the thpinfo.com blogger archives (2007-2008)

Fixing Macbook problems

Today, I've set out to fix some problems and annoyances that I had with my MacBook (August 2006) for several months:

• Suspend-to-RAM not working
• CD-ROM drive works unreliably (hda: drive appears confused)
  
• Newer kernels don't boot ("NMI appears to be stuck (0->0)!")
• Random lock-ups when VT switching from Xorg to text console

Kernel command-line parameters
I figured some of these problems were related to having obsolete/old kernel command line parameters that were needed for older 2.6 kernels to get things working, but are not needed for recent kernels. I'm currently using Debian's stock 2.6.22-2-686 kernel. The "append=" line in my /etc/lilo.conf for the kernel was "noapic acpi=force irqpoll resume=/dev/sda4". Removing the "noapic" option fixed the "NMI appears to be stuck" problem. Additionally, removing the "irqpoll" option fixed the CD-ROM drive problem ("drive appears confused"). Now, I can boot newer (2.6.22) kernels and have a working CD-ROM drive again (previously, the CD-ROM drive spontaneously "detected" an inserted Audio CD when there really was no CD inserted).

Compiz Fusion/Beryl and the intel driver bug
I've been running Compiz Fusion (and previously Beryl) and it worked great, except that when VT switching to the text console, the whole Macbook locked up sometimes. This bug is described in bug #127101 on Launchpad.net. So, I have now disabled the whole Compiz Fusion stuff and things seem to be working fine now, I have not yet had a random lock-up and garbled screen since. Sure, Metacity is not as nice as Compiz Fusion, and some Compiz features are really useful (Scale plug-in and Expo plug-in among some others), but it's better to have reliable shutdown than some Desktop bling-bling. With this text VT switch bug fixed, I've tried Suspend-to-RAM, which also seems to work okay-ish now. That would make Linux (Debian) awesome on that Apple MacBook :)

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Thomas Perl (thp at this domain); jabber: thp@jabber.org