Problem With Ubuntu 11.04 on the Mac? Let's fix it!

[WillT23]

ps. thanks for this video. this, and all the comments will hopefully help.

[WillT23]

fuck ubuntu man. all i hear is faggots talking about this shit and it was trash, truly. it couldn't connect to wireless internet, continued to fail installing the drivers after over ten attempts and restarts, the trackpad didn't work, everything else barely half-worked and it crashed after installing. and to top it off if properly fucked up my mac efi and disk utility now just says warning. i don't want to turn it off. seriously if your shit bricks with an i7 mbp what the fuck will it work with.

[webticino]

I LOOOOVVEEE YOUUU!!! Thanks a lot!! I have had this problem for 3 months, I went to an apple shop and they said to me that I had to change my motherboard!! Obviously I didn't. Thanks again!

[tjasko1]

@webticino Glad to help! I was struggling with the issue for a while. Apple's engineers never even told me about it was possible to flash the firmware. I'm so glad I fixed it as well and could share it with others. Glad it worked for you as well. It's a pretty big problem... the main reason why I don't recommend Ubuntu on the Mac just yet.

[irishdrunkass]

tJasco: I had same problem, only after my little "every 4 boots" fiasco, I tried to delete and reinstall umbutu...now I can't get into Mac OS in my 5th boot anymore, every 4th I get the long beep, and every 3rd boot, my dvd drive initializes, but black screen all the time

[trix87]

@irishdrunkass I have the same problem, no boot at all. I'm planning to take out the hard disk, put it in another macbook, reinstall Mac OS X from scratch and use bless to prepare the firmware upgrade there. Then take out the hard disk, put it back in my macbook and hope that the firmware gets flashed on boot. I'll let you know how it goes!

[mrguldstrand]

Cheers mate! Really helped me!

[tjasko1]

@mrguldstrand Glad it helped you out! It helped me as well! That beeping was horridly annoying. :P

[FatalityTutorials]

Could I use the Mid-2009 13inch MacBook Pro's EFI on the Late 2009 Unibody White MacBook since it has the same exact hardware?

[fottutissimo]

@FatalityTutorials

I tried only with MBP 5,5 firmware and it worked.

[pzeud0nym]

@ps3customgamer I thought the same thing about mine (I'm running a MacBook Pro5,4). BUT! what you have to do is check your system profile. Go to About This Mac and look at the Hardware Overview in your System Report. It should tell you the name, model number, processor info, L2 cache, and so on. Look at the Boot ROM Version; chances are, it will be the same ROM version as another MacBook on that Apple Support page, so just download the one that matches. It worked for me.

[webslinger2011]

Probably my new macbook has no firmware update yet. So I'll be sticking with a usb instead. No sound support and internal hd's not detected. I get" cannot find intramnfs" when booting from a dvd. It's my first mac so I'm afraid to break the thing.Anyway, thanks for the info. See my vid ubuntu on mac.

[ps3customgamer]

Hey man I tried triple booting ubuntu on my macbook6,1

I now have the beeping bug, when I came to use the above method I realised my macbook is the only model which doesnt have a firmware update and I therefore cant reflash it.

any suggestions?

[edwinorc]

@ps3customgamer I have same problem except I have the only iMac model that doesn't have firmware there. So annoying. I'm looking for M101.00CC.B00

[senselessbattery]

I also have the late 2008 macbook with the same problem you describe. I'm going to try this over the weekend and if it works I owe you one.

[tjasko1]

@senselessbattery It should work just fine. :)

[senselessbattery]

@tjasko1 I finally got around to trying this a few days ago and it worked without any problem. Thank you so much. I visited your website to look for a "Donate" button but didn't find one. Let me know if I just happened to miss it.

Cheers

Timur

[tjasko1]

@senselessbattery You're welcome! And of course, glad the fixed worked for you as well. I've added the donate button back to my site (I typically have it disabled).

Thanks, Timur! Glad to have you Mac back in perfect working condition! I'm only wondering what really caused it in the first place.

[jrc2k]

Undocumented features, secret APIs, ... I really hate the apple ecosystem. But they do make the most beautiful hardware.

[tjasko1]

@jrc2k I can't but more than agree. They don't want people to use their secret APIs and undocumented features but themselves. I do hate it for that reason, but I love it because it is truly UNIX. Their hardware is very nice and the quality is superb.

[jrc2k]

@tjasko1 yeah, it's a true, certified UNIX. A clear advantage over windows, but as a Linux user, I could not care less. :-)

[AnHeroDesu]

Ok, nevermind my last comment. Reporting in with 100% success! :)

[tjasko1]

@AnHeroDesu Yeah! Congrats that it worked for you!

[AnHeroDesu]

Haha no way, this just happened to me last night. I have to reset the PRAM each boot now, even though I removed my Ubuntu partition and rEFIt. discussions.apple.com/message/­15375400#15375400

Exactly my problem. every 4th boot.

[tjasko1]

@AnHeroDesu Haha, wow! It was my problem too. Hopefully you can fix it just like I did. It's a major issue though, it really is. I'm surprised it's happening in the first place.

[AnHeroDesu]

@tjasko1 the only big issue for me.. having a 5,4 MBP, there is no firmware listed :/

[tjasko1]

@AnHeroDesu Do you see any firmware update utility in your utilities folder? If not, maybe you could get it fixed under warranty if you still are covered. :)

[AnHeroDesu]

@tjasko1 not by default. but from that downloads page, i tried the 1.7 (listed for 5,3 and 5,5 despite there being nothing there on 5,4). It seems to accept it when I double click it and go to update. Do you think I should proceed?

[tjasko1]

@AnHeroDesu You need to manually flash it, which would be very dangerous if it were the wrong firmware. I'd contact Apple to get the right firmware. They probably didn't need an EFI update for your model, which means there's no publicly available update. You might be able to extract it, but I'd talk to Apple about that first.

[AnHeroDesu]

@tjasko1 Apparently the 5,4 had the same release date as the 5,3 and 5,5... it says it's up-to-date with 1.7

"Your computer's firmware is up-to-date with version 1.7 of the MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update."

Where can I find what exact version I have currently installed?

If I'm correct, 5,5 was the 13" MBP, 5,4 was the 2.53 GHz 15" MBP, and 5,5 was the 2.66 or 2.8 GHz 15" MBP model. Knowing such, despite the 5,4 being unlisted on the firmware page, should I still contact Apple?

[tjasko1]

@AnHeroDesu If you're running 1.7, bit.ly (forward slash) bNnHq would be your firmware. Although it's a bit dangerous as there's no clear indication it's what you want. It sounds safe, but you decide which way to go. Personally, I wouldn't want to screw my EFI up (if you did you'd be a huge trouble) and would contact Apple to make sure.

[AnHeroDesu]

@tjasko1 Alright.. thanks so much! Just one final question: Since now I know the issue and will be re-partitioning and reinstalling 11.04, should I wait to flash the EFI firmware until after I've done all that? Cause I figure it'd just do the same thing to my EFI again.

[tjasko1]

@AnHeroDesu Anytime. :) - that's a good question. Personally, with the EFI issues right now, I'd hold off installing Ubuntu 11.04 on any Mac as of right now. If you did reinstall it, it would make sense to flash the EFI right after installing Ubuntu. Keep in mind that rEFIt might be wiped when doing that and you may need to reinstall it and add Ubuntu back in (using the partition editor). Hopefully nothing goes wrong in the process though. :)

[AnHeroDesu]

@tjasko1 Ok, I just read though that Ubuntu bug page, and it seems that people have done the one listed for the 5,3 with their 5,4 and it works! So I should be good without Apple Support.

[electrodacus]

Not sure an ubuntu install will be able to mess with your BIOS settings even if this happens a set to default of the settings should be more than enough.

Probably the problem was with the bootloader but not sure.

I will still not suggest instilling any Linux distribution on a laptop since the drivers especially for power save are quite bad so the computer will overheat and you will probably physically damage the Laptop.

The modern laptops have really bad cooling so that will also help.

[benjy288]

@electrodacus I have been using Linux on my laptop for years without any problems, and it runs at the same temp as it did when Windows was on it, if anything it probably runs cooler as there is none of the Windows bloat eating up CPU resources.

I have also experienced similar results on other laptops as well.

[electrodacus]

@benjy288 I agree with you that windows is using CPU resources without reasons but this is not the biggest problem but the video drivers on Linux and there will be no idle for GPU that is usually inside the north bridge on most laptops and the cooling is quite bad.

I also used Linux only at home in the last 6 years or so. And I will continue to use Linux.

I always measure the power consumption on any computer I have and on most of them if not all windows gets much better power consumption.

[tjasko1]

@electrodacus Video drivers are one issue... a very large issue in fact. It's getting better with all of the support, but then again, I'm thinking companies like NVidia and ATI should chip in and write some drivers.

That's interesting that Windows gets better power consumption... never really tested anything like that before.

[electrodacus]

@tjasko1 Both ATI and Nvidia have proprietary Linux drivers is probably what you use if you have one of this two they are not open source and you can not distribute that with any Linux distro i like flash and the drivers are quite good but not all Linux users know what to install.

But power consumption is not only related to CPU and GPU almost all other components have power saving futures like wireless, HDD and almost all other components.

Same for Android vs windows and iOS on power...

[tjasko1]

@electrodacus Mot new Linux users have no idea on what to install; I really wish Linux was a bit easier that way.

Wireless was one huge issue some years ago in Linux... but it does make sense, it is good that Windows does save power though. Never actually thought about that.

[tjasko1]

@benjy288 Second that, Windows eats up resources too much. UNIXis just ever so powerful.

[tjasko1]

@electrodacus Okay, first of all, Macs do not use a BIOS, they use something called an EFI. It is possible for software to change the EFI settings; in this case, GRUB probably changed it or something similar. But because no one is sure of what caused it, I cannot say what it is really. It is possible it's a bug on Apple's end too. You really don't need a bootloader with an EFI though.

Linux distributions are stable. I've been using them for around seven years and it's been stable ever since.

[electrodacus]

@tjasko1 I know EFI is a replacement for BIOS I also have on some computer for example Sony Vaio P but is not that different from BIOS. You still need a bootloader if you have more than one OS on a disk.

I also use only Linux and is great otherwise I will not used but they are far from perfect and the problem is the driver quality since they do not always get support from manufacturer so they reverse engineer most of them and even if they work they have problem especially with power saving.

[tjasko1]

@electrodacus OS X kind of integrates the bootloader with the EFI by telling the EFI where the startup volume is. Then it boots off that volume. You can install OSes like Windows on an EFI computer (without emulating the BIOS) and rely on the bootloader built into the EFI to load Windows. Pretty neat idea, but still fairly new.

Exactly, they do reverse engineer them. One great example are the "unrestricted" drivers available in most Linux distros. I really hope someday Linux is streamlined...

[electrodacus]

@tjasko1 Not sure how the Apple uses the EFI I'm not familiar still a reset to default settings should have fix the problem.

I hope Linux remains at the same 0.5% use since if it gets to much attention it will have more problems probably I will need to use an antivirus program like in windows that will use 30% of my resources :)

Then I will move to BSD or anything that will have less attention.

Ubuntu 11.04 had serious problem with power consumption not sure if is solved.

[AnHeroDesu]

@electrodacus haha yeah, when I first got into 11.04 it said I had 36 minutes remaining at 39%...

[n00kkin]

"You have to make sure GRUB gets on the right partition..."

Do people not get the concept of a) active partitions and b) the option for specifying which one to put GRUB on?

[tjasko1]

@n00kkin You'd be surprised... some people just "overlook" it and not really think about it. Besides, some people don't really know how an OS really works in the first place. They just install it with the recommended settings and hope it works.

[abnercus]

What settings do you use in Screenflow to export your videos and make them look so good?

[tjasko1]

@abnercus I just use the publish to YouTube feature and check the "HD" box. :)

[oliver18754]

1st comment!! Finally :)

[tjasko1]

@oliver18754 Ha, I know! I've been so busy lately... this summer should be much better. ;)