FreeBSD on Apple MacBook Pro 8,2: Now with more features

As an update to my last post, I have been able to make more of the features of my 13" Late 2011 MacBook Pro work on FreeBSD 11.0-CURRENT.

Sensor Readings.

Simple: kldload coretemp. To have on boot, add coretemp_load="YES" in /boot/loader.conf.

Cool Temperatures and Power Saving.

You will need to ensure i915kms is loaded and add drm.i915.enable_rc6=7 to your /boot/loader.conf. This was pointed out by the FreeBSD wiki which I could not find, so thank you Elly for helping me find these docs.

Additionally, you can add hw.pci.do_power_nodriver=3 to power down unused PCI cards. They re-enable when you kldload the modules, so this will help if you do not use the SD card reader or FireWire port very much.

Touchpad Gestures.

The atp(4) driver is flaky, but does work. Just add atp_load="YES" to /boot/loader.conf. Two fingers = right-click, three fingers = middle-click. Three finger tap is somehow hilariously much more reliable than two fingers, but with a little persistence they work. Two-finger scroll is a bit wonky and scrolls at unpredictable speeds, but I have a feeling this is a sysctl that may be fixable.

Bluetooth.

This actually does work right out of the box. I can pair with my phone and use the nifty obexapp utility to transfer files to my Android phone, an HTC One (M8). Unfortunately I was unable to transfer any files or pictures from the phone; obexapp consistently reported "0 bytes streamed in 2 seconds". I think it may be a permissions error as I able to upload files to my phone's Download/ directory correctly but no other directory.

To establish a Bluetooth connection (with an Android phone at least), you have to do the following:

1. Add your phone to /etc/bluetooth/hcsecd.conf. The examples are quite good. Remember your PIN.
2. Enable hcsecd in /etc/rc.conf and set flags to ubt0.
3. Enable sdpd in /etc/rc.conf.
   Your /etc/rc.conf should now have at least the following lines:

   hcsecd_enable="YES"
   hcsecd_flags="ubt0"
   sdpd_enable="YES"
   

4. Start both services...
   

   /etc/rc.d/hcsecd start
   /etc/rc.d/sdpd start
   

5. Now run obexapp -a phone:bluetooth:mac -C FTRN. Your phone will ask you for the PIN you specified in /etc/bluetooth/hcsecd.conf. Enter it, and you can see files on your FreeBSD computer!

Some More Bumps.

With all of these things fixed, I have had two more snags. One was that my tilde key (the ~ next to the 1 key) on my MacBook's internal keyboard was not working. This was fixed by adding the following line to ~/.xmodmaprc and running xmodmap ~/.xmodmaprc:

keycode 94 = grave asciitilde

My other new bump is that when I plug in headphones, the sound still comes out of the external speakers (and there is no sound in the headphones). This is probably due to some weirdness in the Apple HDA and I will have to take a closer look at this.

In conclusion, I am still quite happy with this change and am looking forward to fixing the rest of these issues.