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

[rthpjm]

OK, now im stumped.

Mac pro 1,1 flashed to 2, 1. Been running Pikerfied through Yosemite and El Capitan. Updated to 10.11.4 and it broke.
Been running with the Piker boot.efi for so long, that it was before all the fix scripts, etc, and was installed manually.

No great shakes I thought, system booted into 10.9.5, I replaced the boot.efi with Piker's from Github, and all was good! Erm, no it wasn't it wont boot.

So, been through the whole process now a dozen times, checked the MD5's in both locations, checked the settings, cant see what I am doing wrong. So, in summary:

bash-3.2# cd /Volumes/El\ Capitan\ SSD/System/Library/CoreServices/

bash-3.2# ls -lasi boot.efi

7616244 616 -rw-r--r--@ 1 root wheel 314880 7 Apr 07:53 boot.efi

bash-3.2# openssl md5 boot.efi

MD5(boot.efi)= 23348e2baff575405f527cf0a26e2838

bash-3.2# cd ../../../usr/standalone/i386

bash-3.2# ls -lasi boot.efi

7615209 616 -rw-r--r--@ 1 root wheel 314880 7 Apr 07:54 boot.efi

bash-3.2# openssl md5 boot.efi

MD5(boot.efi)= 23348e2baff575405f527cf0a26e2838

bash-3.2# cd -

/Volumes/El Capitan SSD/System/Library/CoreServices

bash-3.2# ioreg -lp IOService | grep board-id

| "board-id" = <"Mac-F4208DC8">

bash-3.2# grep F4208DC8 PlatformSupport.plist

<string>Mac-F4208DC8</string>

bash-3.2# bless --info /Volumes/El\ Capitan\ SSD/

finderinfo[0]: 199 => Blessed System Folder is /Volumes/El Capitan SSD/System/Library/CoreServices

finderinfo[1]: 7616244 => Blessed System File is /Volumes/El Capitan 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]: 199 => OS X blessed folder is /Volumes/El Capitan SSD/System/Library/CoreServices

Any ideas?

Your MD5 checksums are correct for the grey versions of Pike's current boot.efi files.

They appear to be in the correct location.

Therefore you may need to look for other causes.

Does your graphics card give you boot screens? If "yes" try to reboot, hold the ALT key down immediately after hearing the chime, use the arrow keys to highlight the El Capitan SSD drive, hold down the Apple and V keys, then use your mouse to click on the arrow under the drive. This should attempt to boot in verbose mode.

You may be able to spot the issue from here....

P.S. The board ID is no longer necessary with these versions of boot.efi. Pike effectively hard coded the MacPro 3,1 signature into the boot.efi. This allows us to use the App Store etc... Since the 3,1 is still a supported machine. It also means that you don't need to edit the platform support plists any more
[doublepost=1460055722][/doublepost]

I'm quite speechless. Did you try the boot.efi file from the pikify3.1 v8 file? I had a non-running system until I used that file in both folders.
And did you protect the boot.efi in the coreservice folder again after replacing? AFAIK it is very important to have this file protected.

It isn't necessary to re-protect the boot.efi file

 

[tarkie]

I'm quite speechless. Did you try the boot.efi file from the pikify3.1 v8 file? I had a non-running system until I used that file in both folders.
And did you protect the boot.efi in the coreservice folder again after replacing? AFAIK it is very important to have this file protected.

I've tried both the black and the grey boot.efi from Github. I've not tried the "pikify3.1 v8" version. Where do i get that?
[doublepost=1460056204][/doublepost]

Your MD5 checksums are correct for the grey versions of Pike's current boot.efi files.

They appear to be in the correct location.

Therefore you may need to look for other causes.

Does your graphics card give you boot screens? If "yes" try to reboot, hold the ALT key down immediately after hearing the chime, use the arrow keys to highlight the El Capitan SSD drive, hold down the Apple and V keys, then use your mouse to click on the arrow under the drive. This should attempt to boot in verbose mode.

You may be able to spot the issue from here....

P.S. The board ID is no longer necessary with these versions of boot.efi. Pike effectively hard coded the MacPro 3,1 signature into the boot.efi. This allows us to use the App Store etc... Since the 3,1 is still a supported machine. It also means that you don't need to edit the platform support plists any more
[doublepost=1460055722][/doublepost]

It isn't necessary to re-protect the boot.efi file

Trying now, will report back.

The graphics card is a standard Mac 4870 and it currently still running Mavericks on a separate disk.
[doublepost=1460057228][/doublepost]If I remove the Mavericks disk which does successfully boot, the El Capitan SSD drive causes a kernel panic to occur.

It shows:

rooting via boot-uuid from /chosen: 1D3723F4-66A4-3860-AAB4-82A5FB39891A
Waiting on <dict ID="0"><key>IOProviderClass</key><String ID="1">IOResources</string><key>IOResourceMatch</key><string ID="2">boot-uuid-media</string></dict>

The system then panics, you get the standard backstrace hex followed by:

Backtrace terminated-invalid frame pointer 0
Kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependencies):
com.apple.driver.AppleAHCIPort(1.5.1)@0x883d8000->0x883e1fff
dependency: com.apple.iokitIOPCIFamily(2.4.1)@0x883bf00
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOAHCIFamily(1.0.4)@0x883bf000
com.apple.iokit.IOAHCIFamily(1.0.4)@0x883bf000->0x883c4fff

Im about to remove the aftermarket USB3/E-Sata card to see if thats causing it, but posted this here for brevity. Note, thats all typed so errors will be in there
[doublepost=1460057771][/doublepost]OK, so removing the Caldigit card stops the system panicing during boot, but i think that is a red herring.

If i remove the Mavericks disk which is in slot 0, and select the El Capitan disk as suggested above (Alt, then Ctrl V) then the system does through the boot sequence, and stops saying "Waiting for root device'.

If i put the Mavericks disk back in, and do the same, it books straight into Mavericks and doesnt try to use the El Capitan disk, even though it see's it, and offers it as a boot volume.

 

[rthpjm]

I've tried both the black and the grey boot.efi from Github. I've not tried the "pikify3.1 v8" version. Where do i get that?
[doublepost=1460056204][/doublepost]

Trying now, will report back.

The graphics card is a standard Mac 4870 and it currently still running Mavericks on a separate disk.
[doublepost=1460057228][/doublepost]If I remove the Mavericks disk which does successfully boot, the El Capitan SSD drive causes a kernel panic to occur.

It shows:

rooting via boot-uuid from /chosen: 1D3723F4-66A4-3860-AAB4-82A5FB39891A
Waiting on <dict ID="0"><key>IOProviderClass</key><String ID="1">IOResources</string><key>IOResourceMatch</key><string ID="2">boot-uuid-media</string></dict>

The system then panics, you get the standard backstrace hex followed by:

Backtrace terminated-invalid frame pointer 0
Kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependencies):
com.apple.driver.AppleAHCIPort(1.5.1)@0x883d8000->0x883e1fff
dependency: com.apple.iokitIOPCIFamily(2.4.1)@0x883bf00
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOAHCIFamily(1.0.4)@0x883bf000
com.apple.iokit.IOAHCIFamily(1.0.4)@0x883bf000->0x883c4fff

Im about to remove the aftermarket USB3/E-Sata card to see if thats causing it, but posted this here for brevity. Note, thats all typed so errors will be in there
[doublepost=1460057771][/doublepost]OK, so removing the Caldigit card stops the system panicing during boot, but i think that is a red herring.

If i remove the Mavericks disk which is in slot 0, and select the El Capitan disk as suggested above (Alt, then Ctrl V) then the system does through the boot sequence, and stops saying "Waiting for root device'.

If i put the Mavericks disk back in, and do the same, it books straight into Mavericks and doesnt try to use the El Capitan disk, even though it see's it, and offers it as a boot volume.

Hello tarkie,

The pikify zip file is my stuff, it includes both the black and grey boot.efi files along with a script to build a bootable/installable partition/USB key (See page 56 / post 1390). There's no need to go looking for it if you already have copies of the boot.efi file from Pike's Github repository.

Waiting for root device can often be cleared by a PRAM reset (apple-alt-p-r at boot chime), or you may need to explicitly bless the partition again. Try this first before you try the PRAM reset:
Boot into your Mavericks partition, then from the Terminal:

sudo bless --folder /Volumes/El\ Capitan\ SSD/System/Library/CoreServices --file /Volumes/El\ Capitan\ SSD/System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi

From your symptoms, my best guess is that you have previously been using a version of boot.efi that did not enable SIP. After the upgrade you have put a copy of Pike's version 3.1 boot.efi file into place, which does enable SIP. With SIP enabled your CalDigit card has caused you problems (Did it come with software? Specifically a kernel extension?).

Try the re-bless as above with the CalDigit card removed first. Confirm that this makes the system bootable.
If not, try a PRAM reset, (possibly followed by a bless command or select the El Capitan disk from your Mavericks Startup Disk Preference pane). Confirm the system is bootable.
If you have a bootable system, put your card back in.
If adding the card back in stops you booting (K.P.) you will need to try and disable SIP. For this you will need a functional 10.11 Recovery HD partition. Since you say that you have so far manually updated your El Capitan disks, your Recovery HD may not be functional. I wrote a script to make it functional, see post #1607.
(You will probably need to remove the CalDigit card again)
Reboot, hold the ALT key at the chime, select the Recovery HD, boot from that. From the Utilities menu open a Terminal, then issue the command

csrutil disable

Reboot into El Capitan (with the CalDigit card installed), see if that helps...

 

[tarkie]

Hello tarkie,


From your symptoms, my best guess is that you have previously been using a version of boot.efi that did not enable SIP. After the upgrade you have put a copy of Pike's version 3.1 boot.efi file into place, which does enable SIP. With SIP enabled your CalDigit card has caused you problems (Did it come with software? Specifically a kernel extension?).

The Caldigit card didn't come with any software as its chipset was already supported. Shall look to follow the plan you have kindly laid out this morning. You are correct that there is no functioning recovery partition.

Tarkie
[doublepost=1460109375][/doublepost]

The Caldigit card didn't come with any software as its chipset was already supported. Shall look to follow the plan you have kindly laid out this morning. You are correct that there is no functioning recovery partition.

Tarkie

OK, update after following the plan.

The PRAM reset/blessing etc steps made no difference. All this done with the Caldigit card removed. No ability to boot into El Capitan.

The creation of the recovery partition completed successfully and i can now boot into recovery mode with no issues.
The crsutil completed successfully.

However, now when booting via ALT to choose El Capitan SSD to boot from, it is no longer shown as an option, but only the recovery partition version.

I have confirmed that the disk is still there, and the contents.

Tarkie

 

[rthpjm]

The Caldigit card didn't come with any software as its chipset was already supported. Shall look to follow the plan you have kindly laid out this morning. You are correct that there is no functioning recovery partition.

Tarkie
[doublepost=1460109375][/doublepost]


OK, update after following the plan.

The PRAM reset/blessing etc steps made no difference. All this done with the Caldigit card removed. No ability to boot into El Capitan.

The creation of the recovery partition completed successfully and i can now boot into recovery mode with no issues.
The crsutil completed successfully.

However, now when booting via ALT to choose El Capitan SSD to boot from, it is no longer shown as an option, but only the recovery partition version.

I have confirmed that the disk is still there, and the contents.

Tarkie

Is your SSD attached internally?
Try booting from the recovery partition and launching Disk Utility. Perform some disk checks on your El Cpt partition.
Also when in the RHD, you can choose the startup disk (if it shows there)

Ultimately, you could now copy the boot.efi file from the RHD to your ElC disk and try that (because you know the RDH version is working)...

 

[tarkie]

Is your SSD attached internally? Yes

Try booting from the recovery partition and launching Disk Utility. Done this already, checked for errors, all reports ok, for both the physical disk, and the logical partition.

Perform some disk checks on your El Cpt partition.
Also when in the RHD, you can choose the startup disk (if it shows there) - Yes, it shows, but if i do this it hangs with the spinning beach ball.

Doing the boot.efi swap now. Will report back.
[doublepost=1460140631][/doublepost]

Is your SSD attached internally? Yes

Try booting from the recovery partition and launching Disk Utility. Done this already, checked for errors, all reports ok, for both the physical disk, and the logical partition.

Perform some disk checks on your El Cpt partition.
Also when in the RHD, you can choose the startup disk (if it shows there) - Yes, it shows, but if i do this it hangs with the spinning beach ball.

Doing the boot.efi swap now. Will report back.

Reporting back - Made no difference.

What i have noted is that when you select a disk to boot, the /var/log/system.log reports a number of kext dependencies missing, and there are 4 kextcache processes running, it appears to be trying to rebuild them. This continues a *long* time, and never appears to finish.

Any options here in relation to this? Can i just delete them, and let the kernel boot/build its requirements itself?

 

[rthpjm]

Is your SSD attached internally? Yes

Try booting from the recovery partition and launching Disk Utility. Done this already, checked for errors, all reports ok, for both the physical disk, and the logical partition.

Perform some disk checks on your El Cpt partition.
Also when in the RHD, you can choose the startup disk (if it shows there) - Yes, it shows, but if i do this it hangs with the spinning beach ball.

Doing the boot.efi swap now. Will report back.
[doublepost=1460140631][/doublepost]

Reporting back - Made no difference.

What i have noted is that when you select a disk to boot, the /var/log/system.log reports a number of kext dependencies missing, and there are 4 kextcache processes running, it appears to be trying to rebuild them. This continues a *long* time, and never appears to finish.

Any options here in relation to this? Can i just delete them, and let the kernel boot/build its requirements itself?

I think we can safely say that whatever the issue is, it is not a wrong or corrupted boot.efi file.
You can delete the kext cache files, and yes they should rebuild, you will have to be patient though. But what is the context of the selection and the log files? Your Mavericks disk or the Recovery HD? If it's the RHD what you are describing is very odd. The RHD is built from an image file into RAM disks....

What is the history of your OS install, how many generations of upgrade has it gone through?

I decided to do a fresh install of El Capitan 10.11(.0) and use the Migration Assistant to move my data to it. So mine has only seen the 10.11 point upgrades....

How old is your SSD? Have you checked to see if there are any TRIM log entries?

In my experience, your time might be better spent, backing up your data, and then performing a full re-build. I know it's a drastic solution but time is precious....

 

[wolf1734]

Hello rthpjm

I come towards you because I cannot always make my key of boot El Capitan.
Once entered lines them in the terminal it say not a directory.
I put these line in the terminal

cd ~ / Downloads / pikify3.1

sudo -s

my password

. / createpikeinstallmedia / Volumes / Untitled

it do not work
I need help thank you very much.
Cordially

 

[tarkie]

I think we can safely say that whatever the issue is, it is not a wrong or corrupted boot.efi file.
You can delete the kext cache files, and yes they should rebuild, you will have to be patient though. But what is the context of the selection and the log files? Your Mavericks disk or the Recovery HD? If it's the RHD what you are describing is very odd. The RHD is built from an image file into RAM disks....

What is the history of your OS install, how many generations of upgrade has it gone through?

I decided to do a fresh install of El Capitan 10.11(.0) and use the Migration Assistant to move my data to it. So mine has only seen the 10.11 point upgrades....

How old is your SSD? Have you checked to see if there are any TRIM log entries?

In my experience, your time might be better spent, backing up your data, and then performing a full re-build. I know it's a drastic solution but time is precious....

The El Capitan install was new onto a new SSD, the SSD is now 5 months old.
I think i've also come to the conclusion that its time to 'tidy up' so i'll be purchasing about 4TB of spinning disk today, and will migrate all my old pre El Capitan data onto those. I'll then sort a new install of El Capitan utilising all the new methods you have developed since I first did it. That should help next time around. I will also look to use Migration Assistant to move all the data I need across.

Thats for the time you spent, I was hoping this would be a quick fix as it appeared simple. Looks like it turned into a rabbit hole.

 

[rthpjm]

Bonjour Wolf
étape 1, s'il vous plaît supprimer toutes les copies de "Install OS X El Capitan " de votre disque dur .
étape 2 , téléchargez une nouvelle copie de "Install OS X El Capitan " depuis le Mac App Store.
Étape 3, essayez à nouveau , faites attention à ce que vous tapez . Vérifiez que l' espacement entre les mots est correct

(Je ne parle pas bien le français. j'utilise Google Translate)

Hello Wolf
Step 1, please delete all copies of "Install OS X El Capitan" on your hard drive.
Step 2, download a new copy of "Install OS X El Capitan" from the Mac App Store.
Step 3, try again, be careful what you type. Make sure the spacing between words is correct

 

[wolf1734]

Thank you rthpjm

I download at the moment again El Capitan of app blind and then I am going to begin again.
I inform you.
Thank you

 

[rthpjm]

Thank you rthpjm

I download at the moment again El Capitan of app blind and then I am going to begin again.
I inform you.
Thank you

Le poste de #1569 peut vous aider
The post at #1569 may assist you

aussi, le poste de #2026 a une vidéo qui montre l'utilisation du terminal et glisser / déposer (mais pas directement liées)
also, the post at #2026 has a video which demonstrates use of the Terminal and drag/drop (although not directly related)

 

[spin498]

Tried it, neither that, nor the switch to HDMI worked.

Alrighty, got it to boot into Safe Mode. As someone suggested, something other than the video card is conflicting in the boot.
Where should I look to compare what's been started in Safe Mode vs. what is the normal boot?

 

[rthpjm]

Alrighty, got it to boot into Safe Mode. As someone suggested, something other than the video card is conflicting in the boot.
Where should I look to compare what's been started in Safe Mode vs. what is the normal boot?

3rd party extensions are usually found in /Library/Extensions

 

[wolf1734]

Good evening rthpjm
the key usb it in court(yard) of creation with pikifi v8 having to restart on the key usb install osx el capitan I can put has in the daytime on the app blind or it is necessary to install(settle) boot64 v3 before the putting has in the daytime.
Thank you a lot for the help(assistant) of the creation of the key usb kind regards

 

[rthpjm]

Good evening rthpjm
the key usb it in court(yard) of creation with pikifi v8 having to restart on the key usb install osx el capitan I can put has in the daytime on the app blind or it is necessary to install(settle) boot64 v3 before the putting has in the daytime.
Thank you a lot for the help(assistant) of the creation of the key usb kind regards

Bonjour Wolf,
Je suis heureux d'apprendre que vous avez maintenant la création de la clé USB complète . Avez-vous besoin d'installer Boot64 ? il n'a pas été nécessaire , mais il est commode. Pour vous, je vous recommande d'installer Boot64

Hello Wolf,
I am happy to hear that you now have the creation of the USB key complete.
Do you need to install Boot64? it is not required, however it is convenient. For you, I would recommend installing Boot64

 

[ufopeace]

I have installed el capitain on my mac pro 1.1.
It starts fine and runs fine untill i restart.
It then let me login, freezes and restart.
Im running on ATI Radeon HD5770, the original graphics on the second slot and 3GB ram?
I have tried a different graphics card and the problem is still there. So Im thinking it might be my RAM.
Can anyone help please

 

[rthpjm]

I have installed el capitain on my mac pro 1.1.
It starts fine and runs fine untill i restart.
It then let me login, freezes and restart.
Im running on ATI Radeon HD5770, the original graphics on the second slot and 3GB ram?
I have tried a different graphics card and the problem is still there. So Im thinking it might be my RAM.
Can anyone help please

Do you have any of the original 512Mb memory sticks in use? Every user who has reported similar issues has had some 512Mb memory still in use. We have advised every one to remove the 512Mb sticks and replace them with larger capacity memory (preferably 2Gb sticks, although 1Gb should be okay too). 2Gb fully buffered memory appears to be readily available at reasonable prices.

Every user who has followed this advice has subsequently reported that their system has stabilised and runs really well.

We can only speculate why! One theory is that Apple now assumes a minimum of 1Gb physical RAM modules, and may have amended the OS memory management routines accordingly. We don't really know for sure.

Our MacPro 1,1 and 2,1's were depreciated some time ago and therefore won't figure in Apple's thoughts when developing, and certainly will not form part of the QA and testing....

 

[ufopeace]

Do you have any of the original 512Mb memory sticks in use? Every user who has reported similar issues has had some 512Mb memory still in use. We have advised every one to remove the 512Mb sticks and replace them with larger capacity memory (preferably 2Gb sticks, although 1Gb should be okay too). 2Gb fully buffered memory appears to be readily available at reasonable prices.

Every user who has followed this advice has subsequently reported that their system has stabilised and runs really well.

We can only speculate why! One theory is that Apple now assumes a minimum of 1Gb physical RAM modules, and may have amended the OS memory management routines accordingly. We don't really know for sure.

Our MacPro 1,1 and 2,1's were depreciated some time ago and therefore won't figure in Apple's thoughts when developing, and certainly will not form part of the QA and testing....

Yes I do have two 512MB and 2x 1GB on this machine which the first pair was installed on the raiser A and the second pair on the raiser B (Which seems to be wrong according to the apple drawings on the case)

I have placed an order of 16GB for this machine on ebay.

Untill it comes I will try now removing the first pair of 512MB and see if i can run it on 2gb only.
Not ideal I know but if i works then I can do some work on it until the order comes thru.

Will let you know of the result
Thank you for your help

 

[Bruce L]

First of all a sincere thank you to Piker-Alpha, rthpjm, 666sheep, donjames and Peter Holbrook. You guys are great! I am so happy to see that PikerAlpha has recovered from his surgery.

I followed the instructions in post #1390 on page 56 of this topic and was able to get El Capitan installed on my 2006 MacPro and it has been running fine even after running to App Store update of El Cap from 10.11.3 to 10.11.4. I had used pikefy 3.x I but misread the instructions for the post install update:

• You don't need to do steps 1, 2, 3, and 4 if you have just used pikify3.1 (v3 or higher) to install El Capitan From the post above because it's already done for you)

I initially mistyped the terminal commands:

echo "/System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi" >> … and

echo "/usr/standalone/i386/boot.efi" >> …

by leaving out the close quotes. This caused the Terminal window to hang up but I quit it and retyped them correctly. Guess I shouldn't do these things when I have the flu. The point being that even with these errors on my part I still have a solid install of El Capitan on my 2006 Mac Pro 1,1 with an Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB card and 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM.

So for others who are attempting to install El Capitan on their older Mac Pros it can be done. Based on my experience they need to be sure that their Mac Pro has the right video card, the right amount of RAM and the RAM modules have to be at least 2 GB each.

 

[Sko]

Based on my experience they need to be sure that their Mac Pro has the right video card, the right amount of RAM and the RAM modules have to be at least 2 GB each.

I have 4x 1 GB, 2x 2 GB and 2x 4 GB RAM modules in my Mac Pro and it runs just fine. I did have problems with 512MB modules, though.

 

[nightmare111]

I have 4x 1 GB, 2x 2 GB and 2x 4 GB RAM modules in my Mac Pro and it runs just fine. I did have problems with 512MB modules, though.

Yeah had to take out the 2x512mb from mine it was showing ecc errors on the system report

 

[HAL2010]

So where's the ultimate manual of installing El Capitan on a Mac Pro 1,1? I've followed the instructions in MacVidCards link but I was unsuccessful. I've done several installs of Yosemite and I always succeeded.

 

[wolf1734]

Hello HAL2010

to install El Capitan on pimp pro 1,1 it needs to follow the thread of rthpjm page 56 thread 1390 and you can make a key usb of installation or a partition.
Cordially

 

[nightmare111]

Hello HAL2010

to install El Capitan on pimp pro 1,1 it needs to follow the thread of rthpjm page 56 thread 1390 and you can make a key usb of installation or a partition.
Cordially

Err slight problem the macpro 1,1 doesnt boot from usb you must have another os lion and then restore the el capitan image to a 2nd hdd or in firewire mode transfer the data