Linux on a 2013 Mac Pro

[aylward-drm]

Hi Everyone. I have the late 2013 MP 6.1, with 1TB NVME HDD, D700 and use a Pegasus2 R4 (16TB Raid 0). I had used this nice machine for years doing video editing. I also have a Steinburg UR12 for audio.
My start out of the gate is that I can't get the Start Manager to appear. With or without the USB inserted, the computer just gives a blank screen if holding the ALT key. So I thought I noticed in one thread someone mentioned that I need to get into Troubleshooting mode at startup? I will look into that next. I am running Big Sur. My main applications are DaVinci Resolve 14, Affinity Photo, and a bunch of Isotope audio software etc. typical video editing and sound editing stuff.
I was really hoping to use linux to allow me to start running the latest DaVinci Resolve 20+ as I am currently held back at 14.x.
Thanks for checking in.

 

[aylward-drm]

Hey Everyone. Thanks for all the assistance. The USB is good. I installed the ISO onto an old laptop. It seems the issue is the MP6.1 with Big Sur has the issue of not showing boot info to the screen. The Screen is only powered once the desktop for MacOS is ready to show the desktop. So it seems that the boot manager is likely sitting and waiting for me to do something, but I can;t see anything on the screen at that point. So to me its as if the computer is hung. I was told to look into rEFInd at www.rodsbooks.com/refind/features.html but I think this is all over my head at this point

 

[aylward-drm]

Good news. I switched my monitor to the HDMI port and was able to see the Apple and progress bar after all. So, now I need to take a deep breath and try out this Linux Mint USB.

While I was pondering what to do about my Mac, I installed LM onto an old Dell Laptop. an old Inspirion 15 with a Pentium and 4 GB of ram (LOL). It works, but it is prone to a endless cycle of boot crashing. I eventually got back into the LM desktop, and for now, refuse to shut it down, LOL.

Wish me Luck!

 

[aylward-drm]

While today these Mac's are 12+ years old, they still hold some power for basic use and they are fairly cheap these days. In my case, I spend an additional $30 for the Xeon E5-2697v2 and 30 minutes later, I had turned the Quad Core 3.7GHz into a Twelve Core 2.7GHz beast. Upgrading the CPU depends on your use case and does not always make sense. I will use this Mac as a "Build Server", so the extra cores come in handy.... In addition, Amazon/Sintech sells an adapter for ~$10 to use regular NVMe's in your Mac in case you are running low on Disk space. Here is the link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FYY3H5F/ . I also read somewhere, that you have to be at least on Catalina to use these adapters as Catalina installs a Firmware upgrade on your Mac. True or not, I don't know. I installed Monterey before I upgraded my drive to 2TB and had no issues at all....Just something to keep in mind if you are facing problems.

1. Installing Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

Installing Ubuntu on these Mac's is a little more complicated than installing it on a regular PC. Once you have the USB stick created, you can boot the Mac and then immediately press the "option" key to get the Boot Menu.

IMPORTANT: Install Ubuntu on your Mac with the option "Ubuntu (safe graphics)". If you choose "Try or Install Ubuntu" the installer will keep crashing. Also make sure that you have a wired Ethernet connection during install - WiFi will not work yet and the installer might need an update. Go through the install process now but DO NOT install any 3rd party or proprietary drivers during the initial install process - we will do all that later.

Once the install completes, perform a reboot.

As the Mac boots, press the "esc" key as soon as you hear the chime. It will bring up the GRUB bootloader options. Press "e" to edit the boot arguments. Scroll down to the following line:

LINUX /boot/vmlinuz-x.x.x-xx-generic root=UUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx ro quiet splash $vt_handoff

Add the "nomodeset" before $vt-handoff. It should now read:

LINUX /boot/vmlinuz-x.x.x-xx-generic root=UUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx ro quiet splash nomodeset $vt_handoff

Now hit Fn+F10 or just F10 (depending on your keyboard) to boot Ubuntu 24.04 LTS for the first time.

IMPORTANT: If you don't change the boot option to include "nomodeset" your Mac will hang at first boot.

2. Getting WIFI to work:

Open a terminal and type:
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo update-pciids
$ lspci -nn | grep 0280

The output you should see is something like this:
"Broadcom Corporation BCM4360 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter [14e4:43a0] (rev 03)"

Make note of what you see in the square brackets and the revision number behind it

If your device is not 14e4:43a0 - DONT PANIC! There is a great write up from Luis Alvarado on "https://askubuntu.com/questions/55868/installing-broadcom-wireless-drivers/38700#38700" on how to get most Wireless Cards working!

While Luis Alvarado mentions in his write up that the "14e4:43a0 rev 03" is a so called "Special Case #3", and you should create/edit your rc.local, I had no need for that. WiFi worked as expected by just installing the bcmwl-kernel-source.

Install the WiFi driver by issuing the following command in the terminal:

$ sudo apt install bcmwl-kernel-source

Once you do a reboot, WiFi should be working as expected..... But, before we reboot, and while we have the active Ethernet connection, we will also install the AMD GPU drivers.

3. AMD FirePro D500 driver install (should work for the D300 and D700 as well)

Lets find out what we have by issuing the following command in the Terminal:

$ lspci | grep ' VGA ' | cut -d" " -f 1 | xargs -i lspci -v -s {}

The output I am getting is like this:

02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Tahiti LE [Radeon HD 7870 XT] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: Apple Inc. FirePro D500
Physical Slot: 3-3

06:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Tahiti LE [Radeon HD 7870 XT] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: Apple Inc. FirePro D500
Physical Slot: 5-3

What is interesting to note here is that the D500's are recognized as "Radeon HD 7870 XT". It looks like these cards have been re-branded by Apple. In any case, these are so called GCN1/Southern Island (si) cards (D500 and D700) under the Code Name "Tahiti LE GL". The D300 runs under a different Code Name (Pitcairn XT GL)

AMD has proprietary drivers for Linux/Ubuntu. Look for the "Radeon™ Pro Software for Enterprise on Ubuntu 24.04.1 Installer" on the AMD website -->
https://www.amd.com/en/support/download/linux-drivers.html or go to:http://repo.radeon.com/amdgpu-install/latest/ubuntu/noble/ and download the latest driver

For those of you, who are interested and want to install customized options, the complete installation instructions can be found here: https://amdgpu-install.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Lets install the driver by issuing the following commands:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
$ cd ~/Downloads
$ sudo apt-get install ./amdgpu-install_6.3.60301-1_all.deb
$ amdgpu-install -y --accept-eula --usecase=workstation –no-32

Since the AMD Driver has been installed, we need to make some changes to GRUB:

$ sudo vi /etc/default/grub

Scroll to the end of the following line
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" and and press "i"
Add "radeon.si_support=0 amdgpu.si_support=1 amdgpu.dc=1" to the end so it reads:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash radeon.si_support=0 amdgpu.si_support=1 amdgpu.dc=1"
Press "esc" then ":wq"

and finally we make the GRUB changes permanent by:

$ sudo update-grub
$ reboot

You should be all set 🙂

Additional information: As mentioned before, these D500's/Radeon HD 7870 XT are GCN1/Southern Island (.si_) cards. You are disabling the Ubuntu stock drivers by adding "radeon.si_support=0" and enabling the AMD proprietary drivers by adding "amdgpu.si_support=1". I had to add "amdgpu.dc=1" to the GRUB parameters also, to avoid a blank screen/system hang during boot. This needs a little further testing/investigation.....

Here is some more information about the AMDGPU settings: https://docs.kernel.org/gpu/amdgpu/module-parameters.html

Screenshot of what to expect to see once you completed the install:
View attachment 2480023

I have not done a lot of testing yet but the system seems to be stable. No fan issues, both D500's seem to be working as expected, Wifi (with the exception of connecting to WPA3 protected networks) is working as well - even connecting to hidden SSID's, and so does Bluetooth.

Good Luck

Hi Mike. I have got the Linux Mint / Cinnamon 22.3 running live from a USB at this point on my MP 6.1 and my biggest concern was ensure that my Pegasus2 R4 is working. I have access to the 16TB RAID-0 and everything looks fine. The wifi shows not working but I am hardwired and the internet connection works. During the MacOS boot manager choice I did connect the wifi, but seems that did not matter once the LM took over.

At this point (since I am new) I was hoping to clear up some thoughts about running this vs. your Ubuntu 24.04 LTS version your post is about. I found elementary OS as the distro I think would suit me best and it seems to be based on the Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, "Jammy Jellyfish."

I currently updated the original SSD to an Adata XPS8200 NVME and running the Mac OS on it. It so happens that I have a second stick identical that I used for another purpose. So I intend to remove the current stick and insert this blanks stick and install the elementary OS onto it. That way if I ever need to go back to MAC OS for some reason I can swap the sticks back again.

Thoughts?

 

[Marksonthegamer]

Signed up just so I could post a huge thanks + kudos to MacMike365 for these excellent instructions!

Just finishing up the install on my trashcan -- don't even need it, just wanted to do it for fun.

Latest AMDgpu driver is amdgpu-install_7.0.2.70002-1_all.deb and still works.
My system info is:MacPro 6,1 -- 32GB -- Intel Xeon ES-1650 V2 x 12 -- AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series
Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS, Kernel Linux 6.14.0-33-generic

Well, first of all, thanks for MacMike's tutorial for installing GPU drivers, that worked really well at first. But I regret to say that amdgpu-install driver 7.0.2 and 7.0.3 will not compile for the latest Ubuntu HWE Kernel - Linux 6.17 and that forced me to stay in 6.14. Have you guys figured out a solution for this?

Btw, amdgpu-install 7.1 and above seem to compile for Linux kernel 6.17, but then I run Steam, there are always kernel panics... Did they drop support for legacy GPUs? I'm using AMD FirePro D300