PCBSD 9.1 Beta 1 x64 on a MacBook 4,1 for Kids

[malco_2001]

I do remember trying prior versions of PCBSD on this particular MacBook and having issues with booting past an ACPI kernel panic. Until today I have been without a fix.

As newer versions of Mac OS X where no longer supported on this laptop I wanted to retire it to use for my kids. Windows was not an option as I plan to never expose my kids to Windows. I just wanted to set up for this laptop my kids to run gcompris, tuxpaint, etc. Another one I like to compile is ktuberling (mr. potatohead) from kdegames.

I have also tried Ubuntu and Fedora 32 and 64 bit versions but both have had terrible issues with the trackpad on this laptop.

I also tried NetBSD, OpenBSD and both of those booted. However I found I didn’t really want to spent time learning those just yet for this purpose. I’ve already had my kids using PCBSD and they seem to feel comfortable with it. So I wanted to get that working. Also I have found that OS X isn’t really a great system for my kids. It’s especially lacking the learning games like gcompris which PCBSD has in appcafe. The games in Mac OS X’s app store just aren’t really there for this purpose. At least IMO.

Finally I found this bug which was exactly what I was experiencing trying to boot the dvd.

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/f...il/014575.html

I found that by disabling SMP I could at least get the installation DVD to boot. What this page doesn’t tell you is that you will have to escape to a loader prompt when booting the dvd and type

set kern.smp.disabled=1 and press enter
then type
boot and press enter

after this you can add
kern.smp.disabled=1 in loader.conf

I plan to try to compile a custom kernel with the blacklist option to see if that will enable both cores with this setting removed.

For now I was able to get the laptop working perfect. The trackpad is working great. The built in broadcom wireless doesn’t work which I may replace later if I can. For now I was able to get wireless to work by using an asus b/g usb adapter I had laying around. I will post again if I am able to fix the other two issues at a later date.

[malco_2001]

For 9.1 RC1 I've had to press option 5 at the bootloader to run X in vesa mode for the first run. After this first reboot the intel driver loads fine. Also compiling a custom kernel with the patch mentioned above will allow you to run with the second core on this macbook with no problems. I added a line to /usr/src/sys/amd64/amd64/machdep.c for my macbook model which is 4,1
strncmp(sysenv, "MacBook4,1", 10) == 0 ||
After adding the above line I built a new generic kernel by running the following commands
make buildkernel
make installkernel

This was also necessary to fix battery info
http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=33524
/boot/loader.conf
debug.acpi.max_tasks="128"

I also chose to install a new wireless card which was fully supported and worked out of the box in 9.1 RC1. I bought a Intel 4965AGN for approximately $12 on amazon and installed it using this guide. http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Installi...ort-Card/287/1

To enable the second mouse button the best solution for me has been to use the gnome 2 window manager and enable "trigger secondary click by holding down the primary button" under system / mouse preferences.