MacBook 8,3 Firmware update issues

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jcas1411
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MacBook 8,3 Firmware update issues

Post#1 by jcas1411 » 19 Oct 2011, 16:44

After updating macbook 8,3 with the latest firmware I can no longer boot porteus the traditional method from cd. Apple removed the boot from usb MSDOS disks, instead are only allowing GPT formatted usb disks so this removes booting only usb. I am able to work arround by booting the cd with a porteus bootable usb drive inserted. It will find the *.sgn on the usb and continue the boot process off of that disk instead of CD.

I think it is a problem with their new SATA driver but I may be wrong. When I look at the firmware changelog it seems it was to address a SATA speed bug. Can anyone help me get this booting completely from CD again or help confirm my guess is correct. Here is my dmesg output http://pastebin.com/AcQUa1h6. I have an lshw html formatted device list here from my build that is also experiencing the same issue. Copy and paste into an html doc. http://pastebin.com/VM3k7z3h

Thanks,
John

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Re: MacBook 8,3 Firmware update issues

Post#2 by fanthom » 20 Oct 2011, 17:38

hello jcas1411,

at what stage booting hangs when you are doing it from cd?
please post output of 'lspci -k' while booted with CD+usb combination.

BTW - Apple seems to be even worse than M$ in giving freedom of choice to the users :D
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Re: MacBook 8,3 Firmware update issues

Post#3 by jcas1411 » 02 Nov 2011, 12:53

Just got it back from apple. After running through apples tests I found bad memory, however still doesnt fix booting issue.

I have narrowed it down though, significantly.

I booted both machines, the one that only works with the CD+USB option the one that works with the CD only option, and diff'd the lshw reports. The only difference I can find is that one shows a DVD-R and the other does not. I booted both in Lion and found that the issue seems to be with the intel 6 series controller. Even though both have the same MatshitaDVDR-R UJ-8A8 dvd and version of HA13 connected to port 2 of the Intel 6 Series chipset, the one on the working laptop has the link speed set at 3Gigabit, and the one not working is at 6 Gigabit and both show negotiated at 1.5. Even though both show intel 6 series, could the link speed really cause an issue.

Looking in lshw output they are not shown specifically as Intel 6 series chipset so having issue finding the specific series number, macs are horrible to have to open to examine.

Thanks for any help,
John
I hate Macs.. damn non techs buying these pieces.

Posted after 2 minutes 50 seconds:
I will post the lspci -k output first thing in the morning. left the boxes on my desk.

Posted after 16 hours 34 minutes 54 seconds:
Here is the output from both the working macbook pro and the cd+usb boot macbook pro

CD only macbook
http://pastebin.com/Q0hMuUN8


CD+USB macbook
http://pastebin.com/PN2hPNHy

Thanks for any help!! :wall:

Posted after 1 minute 3 seconds:
to completely answer your question, it fails to locate the .sgn file is where it hangs without the CD and USB combination

Posted after 1 minute 45 seconds:
diffing the report output they are identical

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Re: MacBook 8,3 Firmware update issues

Post#4 by Hamza » 02 Nov 2011, 13:19

Looks, some drivers are missing in kernel..It loads some ones, but according your logs, they doesn't works.
Fanthom should be able to answer you with more explanation.
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Re: MacBook 8,3 Firmware update issues

Post#5 by fanthom » 02 Nov 2011, 14:56

Hello jcas1411,

chipset seems to be supported by 'ata_piix' driver. have no other ideas than a kernel update. please try rc1 of 64bit Porteus-1.1 as it has 3.1 kernel:
http://ponce.cc/porteus/x86_64/testing/ ... -v1.1-rc1/

if you still get a failure at "searching for *.sgn" stage you'll be dropped to a debug shell. please run

Code: Select all

ls /dev/sr*
and make sure your DVD is listed.
if yes then try to mount it manually:

Code: Select all

mkdir /tmp/cdrom
mount /dev/sr0 /tmp/cdrom
ls /tmp/cdrom
let me know about the result.
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Re: MacBook 8,3 Firmware update issues

Post#6 by jcas1411 » 04 Nov 2011, 20:19

Booted the latest version 1.1 and still no luck. No sr device found in dev directory either. Some reason I think the 'ata_piix' is not supporting the 6Gbit link, that is all I can figure.

latest 3.1 kernel, man im stumped. Mac bites.

Posted after 1 hour 58 minutes 49 seconds:
able to rescan pci bus and get the cdrom recognized. steps

Code: Select all

lspci -v
and find the Intel 6 controller address

00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 6 Series Chipset Family 4 port SATA IDE Controller
Kernel driver in use: ata_piix

Should not be IDE, should be sata. using ata_piix driver, which is bad (1-3Gbps limit according to ata_piix documentation).

patch pci controller from IDE to AHCI mode

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setpci -s 00:1f.2 0x90.w=0x0060
rescan PCI controller

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sh -c  'echo 1 > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000\:00\:1f.2/remove'
sh -c 'echo 1 > /sys/bus/pci/rescan'
cdrom now displays

Code: Select all

lspci -v 

00:1f.2 SATA interface: Intel Corporation 6 Series Chipset Family 4 port SATA AHCI Controller
Kernel driver in use: ahci
so now the question, how can i force ahci mode rather than ata_piix mode on boot. seems like if the ata_piix driver grabs the device during boot it will see the sda in pata_legacy mode but not the cdrom.

Posted after 18 minutes 26 seconds:
I completed this method after booting with the USB+CDROM workaround

before there was no device listed in /dev/sr*

afterwards there was /dev/sr0 and I could mount device and view contents.

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Re: MacBook 8,3 Firmware update issues

Post#7 by fanthom » 05 Nov 2011, 09:47

so now the question, how can i force ahci mode rather than ata_piix mode on boot.
i was hoping to find some kernel parameter to force ahci but couldn't find it on google.
according to Arch's Wiki:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AHCI
there should be an option in BIOS for switching between IDE/AHCI (i have it in my mobo) - not sure if this applies to MacBooks as they seems to have EFI....
I completed this method after booting with the USB+CDROM workaround
before there was no device listed in /dev/sr*
afterwards there was /dev/sr0 and I could mount device and view contents.
do you mean that 'setpci' command was enough to change the mode form IDE to AHCI permanently? (that would be a surprise to me)
are you able to boot from CDROM (only) on updated MacBook?

if not then i would customize initrd.xz:
a) add setpci utility to /bin folder and all required libs to /lib (eventually /usr/lib). you can track the libs by issuing
"ldd $(which setpci)" command
b) modify linuxrc and add 'setpci -s 00:1f.2 0x90.w=0x0060' and echo commands at the very beginning of linuxrc, before mdev starts (porteus-1.0) or devtmpfs is mounted (porteus-1.1)

should work :)

Cheers

EDIT:\\
crap.. - just realized that we are using uClibc inside initrd in Porteus-1.1.
better go with 1.0 first
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[SOLVED] Re: MacBook 8,3 Firmware update issues

Post#8 by jcas1411 » 08 Nov 2011, 14:20

if not then i would customize initrd.xz:
a) add setpci utility to /bin folder and all required libs to /lib (eventually /usr/lib). you can track the libs by issuing
"ldd $(which setpci)" command
b) modify linuxrc and add 'setpci -s 00:1f.2 0x90.w=0x0060' and echo commands at the very beginning of linuxrc, before mdev starts (porteus-1.0) or devtmpfs is mounted (porteus-1.1)
yeah, that is exactly what I was afraid I was going to do. Add a menu option to boot AHCI, however this would only work for the 8,3 macbook with this device mac address. Do you know a way to get all the disovered devices ids (hard disk, cdroms), maybe then I can make more generic?

I think the issue is that macbook efi does not expose that the device is AHCI. Found that even Windz is having the issue with it. Mac has no access to the EFI settings. Some people post that rFit is the solution to get it to expose AHCI capabilities, but I prefer your solution.

This trick worked only for the session, not persistant.

Thanks for the help,
John

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Re: MacBook 8,3 Firmware update issues

Post#9 by fanthom » 08 Nov 2011, 16:33

Do you know a way to get all the disovered devices ids (hard disk, cdroms), maybe then I can make more generic?
busybox in Porteus-1.1 has 'lspci' support built in but it will provide ID's numbers only.
to get ID's resolved with names you'll have to add standard slackware 'lspci' utility (with all libs) to initrd + /usr/share/pci.ids (resizing of initrd will probably be necessary).

i would go with semi-automatic solution:
a) create custom initrd-mac.xz with setpci and modfied linuxrc only
b) create extra menu in porteus.cfg which uses initrd-mac.xz instead of original initrd.xz
the only disadvantage is that you'll have to choose proper boot option while booting on Mac with updated firmware.

Cheers
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Re: MacBook 8,3 Firmware update issues

Post#10 by Hamza » 08 Nov 2011, 18:44

@fanthom,

Why not make a Porteus Operating System version for Mac Hardware/System ?
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Re: MacBook 8,3 Firmware update issues

Post#11 by fanthom » 08 Nov 2011, 19:10

Why not make a Porteus Operating System version for Mac Hardware/System ?
maintaining 64bit edition is enough for me.
feel free to do it :)
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Re: MacBook 8,3 Firmware update issues

Post#12 by Hamza » 08 Nov 2011, 19:44

Haven't Mac hardware to do this.. ;)
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Re: MacBook 8,3 Firmware update issues

Post#13 by jcas1411 » 08 Nov 2011, 20:32

I could but is it possible to have two initrd on the same system? Then I would just use a menu option to boot the mac, one disk works for all of my systems. What I would like to do is have someway to test whether the device supports AHCI and is not being reported correctly by the EFI or bios. So if I could loop through the detected block devices and attempt to force ahci, that would be great.

What I noticed through this testing is that some harddisk and cdroms that support AHCI are actually getting grabbed by ata_piix device and may or may not boot properly or if booted may not support additional features like 6Gbps throughput (ata_piix devices are limited to 3Gbps but usually end up at 1.5). If I know that the device supports AHCI but is not being recognized then I could choose the menu option that would attempt to force AHCI on the device.

I do a lot of disk copying and speed is everything.

Posted after 2 minutes 43 seconds:
dang, posted while I was typing..lol

Posted after 7 minutes 22 seconds:
I can say no one wants to maintain a mac version release. Learn from my headaches.

Macs, even though the same firmware release, same PO will have different hardware and chipset.
One month they are using nvidia chipsets, the next ati, and then some random vendor I have never heard of.
You have to deal with an "custom" EFI, not the standard.
No access to any settings.
Diagnostic tools moved to an "online" only version. (wasnt fun testing bad memory)
15" and 17" are completely different models, more than just a screen.
very limited documentation of what model has what.

Need I go on...
:wall:

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