2006/2007 Mac Pro (1,1/2,1) and OS X El Capitan

[scribling]

Well, I may have spoken too soon. I had installed and repaired the drive when it was mounted via usb ... and it booted fine from there. Now that I put it back inside ... no boot. The machine won't even select another drive to boot from if the El Cap SSD is set as the boot drive. In order to even get it to mount I have to shut down, pull all drives except one 10.7.5, reboot, select that drive as the boot drive, shut down, reinstall all the other drives, reboot and now at least the SSD is mounted.

I'm tempted to just run the installer on it again. This is what I mean by the system is fragile.
BTW I replaced the battery. I couldn't believe it's a 2032 and I just happen to have a new one. I also discovered my video card is a Radeon 6870 HD.

 

[rthpjm]

Well, I may have spoken too soon. I had installed and repaired the drive when it was mounted via usb ... and it booted fine from there. Now that I put it back inside ... no boot. The machine won't even select another drive to boot from if the El Cap SSD is set as the boot drive. In order to even get it to mount I have to shut down, pull all drives except one 10.7.5, reboot, select that drive as the boot drive, shut down, reinstall all the other drives, reboot and now at least the SSD is mounted.

I'm tempted to just run the installer on it again. This is what I mean by the system is fragile.
BTW I replaced the battery. I couldn't believe it's a 2032 and I just happen to have a new one. I also discovered my video card is a Radeon 6870 HD.

Did you perform my suggestion of going to the System Preferences > Startup Disk control panel?
Make sure the volume on your SSD is the item that is selected...

If you delete the boot.efi file (to replace it), even when attached to an external USB caddy, it will destroy the reference stored in the EFI stub. In effect the data in the EFI stub is pointing to a file reference that no longer exists. It depends on the method you use to “replace the boot.efi file”.

You need to re-bless the drive in these circumstances. You can do this from the Terminal (search this thread), or use the Startup Disk control panel....

 

[scribling]

Did you perform my suggestion of going to the System Preferences > Startup Disk control panel?
Make sure the volume on your SSD is the item that is selected...

If you delete the boot.efi file (to replace it), even when attached to an external USB caddy, it will destroy the reference stored in the EFI stub. In effect the data in the EFI stub is pointing to a file reference that no longer exists. It depends on the method you use to “replace the boot.efi file”.

You need to re-bless the drive in these circumstances. You can do this from the Terminal (search this thread), or use the Startup Disk control panel....

Neither of those suggestions worked. I ended up rerunning the installer, "Install Piked OS X El Capitan.app" and once again it worked like a charm. I haven't tried a second boot but I'm up and running now. I can copy files and bless and restart and pull drives and restart and check this and check that and restart and remount drives and ... which all take hours and hours or just rerun the installer which takes about 30 minutes. I'm loving that thing!

 

[scribling]

MF! After running the Piked OSX El Cap installer last night the machine booted to the SSD properly. Upon restart today, no boot.

With the El Cap SSD selected as the boot drive: (internally mounted)
systemsetup -getstartupdisk
/Volumes/SSD/WINNT
Which I don't think is right. (Running that command while booted from 10.7.5)
Possibly that's what's returned when and EFI boot is set?

I can rerun the installer and although it takes 30 minutes it will boot properly but I need to fix whatever is preventing it from rebooting properly.

I'll try to run Pikefy3.1.v14 ... Now the boot files are 1.1 mb rather than the 315.3 kb they used to be ... I also ran Boot64.v3. Lets try to boot again ...
systemsetup -getstartupdisk
/Volumes/SSD/WINNT
No change after running Pikefy ...


Ok, that didn't work. Interestingly though the machine did find a drive to boot from (10.7.5) without me having to pull all the other drives.

Let's try replacing the boot files with root privileges ... ok, all files seem to be correct size and owned by root ...
Try to boot again ...


Yeah - No! That didn't work and it did not default to a viable OS to boot so I had to remove all other drives, boot, select the 10.7.5 drive, shutdown, replace internal drives an reboot. It seems the only way I can get this box to boot from the El Cap SSD is to run the Piked OSX installer ... although, it will only boot from it once.
It literally worked flawlessly for years and now I can't get it to work at all.

Hmmm, let's try replacing the boot files with the boot file in /Volumes/SSD/OS X Install Data/ ... as root of course.

That didn't work.

I wonder if there's a way to run one of the packages inside /Volumes/SSD/OS X Install Data/InstallESD.dmg? Contents listed ...
/Volumes/OS X Install ESD/Packages/BaseSystemResources.pkg
/Volumes/OS X Install ESD/Packages/EFIPayloads
/Volumes/OS X Install ESD/Packages/Essentials.pkg
/Volumes/OS X Install ESD/Packages/InstallableMachines.plist
/Volumes/OS X Install ESD/Packages/OSInstall.collection
/Volumes/OS X Install ESD/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg
/Volumes/OS X Install ESD/Packages/OSInstall.pkg
/Volumes/OS X Install ESD/Packages/OSUpgrade.pkg
/Volumes/OS X Install ESD/Packages/pikify.pkg
/Volumes/OS X Install ESD/Packages/SMCPayloads
/Volumes/OS X Install ESD/Packages/X11redirect.pkg

I'm going to try running the pikify.pkg from the /Volumes/SSD/OS X Install Data/InstallESD.dmg and see what happens. Well the files are 1.1 mb again so that's not going to work ...
How about the Essentials.pkg ... ? Nope ...

Back to the Piked OSX installer ... I've been selecting grey startup because I don't get a boot screen and that way I can tell when it's booting sooner but this time I'll select black ... if for some reason that's causing the problem.

 

[scribling]

Yep, the installer does it again. I'm booted from the SSD.
With the SSD selected as the boot drive ...
systemsetup -getstartupdisk
System/Library/CoreServices

So the /Volumes/SSD/WINNT is definitely wrong!
How do I fix it when it happens again? Anyone?

Can anyone think of anything else I should run on the system while it's working?

-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 316416 Aug 22 12:51 /usr/standalone/i386/boot.efi


-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 316416 Aug 22 12:51 /System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 316416 Aug 22 12:51 /System/Library/CoreServices/bootbase.efi

I think these are different size from files that worked previously that are stored in my backup.

Nope, they're the same:
-rw-r--r--@ 4 root wheel 316416 Apr 24 2017 /Volumes/.../SSD/System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi
-rw-r--r--@ 4 root wheel 316416 Apr 24 2017 /Volumes/.../SSD/System/Library/CoreServices/bootbase.efi

Files installed today by the installer in the CoreServices/
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root wheel 281 Aug 22 12:51 /System/Library/CoreServices/.disk_label
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root wheel 1133 Aug 22 12:51 /System/Library/CoreServices/.disk_label_2x
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 81 Aug 22 12:37 /System/Library/CoreServices/AuthBrokerAgent@ -> /System/Library/Frameworks/CFNetwork.framework/Versions/A/Support/AuthBrokerAgent
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 67 Aug 22 12:37 /System/Library/CoreServices/CFNetworkAgent@ -> ../Frameworks/CFNetwork.framework/Versions/A/Support/CFNetworkAgent
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 40 Aug 22 12:37 /System/Library/CoreServices/DefaultDesktop.jpg@ -> /Library/Desktop Pictures/El Capitan.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 3277 Aug 22 12:51 /System/Library/CoreServices/PlatformSupport.plist
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 316416 Aug 22 12:51 /System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 316416 Aug 22 12:51 /System/Library/CoreServices/bootbase.efi
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 90 Aug 22 12:38 /System/Library/CoreServices/coreservicesd@ -> ../Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/CarbonCore.framework/Support/coreservicesd

Several are symlinks. When followed the files are:
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 42976 Sep 17 2016 /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/CarbonCore.framework/Versions/A/Support/coreservicesd*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 13049105 Aug 25 2015 /Library/Desktop Pictures/El Capitan.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 18640 Sep 17 2016 /System/Library/Frameworks/CFNetwork.framework/Versions/A/Support/CFNetworkAgent*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 18880 Sep 17 2016 /System/Library/Frameworks/CFNetwork.framework/Versions/A/Support/AuthBrokerAgent*

I'm making copies of these files as well as a copy of the entire CoreServices dir.

 

[rthpjm]

So the /Volumes/SSD/WINNT is definitely wrong!
How do I fix it when it happens again? Anyone?

bless --folder /Volumes/SSD/System/Library/CoreServices --file /Volumes/SSD/System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi

You can double check

bless --info /Volumes/SSD

Out of interest, where did you get your source copy of El Capitan from?
It sounds like you’ve got some sort of process that runs occasionally which is incorrectly blessing your drive.

Does WINNT ring any bells with you?

Also try the following (it might take a long time). When booted from your SSD with all your other disks available too

sudo -s
your-password
cd /
grep -R WINNT *

Let me know if grep matches any files. Possibly in LaunchDaemons or LaunchAgents


P.S. you cannot run the pikify.pkg independently, it’s designed run under the control of Apple’s Install Assistant. You’ll just be wasting more of your time if you try it.

P.P.S. You have probably diagnosed your issue. You should try to track down whatever is causing the Startup Disk to be (incorrectly) set to WINNT

 

[scribling]

Here's where I am now, the box wouldn't sleep last night so I shut it down and sure enough this morning it won't boot properly. I had installed the Piked OS again yesterday to get it up and running and now that I have to boot back into the drive I installed from, Piked OS says it wants to make changes and needs a password. So maybe there's a last part of the script that I need to run and am not or does it just want to change the boot drive back to what it was? I can't run it because I have to unmount the SSD so that I can default boot from 10.7.5. Fun stuff!

I wish I could get a boot screen. It would make like so much easier. Upon next boot when I can have the drive mounted, I'll run those commands.

I believe WINNT stands for WindowsNT. I do have a Windoz partition on one drive I'll see if that comes back with the same WINNT.

With all drives mounted, and the SSD selected as boot ...
systemsetup -getstartupdisk
/Volumes/SSD/WINNT

bless --info /Volumes/SSD
finderinfo[0]: 11249677 => Blessed System Folder is /Volumes/SSD/System/Library/CoreServices
finderinfo[1]: 11674642 => Blessed System File is /Volumes/SSD/System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi
finderinfo[2]: 0 => Open-folder linked list empty
finderinfo[3]: 0 => No alternate OS blessed file/folder
finderinfo[4]: 0 => Unused field unset
finderinfo[5]: 11249677 => OS X blessed folder is /Volumes/SSD/System/Library/CoreServices

systemsetup -getstartupdisk (Windoz selected as boot)
/Volumes/Windows/WINDOWS

I'm running the 'grep -R WINNT *' ... on the root of the SSD not the root of the current boot drive 10.7.5.

I'm not the only person with this problem. In another thread I found someone else with the exact problem. Oddly, he named his drive SSD as well ... so he had the exact same name. I thought it was one of my posts.

Maybe I'll rename the drive ElCap ... later. No need to complicate things now.

Comparing the copy of CoreServices I made yesterday to the current I see there's a file that wasn't there before:
/Volumes/SSD/System/Library/CoreServices/.disk_label.contentDetails
Doesn't seem to contain anything ... only 4k
Also the .disk_label and .disk_label_2x have been touched today for some reason.

Removing the .disk_label.contentDetails did nothing still WINNT ...

CRAZY IDEA! What if I create a symlink at SSD/ called WINNT that points to CoreServices? The WINNT directory does not exist and maybe I'll work properly?
Well, it works well from the finder ... I'll try to boot it.

 

[scribling]

Nope, that didn't work.
What I really need to know is where is the systemsetup -getstartupdisk getting its info from?

systemsetup -liststartupdisks
/Volumes/X G5/System/Library/CoreServices
/System/Library/CoreServices
/Volumes/Windows/WINDOWS
... No SSD listed!

systemsetup -setstartupdisk /Volumes/SSD/System/Library/CoreServices
Not a System Folder: /Volumes/SSD/System/Library/CoreServices

systemsetup -setstartupdisk /Volumes/SSD
Not a System Folder: /Volumes/SSD/System/Library/CoreServices

So, why isn't it a System Folder?

One more time with the Pikey installer ... then maybe I can figure this out.

Before I do, I found some @Reboot cron jobs in my crontab on the SSD ... deleted those.
Maybe it's my login that's jacking the system?
Next time it's up I'll log in as someone other than me and see if it reboots?

 

[scribling]

Back into the SSD El Cap boot ... I have to log in as myself.

systemsetup -liststartupdisks
/Volumes/X G5/System/Library/CoreServices
/System/Library/CoreServices
/Volumes/Windows/WINDOWS
/Volumes/2Terra/System/Library/CoreServices

So the SSD is the root boot Core services currently. Nothing wrong with that.
But ...
systemsetup -setstartupdisk /Volumes/SSD
Not a System Folder: /Volumes/SSD/System/Library/CoreServices

systemsetup -setstartupdisk /Volumes/SSD/System/Library/CoreServices
Not a System Folder: /Volumes/SSD/System/Library/CoreServices

Oh, wait ... the SSD is the root volume so those paths are bad ...

systemsetup -setstartupdisk /System/Library/CoreServices
Set Startup Disk to Path: /System/Library/CoreServices

Ah ha! Maybe it will work?
Still won't sleep ...

Maybe I should pull all other drives before rebooting?

 

[scribling]

I'm getting nowhere!
Once again, it won't reboot.
Moved the drive to a USB mount ... won't boot there either.

systemsetup -setstartupdisk /Volumes/SSD/System/Library/CoreServices
Not a System Folder: /Volumes/SSD/System/Library/CoreServices

bless --info
finderinfo[0]: 11689233 => Blessed System Folder is /Volumes/SSD/System/Library/CoreServices
finderinfo[1]: 12114185 => Blessed System File is /Volumes/SSD/System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi
finderinfo[2]: 0 => Open-folder linked list empty
finderinfo[3]: 0 => No alternate OS blessed file/folder
finderinfo[4]: 0 => Unused field unset
finderinfo[5]: 11689233 => OS X blessed folder is /Volumes/SSD/System/Library/CoreServices
64-bit VSDB volume id: 0x970A181E2CB7253A

Now I've tried everything I know.

The only thing I haven't tried is getting it to boot from the Recovery partition and recovering the entire drive from TimeMachine. Although, it seems ridiculous since all the data is there already. But currently I can't even boot from a recovery partition at all.

Let's look at the recovery partitions:

10.7.5 recovery: (no idea if it works)
ls -al /Volumes/Recovery\ HD\ 1/com.apple.recovery.boot/
total 936632
drwxr-xr-x 9 root wheel 306 Sep 16 2014 .
drwxrwxr-x 8 root wheel 340 Sep 16 2014 ..
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root wheel 749 Sep 16 2014 .disk_label
-rw-r--r--@ 1 gregory 21 454585521 Sep 16 2014 BaseSystem.dmg
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 2445 Aug 11 2011 PlatformSupport.plist
-r--r--r-- 1 root wheel 478 Oct 6 2011 SystemVersion.plist
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 863920 Oct 6 2011 boot.efi
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 361 Sep 16 2014 com.apple.Boot.plist
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 24087081 Oct 6 2011 kernelcache

El Cap recovery: (doesn't work)
s -al /Volumes/Recovery\ HD/com.apple.recovery.boot/
total 982568
drwxr-xr-x@ 12 root wheel 408 Aug 23 12:06 .
drwxr-xr-x@ 8 root wheel 340 Aug 23 11:45 ..
drwxr-xr-x@ 5 root wheel 170 Aug 23 11:45 .diagnostics
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root wheel 1613 Aug 23 12:06 .disk_label
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root wheel 6461 Aug 23 12:06 .disk_label_2x
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 1948 Sep 17 2016 BaseSystem.chunklist
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 481104193 Aug 23 11:26 BaseSystem.dmg
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root wheel 3277 Aug 23 12:06 PlatformSupport.plist
-r--r--r--@ 1 root wheel 482 Sep 17 2016 SystemVersion.plist
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root wheel 316416 Aug 23 12:06 boot.efi
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root wheel 365 Aug 23 11:45 com.apple.Boot.plist
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root wheel 21618556 Sep 17 2016 prelinkedkernel

No idea what the @ means in this case ...

Why do I see a .disk_label_2x every time it won't work?

Found this: One final detail needed to be covered before running bless. The startup boot menu invoked when holding down the Option key uses a special file to display the volume name below the icon, called the volume label.

The contents of /Volumes/SSD/System/Library/CoreServices/.disk_label.contentDetails is SSD
I cannot read .disk_label or .disk_label_2x at all.

I think it's all about these .disk_label files ... apparently they're what's used when using the boot screen, which I don't have.

 

[scribling]

I have this script. Not sure where it came from.

#!/bin/bash
echo "WARNING, THIS SCRIPT IS MEANT TO RUN ON THE DISK YOU INSTALLED TO, BUT NOT ON THE MAC PRO 1,1"
echo "IN ANY OTHER SITUATION, DO NOT PROCEED"

#Grabbed this snippet from here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3231804/in-bash-how-to-add-are-you-sure-y-n-to-any-command-or-alias
read -r -p "Continue making this disk unbootable on this system? [y/N] " response
if [[ $response =~ ^([yY][eE][sS]|[yY])$ ]]
then
    #Get black version of EFI boot file
    curl -o myfile.zip https://forums.macrumors.com/attachments/boot-black-zip.511172/ ; unzip myfile.zip; rm myfile.zip
    #Install Boot.efi
    #NOTE: You will Need to Have Disabled SIP Using csrutil disable; reboot
    #from within terminal in the recovery mode (cmd+R while booting)
    ##CoreServices Boot.efi
    sudo chflags nouchg /System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi
    sudo cp ./boot.efi /System/Library/CoreServices/
    sudo chflags uchg /System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi
    ##Copy to /usr
    sudo cp ./boot.efi /usr/standalone/i386
    ##To-Do: Copy to Recovery Partition
else
    exit
fi

#Get Nvidia Driver
curl -O http://us.download.nvidia.com/Mac/Quadro_Certified/346.03.02f02/WebDriver-346.03.02f02.pkg

#Install Nvidia Driver
sudo installer -pkg *.pkg -target /

if anyone can tell me what that first line warning actually means, I'd appreciate it.
WARNING, THIS SCRIPT IS MEANT TO RUN ON THE DISK YOU INSTALLED TO, BUT NOT ON THE MAC PRO 1,1
Is that don't run it on a Mac Pro 1,1 period? If you're not booted to the disk you want to run it on how can you run it on that disk? It makes no sense.

Maybe it's meant to be run on a system that can install El Cap and with El Cap booted on that box before unmounting and booting in the Mac Pro?

 

[rthpjm]

I have this script. Not sure where it came from.

#!/bin/bash
echo "WARNING, THIS SCRIPT IS MEANT TO RUN ON THE DISK YOU INSTALLED TO, BUT NOT ON THE MAC PRO 1,1"
echo "IN ANY OTHER SITUATION, DO NOT PROCEED"

#Grabbed this snippet from here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3231804/in-bash-how-to-add-are-you-sure-y-n-to-any-command-or-alias
read -r -p "Continue making this disk unbootable on this system? [y/N] " response
if [[ $response =~ ^([yY][eE][sS]|[yY])$ ]]
then
    #Get black version of EFI boot file
    curl -o myfile.zip https://forums.macrumors.com/attachments/boot-black-zip.511172/ ; unzip myfile.zip; rm myfile.zip
    #Install Boot.efi
    #NOTE: You will Need to Have Disabled SIP Using csrutil disable; reboot
    #from within terminal in the recovery mode (cmd+R while booting)
    ##CoreServices Boot.efi
    sudo chflags nouchg /System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi
    sudo cp ./boot.efi /System/Library/CoreServices/
    sudo chflags uchg /System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi
    ##Copy to /usr
    sudo cp ./boot.efi /usr/standalone/i386
    ##To-Do: Copy to Recovery Partition
else
    exit
fi

#Get Nvidia Driver
curl -O http://us.download.nvidia.com/Mac/Quadro_Certified/346.03.02f02/WebDriver-346.03.02f02.pkg

#Install Nvidia Driver
sudo installer -pkg *.pkg -target /

if anyone can tell me what that first line warning actually means, I'd appreciate it.
WARNING, THIS SCRIPT IS MEANT TO RUN ON THE DISK YOU INSTALLED TO, BUT NOT ON THE MAC PRO 1,1
Is that don't run it on a Mac Pro 1,1 period? If you're not booted to the disk you want to run it on how can you run it on that disk? It makes no sense.

Maybe it's meant to be run on a system that can install El Cap and with El Cap booted on that box before unmounting and booting in the Mac Pro?

MY ADVICE

Create a new small (8GB or larger) partition on one of your drives
Install a clean version of El Capitan on that. Do not "clone". Do not use the Migration Assistant. Do not perform the initial sign in to your Apple ID - it will ask for a user name and password later.
Optionally install capitanPikeFix (also turn off SIP), or install Boot64 (SIP can be on or off) - choose one, do not install both of them

Run off that whilst testing, see if all your issues have gone away
If so, then your issues are probably related to previously installed software/scripts/hacks....

Your current stream of conciousness that you're posting here is not helping. With this approach, you and the community here would be working with a known configuration
I will help you going forward but only if you are working from this clean installation...

 

[scribling]

Yes, I was thinking of trying a clean partition next.

I'm documenting my attempts here so that if one were to work I could go back and see what it was that I did. Many times at this stage in the game previously the drive would boot and work normally and I'd have no idea which or what thing I did that actually fixed it. This time I wanted to know absolutely.

BTW I think you and I are the only community in this thread.

 

[rthpjm]

I believe WINNT stands for WindowsNT. I do have a Windoz partition on one drive I'll see if that comes back with the same WINNT.

That made me smile, almost a laugh out loud moment. Thanks for that.
You read my reply in one context, and I wrote it in a completely different one.
I meant... do you remember installing anything that referred to WINNT. It could be something legitimate, like a versions of Windows you installed some time ago via Boot Camp, or maybe a Virtual Machine, or a copy of a volume that you took. I notice that you have a disk reference “X G5”, so I’m guessing you have migrated disks/data from previous machines.

The systemsetup command is not very reliable in my opinion. It often responds with no content until you actually use the System Preferences control panel. From what I observe, the command line tool simply reports the (potentially cached) data as viewed by the System Preferences.
--getstartupdisk was blank for me initially, as was —liststartupdisks, until I used the Startup Disk control panel, at which point it returned the expected data.

I would advise the use of bless since it is always accurate
bless --info will give you the currently selected boot device
bless --info volumeref (where volumeref is a path of the kind /Volumes/name) which is useful if you have more than one bootable volume
bless --info --getboot will return the bootable partition name in /dev/disknsm format
bless --info --verbose gives more information

You can also use diskutil
diskutil list
diskutil info -all

Have a read of the manual pages
man bless
man diskutil

Your Recovery HDs look okay. There is one Recovery HD per system volume. The first one in your list is the 10.7 Lion one, and the second is the El Capitan one.
diskutil info /Volumes/name
Will list all the volume info, including which disk segment houses the Recovery partition. E.g.
Recovery disk: disk0s3

In general, a disk format creates a number of partition segments, take disk0
disk0s1 contains the hidden EFI support volume for the drive
disk0s2 contains the mounted Mac OS volume that you see as your volume
disk0s3 contains the hidden Recovery HD associated with the volume above

If you add another visible volume using the Disk Utility tool, it will typically add just one further segment.
If you install a copy of MacOS onto this partition, the installer will add a Recovery HD segment (from within the allocation of the target volume). E.g.
disk0s4 contains /Volumes/second-OS
disk0s5 contains the Recovery HD associated with the second OS

As a rule of thumb, segment 2 has the visible OS, segment 3 has the Recovery HD.

You figured out the .disk_label files. If the bless command has been run with the --label option to customise the name shown on the boot selector screen, the .disk_label files are produced to hold the graphic rendering of the string. The x2 version is largely used by the very high resolution screens (retina displays on MacBooks for example). They don’t take up much room, and they do no harm. No need to worry about them.

Lastly, that script that you posted looks like someone wrote it to put the Pike version of the boot.efi file into place (the two required locations). It says that it downloads the Black EFI file, which it may do, but when I downloaded that file it does not match the most current version (3.1) of the Pike boot.efi file. To use it you would have to be using an already booted MacPro, which must mean you already have a working boot.efi file. The only conditions I can see it being useful was during the period when Pike was actively developing the boot.efi file and was regularly releasing updates based on the feedback from MacRumors users who were testing the development releases. Personally I would delete it...

 

[scribling]

Ok, getting desperate. I'm going to reinstall the Apple version of El Cap using my laptop, boot from that and try that script. Maybe it is this csrutil disable thing that's f'n with my boot files. Maybe that way I can actually get the recovery partition to work.

Nope. That didn't work but I did manage to get the recovery partition to work. So now I'm going to restore the drive using TimeMachine bu.
That didn't work. The drive is not recognized as bootable.
So maybe the drive was damaged before I shut it down last and I'm backing up with bad files ...
I wonder if there's a record of boot times? If I could see the last time it booted successfully I could back up to that time.

do you remember installing anything that referred to WINNT. It could be something legitimate, like a versions of Windows you installed some time ago via Boot Camp, or maybe a Virtual Machine, or a copy of a volume that you took. I notice that you have a disk reference “X G5”, so I’m guessing you have migrated disks/data from previous machines.

Yes, there have been quite a few migrations and upgrades over the years. Now that you mention it, I did used to use VirtualPC or one of those ... that I believe was running WindozNT.

Currently I'm running a TimeMachine backed up version of the system from the last day of proper functioning, with the Piked install over that because the drive bu from timemachine was nowhere near bootable. And it's mounted via USB and I have not attempted to boot it a second time, yet.

I'm going to try the clean install on a little partition, next. I didn't think I could add a partition to a drive without wiping it, but I was clearly wrong.

Well this is interesting. Running the Piked OSX installer from an El Cap boot the setup returns "Okay" instead of "Restart" like it does when run from 10.7.5. Oh, it says I'll need to manually reboot and I have no boot screen ... and the install boot doesn't show up in the startup preferences ... great. Looks like I'll have to run that from 10.7.5 or disable SIP and try again.

BTW this came up when searching the CoreServices dir for WINNT ...
RemoteManagement/rmdb.bundle/doc/postgresql/html/install-win32.html:>WINNT\SYSTEM32</TT

 

[madhowler]

Note, You're not the only ones playing with these toys.

I picked up a very used (and never cleaned!) mac Pro 1,1 Dual/Dual 3.0 last week. I installed Dual/Quad 2.66 Xeon (5355), 32Gb RAM, Updated the firmware to Mac Pro 2,1, and even have El Cap 10.11.6 running perfectly now (build 15G1011) on an Intel Pro 160 SataIII SSD Using a molex to sata adapter I dropped down from the lower Optical bay and an Orico 3.5->2.5 conversion kit with the drive sled.

I have only two issues remaining:

1 - I have a 7-port Orico USB 3 card that is seen by the OS but runs at like 10mbit (1 megabyte per second at best). Obviously I need real drivers. It also won't mount drives for about 5 solid minutes after they are attached.

2 - I have the old Radeon X1900XT Crappy video. I have a Geforce GT 710 (fanless, no additional power needed) sitting here that I want to install. If I install it and the mac tries to boot - boot loop. I can't install the web drivers from nVidia because they have none for build 15G1011. I need to update the OS.

EDIT: From the 15G1011 install I then installed the 2018-005 update, rebooted, and made it to version 15G18013, which is supported by nVidia's Web Drivers listed elsewhere on this site:

https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...cs-drivers-for-os-x-10-11-6-346-03-15.198033/

I also installed the CUDA 9.0 drivers, then made sure Web Driver was selected in the System Preferences as suggested on that same page. I shut down, removed the ATI x1900xt, installed the Geforce GT 710 in the same slot and then rebooted. I sat at a flashing cursor for a time, and then viola. Login screen. Running video tests now.

So, after much research I download the 2018-005 update, it works fine and reboots. I then try to follow the steps for the 2018-002 (003, and 004 have been tried as well) which replace the kernel during the update and require me to transfer the working kernel back in. Nothing I do to place the working kernel back in allows me boot. Is there a special process for replacing the kernel that I am missing? Some terminal command that escapes my limited Mac*nix knowledge? I've tried chown root:wheel, chmod 700, and a couple other things I forget.

Everything I've read says copy out your working kernel before the updates, do the update, copy it back in, use touch on the system/library/extensions and boom, it should boot. Nada, nowhere, nothing works like that for me so far.

I have a perfect clone of my drive at the last working stage - I clone it every time it works fine, so I can guinea pig some, but this is my 8th restore from the clone to pig it again.

Anyone out there to lend a hand with this beast?

 

[scribling]

This is interesting ... I got the SSD to boot a second time now but I don't know why or what is different from any other time. I created a small partition on the SSD to install a clean copy of El Cap and figured I'd diagnose things when I got that working but I didn't make the partition big enough so I had to reboot and it worked. I don't know if my drive is now fixed, but we'll see.

BTW I made the partition 10 gigs but El Cap didn't like that. 8 gig is supposed to be minimum but I'll up it to 20 for the next go round. Actually, 40 gig is recommended ...

 

[scribling]

I was afraid of this ... I don't know why but everything is fixed and I don't know what exactly fixed it. This seems to happen every time which is why it's so hard to fix. It's as if it simply refuses to work without a weeks worth of frustration and then suddenly it works.

I installed a clean copy of El Cap to a 40 gig partition on the SSD and that also works fine.

Well, I guess what fixed it was to restore the drive from the TimeMachine BU and then running Piked El Cap installer on that.

 

[rthpjm]

Note, You're not the only ones playing with these toys.

I picked up a very used (and never cleaned!) mac Pro 1,1 Dual/Dual 3.0 last week. I installed Dual/Quad 2.66 Xeon (5355), 32Gb RAM, Updated the firmware to Mac Pro 2,1, and even have El Cap 10.11.6 running perfectly now (build 15G1011) on an Intel Pro 160 SataIII SSD Using a molex to sata adapter I dropped down from the lower Optical bay and an Orico 3.5->2.5 conversion kit with the drive sled.

I have only two issues remaining:

1 - I have a 7-port Orico USB 3 card that is seen by the OS but runs at like 10mbit (1 megabyte per second at best). Obviously I need real drivers. It also won't mount drives for about 5 solid minutes after they are attached.

2 - I have the old Radeon X1900XT Crappy video. I have a Geforce GT 710 (fanless, no additional power needed) sitting here that I want to install. If I install it and the mac tries to boot - boot loop. I can't install the web drivers from nVidia because they have none for build 15G1011. I need to update the OS.

EDIT: From the 15G1011 install I then installed the 2018-005 update, rebooted, and made it to version 15G18013, which is supported by nVidia's Web Drivers listed elsewhere on this site:

https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...cs-drivers-for-os-x-10-11-6-346-03-15.198033/

I also installed the CUDA 9.0 drivers, then made sure Web Driver was selected in the System Preferences as suggested on that same page. I shut down, removed the ATI x1900xt, installed the Geforce GT 710 in the same slot and then rebooted. I sat at a flashing cursor for a time, and then viola. Login screen. Running video tests now.

So, after much research I download the 2018-005 update, it works fine and reboots. I then try to follow the steps for the 2018-002 (003, and 004 have been tried as well) which replace the kernel during the update and require me to transfer the working kernel back in. Nothing I do to place the working kernel back in allows me boot. Is there a special process for replacing the kernel that I am missing? Some terminal command that escapes my limited Mac*nix knowledge? I've tried chown root:wheel, chmod 700, and a couple other things I forget.

Everything I've read says copy out your working kernel before the updates, do the update, copy it back in, use touch on the system/library/extensions and boom, it should boot. Nada, nowhere, nothing works like that for me so far.

I have a perfect clone of my drive at the last working stage - I clone it every time it works fine, so I can guinea pig some, but this is my 8th restore from the clone to pig it again.

Anyone out there to lend a hand with this beast?

I’m assuming your reference to 2018-005 was simply a typo...? The “last known good kernel” shipped with the 2017-005 Security Update.

The Security Updates shipped in 2018 (2018-001 through 2018-004) contain a kernel that was modified for supported Macs. I don’t think anyone has dug into the code at this time, but the update release notes mention fixes for the Spectre/Meltdown hardware bugs. Unfortunately our unsupported MacPros are incompatible with this kernel. If it gets installed, the machine will try to boot, then immediately crash, and cycle (boot loop).

To fix it, you need to be able to boot from another partition. Most people who have used my Pikify tools can boot into the Recovery HD. Other people keep a small second volume with another version of MacOS installed.
Either way you need to boot into that, then overwrite the incompatible kernel with the version from the Security Update 2017-005, and don’t forget to touch /Volumes/yourVolume/System/Library/Extensions, this will trigger a rebuild of the extension cache with references against the downgraded kernel. If you’re booting from a version of El Capitan, you’ll need to ensure System Integrity Protection is off. The Recovery HD is always set with SIP disabled.

 

[madhowler]

You are correct - That should have read 2017-005. I've tried multiple times to apply any of the 2018 updates, but I run into the boot loop and replacing the kernel doesn't seem to work. I'm not a whiz at mac terminal commands, so it is likely that I'm simply missing a step.

Any thoughts on resolving the USB issue? The card carries a VIA chipset - I'm thinking of trying the GenericUSB kext. Not sure how that will go but would sure love to have my large USB3 drives online attached to this Mac instead of my new Celeron home media server.

Edit: My Mac Pro Geekbench score (multi core) is about 8300 with the Dual/Quad 2.66. This seems about on par, and is actually substantially higher than my 1 month old Celeron Plex media server (4900 or so). I'm aiming to convert this Mac Pro to the home server, and I am having trouble finding these optical bay drive sled conversions people are talking about. I have 8 drives I want to place in the Mac in addition to the stock 4, along with my Areca 1680 (I believe) 16-Port SATA RAID.

 

[scribling]

Now that the system is working. Should I leave SIP on or off?

I installed Boot64.v3. Hopefully that prevents further problems.

 

[rbad]

1. Troubles when reboot to another OS X

2. How to install correctly RAM for OS X El Capitan

Thanks rthpjm for detailed instructions and a video! OS installation just completed. Whith old graphics card just yet. I used: an unmodified copy of the Apple 'Install OS X El Capitan' app; the script-based Pikify tool; empty HD. Configuration: Mac Pro 1,1 flashed to 2,1 / 2 x 2.66 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon / 11 GB 667 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM / NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256 MBhttps://forums.macrumors.com/members/rthpjm.535915/

I've got 2 questions. I don't know much English so I couldn't scan all the posts in this thread. May be there are already answers to such questions?

1. Reboot to another OS X
I got two HD. The first one with OS X 10.7.5. The second with OS X 10.11.6 just now installed. Running 10.11.6 I point another HD in Startup Dick panel. After restart I got a boot loop. After forced turning off and on 10.7.5 is started normally. In the reverse order, everything's the same. At the same time boot selector (Option during power-up) works normally. Can this be fixed?

2. Installing RAM for OS X El Capitan
Building OS installer was OK. But the installation process was terrible: hang up, restart with messages '... because of a problem', boot loop after installation complete. But one day new OS started. After I set up it starts normally. I think the reason is that my Mac has less than 12 GB RAM. So I'm going to install additional RAM. I saw a post where samebody asked of RAM module sizes. Is the number and size of RAM modules important? For now:
DIMM Riser A/DIMM 1: 4 GB
DIMM Riser A/DIMM 2: 4 GB
DIMM Riser B/DIMM 1: 1 GB
DIMM Riser B/DIMM 2: 1 GB
DIMM Riser A/DIMM 3: 512 MB
DIMM Riser A/DIMM 4: 512 MB
DIMM Riser B/DIMM 3: Empty
DIMM Riser B/DIMM 4: Empty

 

[Wudchip]

Howdy. I have a 2006 Mac Pro 1,1 running Lion 10.6.5 and I'd tried using the pykify.3.1.v14 to update to El Capitan. Everything went fine up to the stage where I entered "y" to reboot (prior to loading the installer), then nothing, I could hear sounds from the hard drive but it would not reboot. Does anybody have any ideas? Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[alphascorp]

Hello,
I'm back, following my post #4299 of July 20, 2018 regarding the operation of the update "SecUpd2018-004ElCapitan" with Kernel 2017-005.
After 2 months EVERYTHING IS STILL STABLE ...
I am a professional and I use my Mac Pro more than 10 hours a day and I work with quite "greedy" softwares such as: Lightroom, Photoshop, Premiere, Final Cut and Cinema 4D.
FYI, I never turn off my Mac Pro, the evening I suspend the activity, and I restart it only once every 2 weeks.


Fix SecUpdate ElCapitan Mac Pro 1.1-2.1 Start Loop.dmg

 

[alphascorp]

I'm in the process of installing El Capitan on a recently gifted Mac Pro 1,1. But I can't find security update 2017-005 available anywhere online, it seems to have been taken down from the app store. Does anyone know how I can find out which security version the install I have done has, or where I can find a download, or maybe even have a copy they can share with me?

Security Update 2017-005 for OS X 10.11.6 El Capitan