Installing Arch on a 2015 MacBookPro
These are my notes on what I did to get Arch running on a MacBookPro 11,5 (Mid-2015)
My setup has no swap, EFI boot, encrypted root (single partition)
Disclaimer
These are very destructive procedures. I bare no responsibility for any damages done to your system.
Boot into the arch install USB
Live System Wifi
It is worth mentioning that I first connected to my wifi network using the iwctl utility.
I actually didn’t make note of the commands there, but from memory I think they were:
station wlan0 connect MY_WIFI_SSID
station wlan0 show
Prep root password and SSH
My next step is to set a root password, enable root login in the sshd config, and start the sshd service.
Note: This unsafe SSH setup is for the live system only and does not propagate to the installed system.
Log in remotely and start setting up the system
I like to do this because all my notes are on a working, stable system. When I inevitably have to iterate, using remote access proves to be super useful.
First, let’s wipe our disk (you’ve been warned by the disclaimer!)
wipefs -a /dev/sda
Set up partitions
parted /dev/sda mklabel gpt
parted /dev/sda mkpart boot fat32 0% 1GB
parted /dev/sda set 1 esp on
parted /dev/sda mkpart luks 1GB 100%
Set up encryption
cryptsetup -y -v luksFormat /dev/sda2
cryptsetup open /dev/sda2 root
Optional: Fill up the disk space (takes a long time)
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/mapper/root bs=1M
Create rootFS and mount
mkfs.xfs /dev/mapper/root
mount /dev/mapper/root /mnt
Set up the EFI partition
mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1
mount --mkdir /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot
Basic bootstrap & fstab & chroot
pacstrap -K /mnt base linux linux-firmware
genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
arch-chroot /mnt
Can’t live without vim
pacman -Syu --noconfirm vim
Timezone, timesync
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Dublin /etc/localtime
hwclock --systohc
Locale
localectl set-locale LANG=en_US.UTF-8
echo "en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8" > /etc/locale.gen
locale-gen
# These two commands are just for the current session. May not be needed
unset LANG
source /etc/profile.d/locale.sh
Hostname
echo myhostname > /etc/hostname
initramfs modifications in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
We want the amdgpu driver to have precedence over radeon
HOOKS=(base udev autodetect microcode modconf kms keyboard keymap consolefont block encrypt filesystems fsck)
MODULES=(amdgpu radeon)
Ensure we are using the amdgpu with the appropriate family support
echo "options amdgpu si_support=1" > /etc/modprobe.d/amdgpu.conf
echo "options radeon si_support=0" > /etc/modprobe.d/radeon.conf
Install xfsprogs before we re-bake initramfs
pacman -Syu --noconfirm xfsprogs
mkinitcpio -P
Gnome & friends
pacman -Syu --noconfirm mesa libva-mesa-driver mesa-vdpau vulkan-radeon vulkan-intel
pacman -Syu --noconfirm gnome gnome-extra
Enable gdm
systemctl enable gdm
More software…
pacman -Syu --noconfirm less rsync firefox htop i2c-tools lm_sensors aspell hunspell hunspell-en_us hunspell-en_gb wget
Devel and AUR software
pacman -S --needed base-devel git
Audio software
pacman -Syu --noconfirm sudo networkmanager
pacman -Syu --noconfirm pipewire wireplumber alsa-utils
Enable networkmanager and sshd
systemctl enable NetworkManager
systemctl enable sshd
Enable gnome power control panel options
pacman -Syu power-profiles-daemon
systemctl enable power-profiles-daemon
Add my user
useradd -m myusername
passwd myusername
usermod -aG wheel myusername
Root password
passwd
Install and setup refind (needed for osx spoofing)
pacman -Syu --noconfirm refind
refind-install
Edit /boot/efi/EFI/refind/refind.conf
spoof_osx_version 10.11
List our encrypted root block device ID
ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid/ | grep sda2
# lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 May 5 15:01 EXAMPLE_UUID -> ../../sda2
Edit /boot/refind_linux.conf. Find “Boot with Standard options” (first entry). Add the following kernel options
Make sure to use the correct UUID as per what we got above
acpi_osi=Darwin acpi_backlight=native radeon.si_support=0 amdgpu.si_support=1 cryptdevice=UUID=EXAMPLE_UUID:root root=/dev/mapper/root rw add_efi_memmap
Disable suspend. We do this because currently there is a, what looks like, a kernel bug that crashes amdgpu on S3 suspend.
mkdir /etc/systemd/sleep.conf.d
vim /etc/systemd/sleep.conf.d/disable-suspend.conf
[Sleep]
AllowSuspend=no
AllowHibernation=no
AllowHybridSleep=no
AllowSuspendThenHibernate=no
Finally…
exit
umount -R /mnt
reboot
References
General Arch installation references
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_boot_process#Boot_loader
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/REFInd
- https://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/linux.html#easiest
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dm-crypt/Encrypting_an_entire_system#LUKS_on_a_partition
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/MacBookPro11,x
Arch sound references
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Advanced_Linux_Sound_Architecture
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PipeWire
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/WirePlumber
Power management references
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management/Suspend_and_hibernate
Graphics references
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/AMDGPU
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Intel_graphics
- Radeon M370X quirk
- MBP 11,5 suspend hang on arch forums
- MBP 11,5 suspend hang on gentoo forums
- Possible related MBP suspend hang bug on freedesktop gitlab
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