James Cornell wrote:
....
> I too have a MacBook Pro.  Problems plaguing OpenSolaris on this 
> hardware are STILL with EFI handling, the workarounds still are 
> dangerous, and partly at the fault of Apple you can't use a USB disk 
> reliably, (Open)Solaris doesn't like them anyways BIOS (MBR) or EFI it 
> doesn't matter.  My Atheros (MBP3, Atheros not broadcom) doesn't work 
> out of the box, neither does the Marvell Yukon, same goes for FreeBSD 
> 6/7, tried that too, it doesn't support my laptop either.  Even most 
> Linux distros new and old don't like it, though MadWifi supports it, and 
> the ethernet driver works fine.  The main issues is with how grub 
> installs itself, it's VERY annoying, then the needing to edit the driver 
> files and force plumb, etc, just not a quality action to go through, 
> makes my hands feel dirty.  Hardware drivers are one thing sysadmins 
> shouldn't have to worry about, these devices are open and widely used 
> enough and not just tied to this particular hardware, it must be 
> included.  For us, it will only be included 6mo down the line with the 
> CD, or with bi-monthly SXCE DVD's, which may take a few months, been a 
> full year so far without a cent of support, and then the lack of GLDv3 
> makes things painful. (xVM, Zones, Crossbow)  I tried and tried, 
> possibly wearing my unit out faster than normal, trying to get 
> OpenSolaris decently working, it has cost me tons of time so far without 
> it even working correctly.  The best option would be to image a copy of 
> OpenSolaris and then install a boot loader onto the superblock (Which 
> UFS doesn't like) and even with rEFIt things go wrong randomly at boot.  
> James, please give me explicit instructions on dual-booting, I will not 
> wipe OSX, OpenSolaris cannot replace neither Windows or OSX for a 
> desktop, maybe for you since you're a kernel engineer, regardless...  I 
> still want to use it, I need to be current since this is my career area.

Hi James,
i can't help you directly, but perhaps if you have a look
at Paul Mitchell's blog (http://blogs.sun.com/paulm/) it
might help you with these issues, as might Alan Perry's
blog entry http://blogs.sun.com/alanp/entry/setting_up_a_mac_mini


btw, I wouldn't describe Marvell hardware as Open - all the
ON code for Marvell chips is in usr/closed as its delivery
via http://dlc.sun.com/osol/on/downloads/current/on-closed-bins.i386.tar.bz2
demonstrates.


hth,
James C. McPherson
--
Solaris kernel software engineer, system admin and troubleshooter
               http://www.jmcp.homeunix.com/blog
                   http://blogs.sun.com/jmcp
Find me on LinkedIn @ http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamescmcpherson


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