[arch-general] EFI-Support (Arch on a MacBook Pro)

[Scott Lawrence]

On Sun, 15 Apr 2012, Arvid Warnecke wrote:

> On Sat, Apr 14, 2012 at 04:19:13PM -0400, Scott Lawrence wrote:
>>>>>> What I have been wondering about now is, if it will be possible to
>>>>>> install Arch without rEFIt and the Mac OS X at all? I read a lot in the
>>>>>> wiki pages, but all I found was that if I install Arch only with EFI
>>>>>> support I will have to install GRUB2. And on the page about GRUB2 I
>>>>>> read, that I will have to bless GRUB2 from OS X...
>>>>>>
>>>>> It's my understanding that with linux 3.3, it's possible to get EFI
>>>>> to boot straight to linux. I don't know the specifics - I mean to
>>>>> give it a stab early this weekend. If I still have a working
>>>>> computer afterwords, I'll let you know what happens (provided nobody
>>>>> else interjects with something more useful).
>>>>>
>>>> Thanks, looking forward to it.
>>>>
>> My cd writer is apparently dead (gets to 60-80% and dies), so I'll
>> be contributing no useful information. Sorry
>>
> Too bad. Apple drive? Seems that the drives break really that often.

Yeah. Lasted over two years, which I understand is a good run. (And it still 
/sorta/ works, but I don't want to risk having an unbootable computer as the 
end of the semester nears.)

>
>> However, it seems that using an archboot[1] livecd[2] is the way to
>> go - a simple install should give you grub2 properly set up, and
>> from there it's just a matter of configuration.
>>
>> [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Archboot
>> [2] http://cosmos.cites.illinois.edu/pub/archlinux/iso/archboot/2012.01/
>>
> I stumbled upon the Archboot disks, but I haven't been sure if it would
> be an option, because I read somewhere that they are not officially
> supported.

The disks themselves aren't officially supported - but once you've done the 
installation, it's the same arch. As far as I can tell, they're the best thing 
available for EFI computers.

>
>> By the way, if you intend to go the dwm/xmonad route, I've created a
>> version of pommed (the hotkeys handler) with unnecessary
>> dbus/wmaker/gnome/ambient-light-sensor support torn out, along with
>> the bugs it had. pommed-light in AUR. The main version of pommed
>> tends to sit at 2% CPU usage because it's constantly polling the
>> ambient light sensor, and it can't tolerate dbus not being running.
>>
> I will take a look, sounds good.
>
>> Good luck.
>>
> Thanks!
>
>

-- 
Scott Lawrence

Linux jagadai 3.3.1-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue Apr 3 06:46:17 UTC 2012 x86_64 Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8700 @ 2.53GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux