No swap activated on Macbook (2,1)?

9 respostas [Última entrada]
Time4Tea
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Joined: 07/16/2017

(FYI: new user - this is my first post on here)

Hi, I'm trying to install Trisquel 7 on a second-hand macbook 2,1 that I've acquired (I've already flashed it with libreboot). The OS looks really nice and seems to run great, except that after I've opened 4 or 5 applications, it tends to gradually slow down and grind to a halt. Mouse, keyboard, nothing responds at all.

I'm suspecting that the issue might be that there is no swap space activated. The System Monitor shows swap as 'unavailable' and swapon -s shows nothing. Is that likely to be the problem? My HDD currently has 3 partitions: sda1 is 20GB and mounted at /; sda3 is 127GB and mounted at /home; and sda2 is just under 3GB, not mounted anywhere and filesystem (in gparted) shows as unknown.

Am I ok to format the sda2 filesystem to linux-swap and use that as swap?

Time4Tea
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Joined: 07/16/2017

Update: I set up a 1GB swap file in /mnt and it seems a lot happier now. Still, it seems a bit strange that the installer didn't set up any swap space.

IrishUSA
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Joined: 12/03/2016

How's it doing with regard to heat issues? Does it run hotter, does the fan run more often and louder etc? Another user here took drastic steps including drilling holes in the bottom and replacing the optical drive with a copper heat sink to deal with that.

Time4Tea
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Joined: 07/16/2017

In terms of heat: I bought it off of Ebay and, when I received it, the fan wasn't working - the laptop kept cutting out when the cpu got too hot. So, I installed a new fan and now it seems to be running fine. My wife has a Macbook Pro running OS X and it doesn't seem significantly hotter or louder than that. Wow - the measures that other user took sound pretty extreme! :)

I had to modify the xorg.conf to increase the trackpad sensitivity. But now I've done that and sorted out the swap, it's running really well.

Another thing to mention is that initially I couldn't get any of the Trisquel ISOs to boot from disc with the Apple firmware. So, I installed Lubuntu first (using their amd64+mac ISO), then flashed the bios, then installed Trisquel.

pizzaiolo
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Joined: 03/12/2015

We have a wiki article tracking everything about macbooks with free software: http://trisquel.info/wiki/macbook

Feel free to edit it and share your issues and workarounds! :)

Time4Tea
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Joined: 07/16/2017

Hi pizzaiolo, actually I saw that and it was useful in getting Libreboot/Trisquel up and running. I'll see if I can add anything that might help other people who are also trying to liberate Macbooks :)

pizzaiolo
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Joined: 03/12/2015

Thanks! You can add the tip about the swap ;)

Time4Tea
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Joined: 07/16/2017

Ok, I updated the Macbook wiki page with what I found out about the trackpad, thermal issues and swap space. I also mentioned about the Trisquel ISO images possibly having problems booting with Apple firmware. Please take a look and let me know if you have any comments or edits :)

IrishUSA
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Joined: 12/03/2016

I need to update it as well with information about how to put on Trisquel stickers, not just the non-Trisquel stickers it mentions.

I laid out some info about this in this comment here:

https://trisquel.info/en/forum/new-devices-ryf-certificate#comment-111959

Time4Tea
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Joined: 07/16/2017

Thanks, I'll take a look at that. Would be great to get a Trisquel skin and sticker for it :)