Vanilla OS MacBook T2 (2016-2019) Image

Containerfile for building a Vanilla OS Desktop T2 image.

This image is based on top of vanillaos/desktop and offers the necessary kernel patches, drivers and tweaks for any MacBook with a T2 chip.

Development

Preparation

• Install go via brew install go
• Install vib (git clone git@github.com:Vanilla-OS/Vib.git, or vs add git@github.com:Vanilla-OS/Vib.git -b=v0.3.3 with https://gist.github.com/martin-braun/e10b7cafdd55feea44bc2d06d5c2c972#file-vs and alias vib='"$(vs dir github.com/Vanilla-OS/Vib -b=v0.3.3)/vib"')
• Build vib by cd Vib or vs sh github.com/Vanilla-OS/Vib/v0.3.3 and then go build && chmod +x vib
• Install podman via brew install podman
• Run podman machine init to initialize the host VM for podman

Build

This build step is not necessary to use the image, but it is useful to verify the image can be built. Comment the fsguard section in recipe.yml and then:

podman machine start; vib build recipe.yml && podman image build -t vanilla-os/t2 . && podman save -o vanilla-os-t2-desktop.tar localhost/vanilla-os/t2

Don't forget to uncomment the fsguard section in recipe.yml again.

Note: You can track the image via podman inspect localhost/vanilla-os/t2. You can also clean up via podman rmi localhost/vanilla-os/t2 && podman rmi 0179950f34c7

Usage

Preparation

This image cannot contain any proprietary driver software for your MacBook, so a few manual steps are required:

• Make sure your Bluetooth and WiFi firmware is available on your EFI partition: https://wiki.t2linux.org/guides/wifi-bluetooth/#on-macos

Install

• Use balenaEtcher to setup an USB drive with the VanillaOS tar image
• Boot into recovery, disable SIP and mount your USB drive
• Install and boot into VanillaOS
• Connect to the internet using Ethernet/USB tethering/external Wi-Fi adapter
• Run host-shell pkexec vim /etc/abroot/abroot.json in your local installation:
• Change the "name" entry from something like vanilla-os/desktop to martin-braun/t2-image.

• Run abroot upgrade to switch to this image.
• Perform upgrade via pkexec abroot upgrade
• Finalize your setup by installing your Bluetooth and WiFi firmware under VanillaOS: https://wiki.t2linux.org/guides/wifi-bluetooth/#on-linux

Development hints

• If we want to install .deb files, we can just put them in includes.container/deb-pkgs
• Optionally, we can add out modules to the modules directory and add them to the package-modules includes in recipe.yml.
• We can check the Actions tab in GitHub to see the build progress of our image.

Note

It is suggested to add a vib-image tag to your repository for your image to be easily discoverable.

Project structure

• .github/workflows/vib-build.yml: This file contains the GitHub Actions workflow to check for updates to the base image and build the Vib image.
  • It uses the vib action to build the recipe and upload it as an artifact. The generated artifact is then built using Docker and pushed to GHCR.
  • The action runs automatically on a schedule checking updates to the base image using Differ.
• .github/workflows/vib-pr.yml: This file contains the GitHub Actions workflow to build the Vib image on pull requests.
  • It uses the vib action to build the recipe and upload it as an artifact. You can download and view the artifact to verify that your changes are performed as expected.
• .github/dependabot.yml: This file contains the configuration for GitHub's Dependabot to check for updates to the GitHub actions used in the workflow files monthly and when it finds a new version it creates a PR in your repository.
• includes.container: The files included in this directory are added by default to your image to the specified location. (It also contains ABRoot's configuration file)
• modules: This directory contains the modules that are used to customize the image. You can add your modules to this directory.
• recipe.yml: This file contains the recipe for the image. It specifies the base image, modules and other fields to be present in the custom image.