
> Booting however
>
>   
This means that you forgot to load efi_uga and/or efi_gop modules.

-- 
Regards
Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko



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