Macbook Pro 2010 Bumblebee - Nvidia - BBSwitch problem

[Patmac]

Hi All, I managed to install Cent OS 7.6 on a Macbook Pro 2010 in EFI mode,
The problem I'm having is installing certain Kmods into the right kernel.
Let me explain first what I've done so far, and where I get really stuck. (Also a bit of a tutorial for other people with macs)
First step is obviously installing Cent OS 7.6 (1810) which seems like a straight forward thing but it's not.
Macs can boot Cent OS in 2 ways and unlike PC's you have no control over the settings if you use BIOS mode and it's a very unstable method used to boot Windows using bootcamp (I don't really want to go into that) now the bios option is only available if you boot from DVD, and will not be available if you boot from USB. You can check that very easily in the mac boot menu (alt at startup) if the disk is called EFI you're booting EFI if the disk is called Windows you're using BIOS Emulation.
Now I tried installing the EFI 7.6 version but you can forget about booting from it. after a lot of reading googling it turns out there is a security update and the MAC EFI is not compatible with that feature so you get a MokUtil fatal error and the mac shuts down. So far not very encouraging as we havent even started yet... But hey this is linux! The easiest way around this problem is to download the Cent OS 7.4 (1708) Image (Not the 7.5 Anaconda hangs on that installer with UDEV) N.B Creating an installer on the mac is very easy just run "diskutil list" in the terminal make a note of the disk you want to install it on run "diskutil umountdisk /dev/disk*" and then run "sudo dd bs=32m if=/path_to_the_image of=/dev/disk*"
Once booted into the 7.4 (1708) installer i would recommend a couple of settings, which will save time after the installation.
First of all the keyboard, if you don't change that you have to fiddle around later, and it's impossible to type so delete the default keyboard and find the Macintosh driver in your language (English (macintosh) was the one i used... Don't use Macintosh International.
Second of all the network make sure you are connected to the network you want to use after...
So far so good, so I installed Cent os 7.4 with Kernel 3.10.0-693 which works well not complaints so far... now here comes the problem some packages insist on installing the kernel that comes with 7.6 (1810) e.g the latest release which is kernel version 3.10.0-957 now this kernel is not a very nice fellow at all at least not on macbooks.... A BIG FAT WARNING HERE! if you apdated the kernel to 3.10.0-957 for the first time the mac won't boot from it and you will have the same problem as with the 7.6 installer.... So if yum installed this kernel you need to do the following step before reboot as root : "cd /boot/efi/EFI/centos/" and then "cp grubx64.efi shimx64.efi" overwrite yes is it asks. You have to take that step.
Now after I did a yum update to 7.6 everything seems to work fine if I run it on kernel version 3.10.0.693 as mentioned before the 3.10.0.957 is horror, I get errors, it's slow, unstable ect. So I decided to install kernel version 4.20 from el-repo... very stable again and everything work fine, installed X Window light dm and Mate that works fine... Now here is my question whatever I try I cannot get kmod drivers to go into another kernel, whatever I try it insists on installing the 3.10.0.957 again which I try to avoid like the plague, I even uninstalled it. So I'm stuck with things like bumblebee, bbswitch and nividia (I did manage to install nvidia using their driver) yum, repositories and however it works insist on the older kernel... even if I want to use the 3.10.0.693 kernel it insists on reinstalling the 7.6 kernel. Yes I've googled the land, tried multiple things, swapped the kernel-devel (Which elrepo does not mention in their manual and I find it very weird and frustrating that all those things come from elrepo) swapped the kernel-headers and kernel-tool-lib... still no go... Any suggestions would be highly appreciated on this matter. There is nothing on this machine clean install, so I don't mind experimenting....

[TrevorH]

A BIG FAT WARNING HERE! if you apdated the kernel to 3.10.0-957 for the first time the mac won't boot from it and you will have the same problem as with the 7.6 installer.... So if yum installed this kernel you need to do the following step before reboot as root : "cd /boot/efi/EFI/centos/" and then "cp grubx64.efi shimx64.efi" overwrite yes is it asks.

It's not the kernel that is the problem, it's an updated package supplying the shim. Please see https://bugs.centos.org/view.php?id=15522 for more information and for a link to newer packages that have yet to be released. Update your copy of shim and you should be OK.