[Mactel-linux-users] Problem activating the BIOS emulation on the MacBook Pro

[Michael K. <mi...@en...>]

Hi,

I'm a happy owner of a MacBook Pro and I have put Gentoo Linux on it but NO 
Windows (I even do not have a copy of it). I have updated the firmware to 
version 1.0.1 and I have used the diskutil GUI program from the installation 
dvd to repartition my harddisk into several partitions.

Disk geometry for /dev/sda: 0kB - 80GB
Disk label type: gpt
Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name                  Flags
1       20kB    210MB   210MB   fat16        EFI System Partition  boot
2       210MB   1149MB  940MB   linux-swap   Apple_UFS_Untitled_1
3       1149MB  1364MB  215MB   ext2         Apple_UFS_Untitled_2
4       1364MB  23GB    21GB    ext3         Apple_UFS_Untitled_3
5       23GB    64GB    41GB    ext3         Apple_UFS_Untitled_4
6       64GB    80GB    16GB    hfs+         Apple_HFS_Untitled_5

The problem is that the ATI driver doesn't work without BIOS and the firmware 
only activates the BIOS emulation if it finds not "old bootcode" (or whatever 
it is searching for). I cannot install grub-0.97 without having legacy MBR 
partition table but shouldn't it work with lilo, because lilo addresses the 
vmlinuz using sector addressing? Another possibility might be grub-1.93 
because it can use GPT partition tables. I have tried all but without 
success.

So, I think the root of all my problems is that I cannot activate the BIOS 
emulation and that I have more than 4 partitions (because MBR partition 
tables cannot have more than 4 primary partitions). This I can solve by using 
grub-1.93 or lilo(?). But it doesn't seem that the firmware recognizes this. 
Maybe I'm doing something wrong.
What do I have to do so that the firmware of my macbook pro recognizes the 
grub or lilo code and activates the BIOS emulation??? I have not yet 
installed lilo or grub on /dev/sda but on /dev/sda1 (the hidden fat 
partition) and on /dev/sda3 (/boot) and /dev/sda4 (/).

Please help me to activate the BIOS emulation mode.

Best Regards,
	Michael

btw: currently I'm using X with fbdev driver. The touchpad works as expected 
and the improved backlight control works great (except that values under 33 
disable the backlight).