MacBook Pro 7.1--MCP89 Chipset --> Apple's Sneakyness makes booting difficult

[grillparzerkarma]

FYI:

If you try to boot BackTrack on the new MacBook Pro 7.1, the bootloader/boot menu will not be able to recognize the mac's SATA drives because the new mbp has a MCP89 chipset; see https://bugs.launchpad.net/linux/+bug/576601, or just google macbook pro 7.1 and the first result will say "linux not allowed?!" or something like that.

Ubuntu has a patched version for download, but as far as I know other linux distros [INCLUDING BACKTRACK] don't have one yet. I am sure that if you know what you're doing and are fairly determined you can fix this yourself, probably in a similar way. But
this is why people have said many many times on these forums that if you want to boot BT on a Mac, do it with VMware.

Just posting this so that others who are new to BT and/or beginners don't have to go through weeks of googling and searching and reburning and downloading and checksumming .iso's, only to discover that Apple has tried to prevent you from running third-party software (& OS's) on its hardware once again.

Admins, plz bump if this is in the wrong place.

(of course I had problems using VMware fusion to begin with on my mac (related to my usb adaptor, made my Mac kernel panic), so that is why I tried to hard boot it, but that is another long complicated story)

Of course it would be great if someone either made a tutorial/how-to on how to tailor BT so that it's compatible, like they did for Ubuntu; but I don't think that will happen because the population of users trying to use BT on a mac without VMware is probably too small to warrant the time it would take to create a compatible version for download. I'm just disappointed after all this work because I've ended up just installing BT components on Ubuntu, but it's not going to be the same

If anyone has constructive advice (i.e. other than "google it"), or good sources/links to point me toward, please let me know.

[Physics]

Thanks for the notice, I appreciate it.
I do have a Mac Pro 7.1 and am looking for a way to triple boot (OSX, BT4 R1 & Ubuntu).
I was wondering if there was a work around for this bug or a possible solution.
I'm newer to linux and if you could give me a head in the general direction. It would be much appreciated. I would love to work/research to find a fix. So that others, like me/us can run BT4.

Thanks for your help and consideration,
-Physics

[imported_ahmad]

I've just tested Ubunto 10.04 LTS (patched) and it boots fine on the Macbook pro 7,1, it runs with the patched kernel 2.6.32-22-generic, now I'm thinking of using this kernel instead of the one in the iso image of BT4, if not applicable, then I think we will need to find some other way (replacing the kernel and all the kernel headers and any related files) as the patched kernel is already there, what do you think?

[grillparzerkarma]

I've just tested Ubunto 10.04 LTS (patched) and it boots fine on the Macbook pro 7,1, it runs with the patched kernel 2.6.32-22-generic, now I'm thinking of using this kernel instead of the one in the iso image of BT4, if not applicable, then I think we will need to find some other way (replacing the kernel and all the kernel headers and any related files) as the patched kernel is already there, what do you think?

That sounds like something that would work. I don't have the skills to do it personally however, so this would be on you and/or whoever else wants to to test this out.

It would be REALLY amazing if someone to get it to work, I spent so much time during the summer trying to figure it out! Plz update if/when you have time to work on it.

Thanks!

[ragonblitz]

seems to me like you'd have to boot with the ubuntu live cd, repartition the hard drives, unpack backtrack in the new partition, chroot into your backtrack environment, configure and compile an upstream kernel.

Hope this helps you out with your mac
some additional reference material for configurations:
Gentoo Linux Documentation -- Gentoo Linux x86 Handbook