Black MacBook 2008 A1181 - wireless - works from live boot but not install

Newbie Corner
#1

Hi manjaro forum members. I've toyed around with manjaro on an old fujitsu convertible laptop and was very happy with its performance, ease of installation, and functionality out of the box!

Needless to say, when I plugged the same USB flash drive used to install manjaro on my Fujitsu into the 2008 Black MacBook A1181 and found that it live booted, had wifi, sound, video... even the functions on the function keys worked (vol up/down, brightness up/down...) ! Again, the live boot is fully functional!

Using the install option from the live environment, I installed manjaro onto a brand new 240GB SSD in the MacBook. Installed with option for a swap partition including hibernate.

Upon boot, the wifi no longer works. Seems to be the only issue. I have it connected via ethernet now to write this post (still so happy with the performance of this old machine running manjaro!)

I would love help to get the wifi working, because clearly it's possible via live boot from USB. I can also boot back into Mac OS X from the original hard drive now mounted in a USB external hard drive enclosure.

Thanks, and kind regards

#2

paste here output from this

inxi -Fxxxz

#3

[stephanie@stephanie-macbook ~]$ inxi -Fxxxz
System: Host: stephanie-macbook Kernel: 5.4.43-1-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 10.1.0
Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.18.5 tk: Qt 5.14.2 wm: kwin_x11 dm: SDDM Distro: Manjaro Linux
Machine: Type: Unknown System: Apple product: MacBook4,1 v: 1.0 serial: Chassis: type: 2 v: Mac-F22788A9
serial:
Mobo: Apple model: Mac-F22788A9 v: PVT serial: UEFI: Apple v: MB41.88Z.00C1.B00.0802091535
date: 02/09/08
Battery: ID-1: BAT0 charge: 39.9 Wh condition: 40.4/58.3 Wh (69%) volts: 12.5/10.8 model: DBK ASMB013 type: Li-ion
serial: N/A status: Discharging cycles: 47
CPU: Topology: Dual Core model: Intel Core2 Duo T8300 bits: 64 type: MCP arch: Penryn rev: 6 L2 cache: 3072 KiB
flags: lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 ssse3 vmx bogomips: 9579
Speed: 798 MHz min/max: 800/2400 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 844 2: 1124
Graphics: Device-1: Intel Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics vendor: Apple driver: i915 v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0
chip ID: 8086:2a02
Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.8 driver: intel unloaded: modesetting alternate: fbdev,vesa
compositor: kwin_x11 tty: N/A
OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel 965GM (CL) v: 2.1 Mesa 20.0.7 direct render: Yes
Audio: Device-1: Intel 82801H HD Audio vendor: Apple driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 00:1b.0
chip ID: 8086:284b
Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.4.43-1-MANJARO
Network: Device-1: Broadcom and subsidiaries BCM4321 802.11a/b/g/n vendor: Apple AirPort Extreme driver: wl v: kernel
port: efa0 bus ID: 02:00.0 chip ID: 14e4:4328
IF: wls4 state: dormant mac:
Device-2: Marvell 88E8058 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet driver: sky2 v: 1.30 port: 5000 bus ID: 03:00.0
chip ID: 11ab:436a
IF: ens5 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac:
Drives: Local Storage: total: 223.57 GiB used: 9.32 GiB (4.2%)
ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: A-Data model: SU630 size: 223.57 GiB speed: 1.5 Gb/s serial: rev: 3B0
scheme: GPT
Partition: ID-1: / size: 210.48 GiB used: 9.32 GiB (4.4%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2
ID-2: swap-1 size: 8.42 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda3
Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 54.0 C mobo: N/A
Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info: Processes: 146 Uptime: 8h 09m Memory: 3.83 GiB used: 828.8 MiB (21.2%) Init: systemd v: 245 Compilers:
gcc: 10.1.0 Shell: bash v: 5.0.17 running in: yakuake inxi: 3.0.37

#4

I have wifi!

Not sure what happened, but after I posted the output from inxi, I checked the network taskbar icon and found a list of visible networks. Connected as soon as I input the password...

I want to reboot to be sure wireless works at startup. This computer is going back to my friend (Stephanie, as you can see in the previous post) and it can't give her any fuss.

#5

I thought there was wifi...

The networks now appear, but when I connect to a network there is an exclaimation point on the wifi tray icon. Error - limited connectivity; no IPV4 address assigned. The throughput rates are in B/s (bits per second). Wifi in the live environment was pulling around 10 MB/s

#6

It looks like you have broadcom-wl installed I would only suggest try to install old kernel 4.19 your macbook is an ancient piece of hw. I am just surprised it still runs my broke in 2011 that plastic one, I was traveling with it a lot.

#7

Yes, it's ancient hardware but surprisingly fast with an SSD and 4GB of RAM.

Rolling back the Kernel is the answer? I can't swallow that because the live boot works perfectly...

#8

Check this out!

I booted from USB again and ran inxi -Fxxxz

In the live boot it does not use the broadcom wl driver, instead b43-pci-bridge!


[manjaro@manjaro ~]$ inxi -Fxxxz
System:    Host: manjaro Kernel: 5.4.23-1-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 9.2.1 Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.17.5 
           tk: Qt 5.14.1 wm: kwin_x11 dm: SDDM Distro: Manjaro Linux 
Machine:   Type: Unknown System: Apple product: MacBook4,1 v: 1.0 serial: <filter> Chassis: type: 2 v: Mac-F22788A9 
           serial: <filter> 
           Mobo: Apple model: Mac-F22788A9 v: PVT serial: <filter> UEFI: Apple v: MB41.88Z.00C1.B00.0802091535 
           date: 02/09/08 
Battery:   ID-1: BAT0 charge: 39.8 Wh condition: 40.4/58.3 Wh (69%) volts: 12.5/10.8 model: DBK ASMB013 type: Li-ion 
           serial: N/A status: Full cycles: 47 
CPU:       Topology: Dual Core model: Intel Core2 Duo T8300 bits: 64 type: MCP arch: Penryn rev: 6 L2 cache: 3072 KiB 
           flags: lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 ssse3 vmx bogomips: 9581 
           Speed: 1170 MHz min/max: 800/2400 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 844 2: 832 
Graphics:  Device-1: Intel Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics vendor: Apple driver: i915 v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0 
           chip ID: 8086:2a02 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.7 driver: intel unloaded: modesetting alternate: fbdev,vesa 
           compositor: kwin_x11 resolution: 1280x800~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel 965GM v: 2.1 Mesa 19.3.4 direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Device-1: Intel 82801H HD Audio vendor: Apple driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 00:1b.0 
           chip ID: 8086:284b 
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.4.23-1-MANJARO 
Network:   Device-1: Broadcom and subsidiaries BCM4321 802.11a/b/g/n vendor: Apple AirPort Extreme 
           driver: b43-pci-bridge v: N/A port: efa0 bus ID: 02:00.0 chip ID: 14e4:4328 
           Device-2: Marvell 88E8058 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet driver: sky2 v: 1.30 port: 5000 bus ID: 03:00.0 
           chip ID: 11ab:436a 
           IF: ens5 state: down mac: <filter> 
           IF-ID-1: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter> 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 231.01 GiB used: 152.6 MiB (0.1%) 
           ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: A-Data model: SU630 size: 223.57 GiB speed: 1.5 Gb/s serial: <filter> rev: 3B0 
           scheme: GPT 
           ID-2: /dev/sdb type: USB model: SMI USB size: 7.44 GiB serial: <filter> rev: 1100 scheme: MBR 
Partition: ID-1: / size: 2.87 GiB used: 152.6 MiB (5.2%) fs: overlay source: ERR-102 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 51.0 C mobo: N/A 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Info:      Processes: 169 Uptime: 3m Memory: 3.83 GiB used: 902.3 MiB (23.0%) Init: systemd v: 242 Compilers: gcc: 9.2.1 
           Shell: bash v: 5.0.16 running in: yakuake inxi: 3.0.37
#9

Solved!

1 Like
#10

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