Macbook PRO installer freeze

jkim@,

Tried it without success. I really do not know what to do anymore. I'll try a little bit more, but just for the record, I never went to this much trouble installing FreeBSD before.

Thanks for your time.
 
ernie said:
Tried the 8.1-RELENG_8-20101202-JPSNAP CD on a new Mac Mini, it boots! However the installer can't find any hard drives to install on. This is the same problem the Linux kernels before 2.6.35 had, not talking to the MCP89 controller chip correctly. Unfortunately I don't know the specifics of the problem, or how the Linux kernel solved it.

I just took a look at the Linux patches. Basically, what they say is new MBP and Mac Mini cannot use MCP89 as a SATA controller. A workaround they found is adding a quirk entry in SATA driver to ignore this chipset completely, which lets them fall back to generic ATA device driver. There is an additional patch in the PR to force DMA mode but that's a minor performance issue. All I can say from the patches is that the firmware does not initialize the chipset properly. That also means only their proprietary device drivers can be used unless we reverse-engineer them or compare working PCs vs. broken Macs as NVIDIA does not provide any documentation for open source development.
 
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Reactions: rah
Greetings to all!

I just want to report that I also have that issue... I can boot the 8.2-PRERELEASE FreeBSD disk but the installer can't see the hard disk (I think it shows timeout when it is probing them).

I'd like to say that I'm at the developers disposal, should they have time to waste with this issue, to try different solutions to make it work. :p

Thank you!


(HW: Macbook Pro 7,1 - 2010)
(OS: OSX / Sabayon Linux)
 
Ok, I've been making some advancements...

I've made a patched version based on Jan 2011 8.2 snapshot and I was able to do the partitioning of the disc, altough it was not able do create the second disk label.
I'm going to fiddle a bit more with this issue and today or tomorrow I'll try to post some more news regarding this matter. As soon as I am able to install it on my MBP, I'll try to submit the patch. Honestly, I'm not that motivated to submit it because it is really too hacky for BSD...
 
Done.

I have it now installed on Apple hardware. It detects the disk and is able to do the partitioning and slicing :p

The wiki for Apple hw and FreeBSD still applies regarding the GTP mess afterwards.
 
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Reactions: rah
Sorry for not replying to your email, but I've been having a lot of work latelly. I'll try to have feedback for you between today and tomorrow.


DC
 
jkim@ said:
If you can test the following patch, please let me know the result.

http://people.freebsd.org/~jkim/apple_mcp89.diff

I am having the same problem as the original poster. I have lashed together an unholy combination of an 8.2-RC2 installer CD and an 8.2-RC2 "memstick" installer, the latter mutilated to the point where I can build a kernel.

Which kernel configuration would you suggest I build?

jkim@ said:
Also, I'd like to see [cmd=]pciconf -clv[/cmd] output.

Sure, please see: http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~de0u/pciconf-clv

Also... "As long as I have you on the line", what would be the best way to get help with the Broadcom BCM5764 wired Ethernet? The switch thinks the link has been negotiated ok, and FreeBSD declares the interface up, but every attempt to transmit results in a watchdog reset, the link goes down according to both FreeBSD and the switch, and then the sequence repeats.
 
jkim@ said:
If you can test the following patch, please let me know the result.

http://people.freebsd.org/~jkim/apple_mcp89.diff

I built a GENERIC kernel on my memstick. If I use the CD to boot into the loader and load the kernel and the mfsroot from the memstick, I can then see both the disk (ad4) and the DVD drive (acd0). There is a complaint about each that it is UDMA33 because the cabling is "non-ATA66" (which I guess SATA isn't going to qualify as?): http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~de0u/dmesg_UDMA33

Next I will re-partition the disk and try an actual install.
 
de0u said:
I built a GENERIC kernel on my memstick. If I use the CD to boot into the loader and load the kernel and the mfsroot from the memstick, I can then see both the disk (ad4) and the DVD drive (acd0). There is a complaint about each that it is UDMA33 because the cabling is "non-ATA66" (which I guess SATA isn't going to qualify as?): http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~de0u/dmesg_UDMA33

Next I will re-partition the disk and try an actual install.

Great. You can safely ignore the warning. Can you please try one more patch?

http://people.freebsd.org/~jkim/apple_mcp89_2.diff

This patch may not work at all but I want to make sure.
 
jkim@ said:
Great. You can safely ignore the warning. Can you please try one more patch?

http://people.freebsd.org/~jkim/apple_mcp89_2.diff

This patch may not work at all but I want to make sure.

Hi!! i've bought a newer white macbook (7,1) and actually I've tried several distributions (including 9.0). All my attempts failed (some distributions do not detect sata, others do not detect keyboard)... but I'm happy to know that there's a patch... jkim@ maybe also I can try the patch? Or it is only experimental with de0u??
 
ummon said:
Hello, I am trying to install FreeBSD 8.0 amd64 on my Intel Core 2 Duo Macbook Pro and was running into a problem.

When I boot the install CD, it starts printing hardware information and appears to freeze at:

There were some bug on 8.0 with (some) Apple Hardware. Why using an old version of FreeBSD? Try with 8.2.

I'm using a Macbook pro model 3,1 it works fine (but the installation was made using FreeBSD 7.X).

Edit oops, this is an old thread!
 
ElectrumRay said:
Hi!! i've bought a newer white macbook (7,1) and actually I've tried several distributions (including 9.0). All my attempts failed (some distributions do not detect sata, others do not detect keyboard)... but I'm happy to know that there's a patch... jkim@ maybe also I can try the patch? Or it is only experimental with de0u??

It is highly experimental but you can try, of course.
 
ElectrumRay said:
jkim@ maybe also I can try the patch? Or it is only experimental with de0u??

The first one worked for me, haven't had time to try the second one yet, so probably most useful if you try that one first, then fall back to the first patch if it doesn't work.

If you want I can upload tonight a 8.2-RC2 memstick image which I have mutilated by (a) replacing /boot/kernel with a kernel compiled with jkim's first patch and (b) re-partitioned so it is 2G instead of 1G, so there is room for a kernel source tree, /usr/obj, etc.

While I'm thinking of it, here are the directions for booting off of such a thing on this machine (firmware will not boot a BIOS-compatibility partition from a USB device, only hard disk or CD/DVD, neither of which will work for you if you're reading this thread):

  • Insert FreeBSD CD/DVD, restart, hold down "c" while the screen is black
  • Hit 6 for command prompt (ok to do this while it's still loading the default kernel)
  • [CMD="ok"]unload[/CMD]
  • [CMD="ok"]set currdev=disk1s0[/CMD] (Type "lsdev" first to make sure disk1 is the right one)
  • [CMD="ok"]load /boot/kernel/kernel[/CMD]
  • [CMD="ok"]load -t mfs_root /boot/mfsroot[/CMD] (the actual filename is /boot/mfsroot.gz, but you must not type the ".gz"!)
  • [CMD="ok"]lsmod[/CMD] Make sure you see "/boot/mfsroot (mfs_root, 0x400000)"
  • [CMD="ok"]boot -a[/CMD]
  • Type [CMD="mountroot>"]ufs:/dev/md0[/CMD] to run the installer or [CMD="mountroot>"]ufs:/dev/da1a[/CMD] for regular file system (e.g., kernel build)
 
Oh, that would be great! Sincerely, I've tried several times compile a custom kernel, but the memstick has no sources. It's a little complicated for somebody like me, that is introduced to FreeBSD. But fortunately between jkim@ and you fixed this bug.

Meanwhile I'm going to try patch the kernel myself. @deOu If it is uploaded, please tell me or post it. I haven't a connection internet but I could download from my school.

Thanks!
 
de0u said:
If you want I can upload tonight a 8.2-RC2 memstick image which I have mutilated by (a) replacing /boot/kernel with a kernel compiled with jkim's first patch and (b) re-partitioned so it is 2G instead of 1G, so there is room for a kernel source tree, /usr/obj, etc.

Yeah, please upload this I want to try it.
 
ElectrumRay said:
@deOu If it is uploaded, please tell me or post it.

I realized that the 2G SD card I was using had a previous life storing personal files, so while there is a file system on the second half the unallocated space may contain bits I'd rather not leak.

As an interim measure I have taken exactly the 8.2-RC2 amd64 "memstick" image and replaced /boot/kernel/* with the "patch 1" kernel I built. In theory this should work well enough for you to do an install (who knows, maybe instead it will destroy everything, including your OS X partition, so make sure you have everything backed up); it's available at http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~de0u/boot.html.

I see 8.2-RC3 is out, so presumably I should "start over" with that and apply jkim's second patch. Not tonight, though.
 
NuLL3rr0r said:
Hi jkim@,

I have a MacBook Pro 4.1 and I have this problem http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=22083 with 8.2 Release while 8.1 Release works fine.

Is this because of this changes you mentioned above?

Which one? "8.0/8.1 freeze on Mac" problem was fixed in 8.2. I am still working on "MCP89 AHCI controller" issue although there is a workaround posted in this thread. However, this AHCI controller problem won't freeze system, i.e., it just can't find hard disk and times out, and only new models are affected. So, I guess your problem is something new. :-(
 
Thanks for reply and sorry for delay in responding, I was a little bit busy this week.

1. As I said I already had an 8.1 before upgrading to 8.2
(8.2 Discs freeze at boot time, I upgraded using freebsd-update, 8.2 kernel was installed but now cannot boot the system)

2. My MacBook Pro are using ICH8M and not NVIDIA chipsets.

It seems I'll have three solutions:
1. Stick with 8.1
2. Go for 9.0-Current
3. Back to bloody Gentoo/Funtoo

Well I must run some test on 9.0-Current before I decide to go with which one.

Thanks anyway.
 
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