# Running FreeBSD on a Macbook



## dubby (May 16, 2011)

Hopefully someone can give me an insight on this. It seems there's lots of threads on the net in regards to running FreeBSD on a Macbook but nothing seems to answer my primary questions or is recent. 

My hardware is a 13 inch Macbook Pro 8,1

What I would like to know is:

1. Does FreeBSD 8.2 have the right drivers to run the wireless card from a fresh install?

2. I downloaded FreeBSD 8.2 Release ia64 but it won't boot from the CD by holding down 'c'. The MacOSX disc will boot with this method by not FreeBSD. I'm just unable to install it.

Any help would be appreciated.


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## SirDice (May 16, 2011)

IA64 is for Intel Itanium processors. You are looking for the amd64 version. Intel calls it IA-32e, EM64T and more recently Intel 64.


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## gkontos (May 16, 2011)

The relevant FreeBSD wiki might be able to help you on this.


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## Imanol (May 16, 2011)

FreeBSD has the necessary drivers for almost everything, Airport cards are on top of an Atheros chipset if my memory serves right, the ath driver will work fine.

PD: You might need some help when installing on a gpt partition table, the procedure is well explained on the wiki, if you find it confusing, I used this link to install FreeBSD on a GUID partition table successfully http://www.b0rken.org/freebsd/gpt.html


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## tankist02 (May 16, 2011)

I used PC BSD 8.2 installation disc to install FreeBSD 8.2 using GPT partitioning.


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## dubby (May 17, 2011)

Thanks all for your replies. I'm downloading the AMD version now.

The wikis all look rather complicated so it may take me some time to get it right. It's been a few years since I've used FreeBSD.


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## emc2 (Jun 10, 2011)

I was unable to get it working with a GPT partition, and I got it working only by creating an MBR.

My understanding of things is this: Apple's firmware looks for an HFS+ partition, and attempts to boot it.  HFS+ has a specific "blessed" file, which is expected to be an EFI application that loads the kernel (there's a firmware variable you can set to change this, but it gets reset under certain conditions).  If you just create a GPT with a bunch of FreeBSD partitions, the firmware will wait 30 seconds and report no bootable partitions (you get a little folder with a question mark icon).  There's also the problem that the FreeBSD kernel can't boot from EFI on AMD64.

Now, if you have an MBR disk, the firmware will detect it and default to legacy BIOS mode after 30 seconds (or you can hold alt and select "Windows").  This is how I got things working.

My setup looks like this (the disk gets assigned ad4 for some reason):


```
ad4(MBR)---s1(Disklabel)+--a(ZFS)
                        |
                        +--b(swap)
```

You have to manually install zfsboot into ad4s1, btw.

I would imagine one could set up a GPT system as follows, assuming the kernel could boot from EFI:


```
ad4(GPT)+--s1(swap)
        |
        +--s2(HFS+, containing /gpt(zfs)boot, which is blessed)
        |
        +--s3(Disklabel or ZFS)
```

I hope this helps.  If any of this is inaccurate, please let me know.


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