Installation process follows that outlined in Arch Installation Guide, with the following additions/exceptions.
Boot Arch install ISO CD by holding ALT key on poweron. Select EFI boot (other choice is Windows which gives MBR boot). Be prepared to wait for a few minutes until Arch starts.
Using the mac-uk keyboard map i.e. loadkeys mac-uk kills the
keyboard. No character prints what is inscribed on the key. This has been
reported a couple of times, but there seems to be no reaction/fix
available. I suspect this keymap is not for the Macbook Pro.
Best option for UK/International Macbook Pro keyboard seems to be to use the US keyboard layout.
The only keys not mapped correctly are (1) the section (§) key, which produces the grave character (`), (2) the grave key, which generates < and >, and (3) the £ key (shift 3), which generates a #.
I suggest a fix for this later.
Contents of /etc/vconsole.conf:
# Closest match for Macbook Pro keyboard in console mode KEYMAP=us
Decided to use btrfs (for a change).
Originally had /usr as a separate partition. This caused grub to
fail to find /sbin/init on reboot. There is a way of supporting a
/usr partition by configuration in mkinitcpio (see
/etcv/mkinitcpio.conf, HOOKS), but I decided to go with the flow and
just have a bigger root partition, forgetting /usr. Here's the
autogenerated /etc/fstab.
# Static information about the filesystems. # See fstab(5) for details. # <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass> # /dev/sda3 UUID=893ad534-7875-4723-be91-1f9d36e6e20b / btrfs rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache,subvolid=5,subvol=/ 0 0 # /dev/sda1 UUID=0299-F54F /boot/efi vfat rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro 0 2 # /dev/sda4 UUID=a7843e2d-b3fc-4054-b7e1-411143f1fdf4 /var btrfs rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache,subvolid=5,subvol=/ 0 0 # /dev/sda5 /dev/sda5 /tmp btrfs rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache,subvolid=5,subvol=/ 0 0 # /dev/sda6 UUID=6174874f-47b2-4769-89ff-ccbc4f4505b7 /home btrfs rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache,subvolid=5,subvol=/ 0 0 # /dev/sda2 UUID=d58ddbd7-6d69-4062-8553-7e25841c5d5d none swap defaults 0 0
| Device | Mount Point | Size |
|---|---|---|
| /dev/sda1 | EFI System | 256MB |
| /dev/sda2 | Swap | 8GB |
| /dev/sda3 | Root | 30GB |
| /dev/sda4 | var | 10GB |
| /dev/sda5 | tmp | 2GB |
| /dev/sda6 | home | 172GB (the rest) |
When using pacstrap, add the following packages, in addition to base, linux and linux-firmware:
grub efibootmgr mg btrfs-progs man-db man-pages texinfo iwd binutils fakeroot b43-fwcutter wget iwd
NB b42-fwcutter, binutils and fakeroot are required to build the Wifi Broadcom firmware. See below.
After using arch-chroot to the /mnt
directory, and following the install guide, the next step can be
performed.
First, install grub on the boot partition:
# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=GRUB
Then create the grub configuration file:
# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
You can reboot now, or carry on with the next steps and then reboot.
The firmware for the Macbook Broadcom adapter can be downloaded from here. Use the "Download snapshot" on the left-hand menu.
This will download b42-firmware.tar.gz. Untar and cd
into the resulting directory. Then issue the command:
makepkg
If that works (it will download the firmware), the generated package can then be installed with:
pacman -U b43-firmware-6.30.163.46-1-any.pkg.tar.zst
By the way, there's more Arch Linux Mac stuff
First, enable the daemons:
systemctl enable systemd-networkd systemctl enable systemd-resolved
Then, create the configuration files.
/etc/systemd/network/20-wired.network
[Match] Name=enp0s10 [Network] DHCP=yes [DHCP] RouteMetric=10 UseDomains=yes
/etc/systemd/network/25-wireless.network
[Match] Name=wlan0 [Network] DHCP=yes [DHCP] RouteMetric=20 UseDomains=yes
Now the configuration files exist, start the daemons.
systemctl start systemd-networkd systemctl start systemd-resolved
This setup causes a DHCP IP address to be assigned to each network adapter. See below for a different way of handling the two adapters with bonding.
systemctl enable iwd systemctl start iwd
Control / set-up wireless with iwctl.
# iwctl [iwd]# station wlan0 connect <station_id>
If this doesn't work, scan for networks first:
[iwd]# station wlan0 scan
Note, this will not work if wlan0 is part of a bond (see below).
echo 220 > /sys/class/leds/smc::kbd_backlight/brightness
ip addr # shows interfaces with address ip link # shows network adapters ip link set 'device' [up | down]
# pacman -S lxde xorg xorg-xinit # Allow non-root users to run startx # chmod 4755 /usr/bin/startx $ echo "exec startlxde" >~/.initrc
pacman -S archlinux-wallpaper
Images are installed in /usr/share/backgrounds/archlinux.
Need to install nfs-utils.
The first mount after boot takes an age (maybe systemd related?):
[mark@albino:~]$ doas mount -t nfs opal:/home/mark /mnt Created symlink /run/systemd/system/remote-fs.target.wants/rpc-statd.service → /usr/lib/systemd/system/rpc-statd.service.
Subsequent mounts were fast.
After much investigation, to little effect, the slowdown was caused by:
systectl start rpc-statd
invoked when the mount command is issued. This took about 60
seconds to complete. Starting /usr/sbin/rpc-statd
manually was fast, as was a subsquent mount command. I could not
figure out the real problem, but added an [Install]
section to the
/usr/lib/systemd/system/rpc-statd.service file:
[Install] Wantedby=multi-user.target
and then enabled with
# systemctl daemon-reload
This meant I could start rpc-statd.service at boot
time. Doing this doesn't cause any boot delay, as far as I can tell.
After some more investigation, the rpc-statd hang was actually caused by sm-notify (/usr/lib/systemd/system/rpc-statd-notify.service), which is required by the rpc-statd.service. The sm-notify hang occurs when the wired ethernet is disconnected. If the Match name in 20-wired.network is changed to something that will not match, the hang does not occur. Caused by systemd-networkd trying to get a DHCP address on the wired network?
Running a bonded network (slaves wired and wireless) still has an approx 90s delay in mounting NFS.
If the wired ethernet is connected at boot, no delay in mounting.
The kludge I used above (making rpc-statd run at boot time) didn't help with a BOND.
Found this thread on askubuntu
forum. The answer is to edit
/usr/lib/systemd/system/systemd-networkd-wait-online.service,
remove the existing ExecStart= line and replace it with
the following lines:
ExecStart= ExecStart=/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-networkd-wait-online --ignore enp0s10
where enp0s10 is the wired ethernet interface. This
causes wait-online to succeed, irrespective of the state of the
wired adapter.
Could also try the --any switch (which waits until at
least one interface is online). This works and has the advantage of
not needing the interface name.
The use of a bond is a bit academic. If the laptop is mobile and must connect to other wifi points, then much manual editting is required. Easier just to leave unbonded and use the wireless adapter all the time.
For sound, install alsa-utils, pulseaudio, and pulseaudio-alsa.
Lxmusic doesn't want to play mp3 files (they disappear
as soon as you open them in lxaudio), so installed audacious. That
works fine.
Turns out lxmusic needs pacman -S libmad to play mp3 files.
pacman -Syu: updates package list and upgrades all
packages.
Aka pacman --sync --refresh --sysupgrade.
For a list of installed packages:
pacman -Qett.
Aka packman --query --explicit --unrequired
--unrequired
alsa-utils 1.2.4-2 archlinux-wallpaper 1.6.1-1 audacious 4.1-3 b43-firmware 6.30.163.46-1 b43-fwcutter 019-3 base 2-2 binutils 2.36.1-2 btrfs-progs 5.11.1-1 efibootmgr 17-2 emacs 27.2-1 fakeroot 1.25.3-2 firefox 88.0.1-1 gcc 10.2.0-6 gpicview 0.2.5-6 grub 2:2.04-10 iwd 1.14-1 libmad 0.15.1b-9 linux 5.12.1.arch1-1 linux-firmware 20210426.fa0efef-1 lxappearance 0.6.3-4 lxappearance-obconf 0.2.3-3 lxde-common 0.99.2-3 lxde-icon-theme 0.5.1-5 lxdm 0.5.3-7 lxhotkey 0.1.1-1 lxinput 0.3.5-3 lxlauncher 0.2.5-4 lxmusic 0.4.7-5 lxpanel 0.10.1-1 lxrandr 0.3.2-2 lxsession 1:0.5.5-1 lxtask 0.1.10-1 lxterminal 0.4.0-1 make 4.3-3 man-db 2.9.4-1 man-pages 5.11-1 mg 20210314-1 nfs-utils 2.5.3-1 ntfs-3g 2017.3.23-5 openbox 3.6.1-7 opendoas 6.8.1-3 openssh 8.6p1-1 pcmanfm 1.3.2-1 pulseaudio 14.2-3 pulseaudio-alsa 1:1.2.2-2 rpcbind 1.2.5-3 rsync 3.2.3-3 strace 5.12-1 texinfo 6.7-3 wget 1.21.1-1 xf86-video-vesa 2.5.0-1 xorg-bdftopcf 1.1-2 xorg-docs 1.7.1-3 xorg-font-util 1.3.2-2 xorg-fonts-100dpi 1.0.3-7 xorg-fonts-75dpi 1.0.3-7 xorg-iceauth 1.0.8-2 xorg-mkfontscale 1.2.1-2 xorg-server-devel 1.20.11-1 xorg-server-xephyr 1.20.11-1 xorg-server-xnest 1.20.11-1 xorg-server-xvfb 1.20.11-1 xorg-sessreg 1.1.2-2 xorg-smproxy 1.0.6-3 xorg-x11perf 1.6.1-2 xorg-xauth 1.1-2 xorg-xbacklight 1.2.3-2 xorg-xcmsdb 1.0.5-3 xorg-xcursorgen 1.0.7-2 xorg-xdpyinfo 1.3.2-4 xorg-xdriinfo 1.0.6-2 xorg-xev 1.2.4-1 xorg-xgamma 1.0.6-3 xorg-xhost 1.0.8-2 xorg-xinit 1.4.1-3 xorg-xinput 1.6.3-2 xorg-xkbevd 1.1.4-3 xorg-xkbutils 1.0.4-4 xorg-xkill 1.0.5-2 xorg-xlsatoms 1.1.3-2 xorg-xlsclients 1.1.4-2 xorg-xmodmap 1.0.10-2 xorg-xpr 1.0.5-2 xorg-xprop 1.2.5-1 xorg-xrdb 1.2.0-2 xorg-xrefresh 1.0.6-2 xorg-xset 1.2.4-2 xorg-xsetroot 1.1.2-2 xorg-xvinfo 1.1.4-2 xorg-xwayland 21.1.1-1 xorg-xwd 1.0.7-2 xorg-xwininfo 1.1.5-2 xorg-xwud 1.0.5-2 xscreensaver 6.00-2
To overcome the missing/transposed keys, I had to create a new
keyboard map file, based on the us.map file. Files are in this
location: /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty. The
following changes were made:
[mark&albino:~]$ diff -u us.map uk-macbook-pro.map
--- us.map 2021-05-15 14:44:08.311357071 +0100
+++ uk-macbook-pro.map 2021-05-15 14:45:32.094363649 +0100
&& -1,4 +1,4 &&
-# us.map
+# uk-macbook-pro.map
keymaps 0-2,4-6,8-9,12
alt_is_meta
include "qwerty-layout"
&& -10,8 +10,9 &&
keycode 1 = Escape
keycode 2 = one exclam
keycode 3 = two at at nul nul
-keycode 4 = three numbersign
+keycode 4 = three sterling
control keycode 4 = Escape
+ altgr keycode 4 = numbersign
keycode 5 = four dollar dollar Control_backslash
keycode 6 = five percent
control keycode 6 = Control_bracketright
&& -50,5 +51,7 &&
keycode 57 = space
control keycode 57 = nul
keycode 58 = Caps_Lock
-keycode 86 = less greater bar
+keycode 41 = section plusminus
+keycode 86 = grave tilde
keycode 97 = Control
Note the map file has to be gzipped before placing in the keymaps directory.
My first attempt (after much research) at getting the keyboard
working properly (i.e. what is printed is the same as the key is
labelled) led to this configuration file
(/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/00-keyboard.conf):
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "Generic Keyboard"
MatchIsKeyboard "on"
Driver "kbd"
Option "CoreKeyboard"
Option "XkbRules" "xorg"
Option "XkbLayout" "gb"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbVariant" "mac"
Option "XkbOptions" "lv3:rwin_switch"
EndSection
I believe the lv3:rwin_switch option emits the #hash;
symbol when the AltGR key (right-hand Alt alt key) is pressed with
the 3 key.
Everything seemed to work except the section and grave keys were
switched. I could find no options (e.g. Option XkbOptions
"apple:badmap") which would fix this. Then I found (even
worse) the arrow keys weren't being recognised.
Yet more research ...
Testing combinations keyboard setup is made easier by using
setxkbmap. For example, this is the closest I could
get to matching the keyboard:
setxkbmap -layout gb -variant mac
This xorg configuration is correct, apart from the § and
grave (`) keys being swapped. This can be fixed by modifing
/usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/gb:
[mark@albino:/usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols]$ diff -u gb~ gb
--- gb~ 2021-05-14 19:55:48.024452514 +0100
+++ gb 2021-05-15 14:22:28.911999295 +0100
&& -188,8 +188,8 &&
key <AE02> { [ 2, at, EuroSign ] };
key <AE03> { [ 3, sterling, numbersign ] };
- key <LSGT> { [ section, plusminus ] };
- key <TLDE> { [ grave, asciitilde ] };
+ key <TLDE> { [ section, plusminus ] };
+ key <LSGT> { [ grave, asciitilde ] };
include "level3(ralt_switch)"
include "level3(enter_switch)"
This vital change was found from this article.
Then I could create an X11 keyboard configuration file using
localectl:
doas localectl set-x11-keymap gb "" mac
This produces a /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/00-keyboard.conf
with the following contents:
# Written by systemd-localed(8), read by systemd-localed and Xorg. It's
# probably wise not to edit this file manually. Use localectl(1) to
# instruct systemd-localed to update it.
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "system-keyboard"
MatchIsKeyboard "on"
Option "XkbLayout" "gb"
Option "XkbVariant" "mac"
EndSection
This is a manual exercise; create a custom Palette, selecting the
appropriate Dracula colour for each of the standard LXTerminal
colours. Once configured, the setup is in
~/.config/lxde/lxterminal/lx-terminal.conf. This can be
copied into a new configuration, if necessary.
The one remaining problem is that on rsync'ing large datasets, the rsync process stalls after a period of time. Test case is copying around 60GB of mp3 files.
What's the cause? Could be the ethernet driver, the use of bonding, btrfs ... Hard to say.
First start: forcedeth. Possible fix has been implemented, but not
yet tested. Added these options to
/etc/modprobe.d/forcedeth.conf:
options forcedeth msix=0 msx=0
/etc/systemd/network/20-wired.network [Match] Name = enp0s31f6 [Network] DHCP=yes [DHCP] RouteMetric=10
On the Thinkpad T470, the FN-Space combination works to control the led brightness.
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/00-keyboard.conf:
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "system-keyboard"
MatchIsKeyboard "on"
Option "XkbLayout" "gb"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
EndSection
For Thinkpad T470 console keyboard, enter the following into
/etc/vconsole.conf:
KEYMAP=uk
Set via ACPI:
# echo 1515 /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness
Stalls a lot. Placed these options in
/etc/modprobe.d/iwlwifi.conf:
options iwlwifi power_save=0 options iwlmvm power_scheme=0 options iwlwifi 11n_disable=1 swcrypto=1
These options turn off power saving, use of 11n and software crypto (I think). Much more stable now.
