In December 2012 I bought a new MacMini which identifies itself during startup like this
0.000000] DMI: Apple Inc. Macmini6,1/Mac-0xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, BIOS MM61.88Z.0106.B03.1211161202 11/16/2012
Since I had openSUSE installed on my six year old MacBookPro, I was eager to get openSUSE 12.2 installed on that machine. Especially since the new machine is ought to replace the old one.
I will use this thread to describe what I did to get the installation running, what is working so far and what isn’t
1.) I resized the hard drive using OS-X’s disk utility. Later I installed a second hard drive (SSD) using the special cable from OWC.
2.) I’m using reFind as a primary boot manager (replacing refit which seems to not actively beeing developed any longer)
3.) I put openSUSE 12.2 64bit on a usb stick following some instructions on the openSUSE web space. The installation went more or less smooth
4.) I didn’t get GRUB (grub, grub2, grub2-efi) successfully installed in a way, it would boot afterwards. I tried an awful lot of combinations. Selecting the boot entry would only lead to GRUB with a blinking curser
So I ended up with this solution:
Installing grub2 to the partition where / is located (e.G. - /dev/sdb3)
Installing Ubuntu 12.10 which installs a grub64.efi to /dev/sda1 (the EFI-Partition) /ubutnu
(the newest update to grub in opensuse now installs a grub.efi to /dev/sda1/opensuse but selecting this boot entry leads me to a grub prompt only )
Having started Ubuntu I used Boot Repair and https://answers.launchpad.net/grub-customizer/+faq/1397 to include the openSUSE entries into Ubuntu’s Grub-Menu. However, I didn’t managed to make the openSUSE menu item the default
5.) Using a Kernel 3.7.2 from the Kernel-standard repository from openSUSE
6.) To get networking at all, I started to use a usb-Ethernet dongle
Wireless: The chip included is a Broadcom B4331. (b43 - Linux Wireless) lspci -vnn -d 14e4: -
Installing b43-fwcutter
Running “/usr/sbin/install_bcm43xx_firmware” didn’t help since the script isn’t downloading the needed firmware:
b43-phy0 ERROR: Firmware file “b43/ucode29_mimo.fw” not found
This module is not to be found in /lib/firmware/b43
Patching the aforementioned script in line 10 and 11 helps:
File: /usr/sbin/install_bcm43xx_firmware
URL1=http://www.lwfinger.com/b43-firmware
- FILE1=broadcom-wl-5.10.144.3.tar.bz2
- FIRMWARE1=broadcom-wl-5.10.144.3/linux/wl_apsta.o
+ FILE1=broadcom-wl-5.100.138.tar.bz2
+ FIRMWARE1=broadcom-wl-5.100.138/linux/wl_apsta.o
Ethernet
So far I've found out that the chip is
01:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM57766 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe [14e4:1686] (rev 01)
Subsystem: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM57766 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe [14e4:1686]
I also found the device's ID in the module's source code:
/usr/src/linux-3.7.2-1/drivers/net/ethernet/broadcom/tg3.h
#define TG3PCI_DEVICE_TIGON3_57766 0x1686
lsmod tells me that tg3 is loaded. However. The port is not recognized at all. First I was mislead by this thread ([SOLVED] Macmini6,2 network driver not working - Ubuntu Forums](http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2078320)) since the module seems to build at the 3.7 kernel. Any input on this issue is highly appreaciated
VIDEO
lspci -nnv | grep VGA
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0166] (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
2D seems to work using the i915 driver
3D not sure yet; KDE 4.9 doesn’t let me enable some desktop effects
Attaching a monitor to the HDMI port using the hdmi-dvi dongle supplied is working.
Attaching a display port (DP) monitor using a miniDP (thunderbolt) to DP cable freezes the video completely after a short time
SOUND
working out of the box
SDCARD-READER
working (probably)
wasn’t previously.
01:00.1 SD Host controller [0805]: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM57765 Memory Card Reader [14e4:16bc] (rev 01) (prog-if 01)
Subsystem: Broadcom Corporation Device [14e4:0000]
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
Memory at a0420000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=64]
Capabilities: [48] Power Management version 3
Capabilities: [58] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
Capabilities: [ac] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
Capabilities: [150] Power Budgeting <?>
Capabilities: [160] Virtual Channel
Kernel driver in use: sdhci-pci
Booting from this slot isn’t working either.
I will improve this howtow over the time and would be happy to receive some hints especially on the ethernet and the grub2-efi issue.
I wanted to share my experiences made within the last weeks and do hope this is of some help for a few linux users.
Cheers
m.r.[/size]