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

[Ant3000]

Thanks rthpjm and ant3000 for the suggestions. I had to get back to work this week so I ended up reverting. I think I'm going to wait until I can get an SSD installed and try to install it on that; that way if it doesn't work, I can just plug in my old drive and keep working and tinker on the second drive until I get it working without affecting my work.

Thanks again! I'll give it a try later

That's what I did too - installed on an SSD and migrated everything over - I still have the possibility to boot in Yosemite, Mavericks and even Snow Leopard if necessary from various Hard drives - the big advantage of the Mac Pro. I have used both a Crucial MX200 and now a Samsung 850 Evo 1TB - the MX 200 is heading for my laptop soon. I used the Pikify method and the installer creator of rthpjm and it works really well. Then used Boot64 to protect the Boof.efi files in future updates.
[doublepost=1464125571][/doublepost]

Not sure if others have had the same issue after updating to 10.11.5...

I installed 10.11 on my MacPro 2,1 with no issues via pike's boot.efi, but the newest update 10.11.5 installed via Mac App Store my Mac seemed to reboot improperly, sounds like its trying to boot off the CD/DVD.

I had to shut it down and hold the Option key and boot into my Lion partition, re-downloaded the boot.efi and reinstalled it back into its proper places in my El Capitan partition.

Rebooted and still sounded like it was trying to boot off my CD/DVD again, it kept doing it in a loop with no end.

Shut it down, held Option key and manually booted from the El Capitan partition and sure enough this time it booted and finished the 10.11.5 update.

However, every time I do a re-start or reboot, I have to manually hold Option key and boot into my El Capitan. If I leave it by itself to reboot, it'll keep trying to boot into the CD/DVD it seems.

I already performed a PRAM reset and also set the startup disk to El Capitan, so not sure what happened. El Capitan still works as normal, its just booting.

Have you selected the startup disk through system prefs when booted into El Capitan? I noticed that I had to do this to get it remember where to boot from - can't recall if this happened on previous installs.

 

[Razieln64]

The 10.11.5 update replaces the boot.efi. Make sure you delete it and copy the one provided by piker alpha at the right locations:

- /usr/standalone/i386/
- System/Library/CoreServices/

It works fine. I've just done that myself on my own computer.

 

[AnimeFunTv]

Hmm... I dunno what happened but I was showing 28GB or ram when I should have 32GB. Two of my memory modules starting showing up as 2gb on one of my riser cards when they should be 4gb per module.

I just recently upgraded to 32GB a few weeks ago, so I cleaned up the contacts of the modules and the riser cards. Now everything boots up just fine and now have 32GB of ram again. Ran a Memory test via Tech Tool 7 and all checked out fine.... Weird.

 

[Ultracyclist]

Not sure if others have had the same issue after updating to 10.11.5...

I installed 10.11 on my MacPro 2,1 with no issues via pike's boot.efi, but the newest update 10.11.5 installed via Mac App Store my Mac seemed to reboot improperly, sounds like its trying to boot off the CD/DVD.

I had to shut it down and hold the Option key and boot into my Lion partition, re-downloaded the boot.efi and reinstalled it back into its proper places in my El Capitan partition.

Rebooted and still sounded like it was trying to boot off my CD/DVD again, it kept doing it in a loop with no end.

Shut it down, held Option key and manually booted from the El Capitan partition and sure enough this time it booted and finished the 10.11.5 update.

However, every time I do a re-start or reboot, I have to manually hold Option key and boot into my El Capitan. If I leave it by itself to reboot, it'll keep trying to boot into the CD/DVD it seems.

I already performed a PRAM reset and also set the startup disk to El Capitan, so not sure what happened. El Capitan still works as normal, its just booting.

Having the exact same "problem" as you describe.

 

[rdfincher]

Back in January 2016, I installed El Cap 10.11 on my MacPro 1.1, using piker-alpha's modified boot.efi file. I then installed rthpjm's patch (ref post # 1391) to ensure that future updates to El Cap by Apple would not overwrite the modified boot.efi files. This future-proofing seemed to work well because subsequent updates to 10.11.2, 10.11.3 and 10.11.4 all occurred automatically and painlessly.

But not so with the latest 10.11.5 update. I can't work out just what is happening, but after downloading 10.11.5 the "query logo" now appears instead of the normal Apple logo at startup, and the machine won't boot.

Other users who initially had trouble installing 10.11.5 have said they ran (or re-ran) Boot64v3.mpkg.zip, after which 10.11.5 installed and booted normally. This seems to contradict the stated purpose of the Boot64v3 patch. Please, can anyone advise in clear terms what is the correct process for downloading and installing the new 10.11.5 update?

Thanks

 

[Ant3000]

I had El Cap 10.11.1 or 2 on a "test" HD and had updated to 10.11.4 using Boot64 without issue.
Recently rebuilt the installer with 10.11.4 and installed on a new SSD - followed by Boot 64, following the instructions of booting into recovery etc. Then updated to 10.11.5 without issue. I had not followed the instructions correctly initially so when I checked for whether the boot.efi files were protected by SIP it showed they were. I think I had tried to run boot 64 from the finder without following the instructions - I thought I had remembered the process correctly - but obviously not! Any need to re-run it was my error - not the script. Now glad to say it appears to be fine. I changed the boot screen to black which seems to be another way to check that SIP isn't protecting the boot.efi as this cannot be done if it is.

Have you checked the size of the boot.efi files? Apple's Boot.efi is different size to Piked version and is a quick check as to whether they have been changed back to the Apple flavour.

 

[rdfincher]

Thanks Ant3000. Will respond later as I now have a bigger problem. After attempting to install 10.11.5 downloaded from App Store, none of the HDD's in my MacPro are accessible or bootable, including the SSD that originally contained El Cap 10.11.4. S**t oh Dear - what have I done?!

Ah, well, rebooted from external drive clone of SSD with El Cap 10.11.4 and MacPro then ran 10.11.4 as expected. All the drives are now visible in Finder/Terminal/Disk Utility - wheww!

A quick check of the internal SSD showed that the downloaded 10.11.5 had been installed, but piker-alpha's boot.efi files had been overwritten. So I replaced the Apple boot.efi files with piker-alphas, and then rebooted from the internal SSD. All now OK, but clearly, rthpjm's Boot64v3 script had not worked its magic as planned. I'll now re-run the rthpjm script, and check that the launch daemons have been properly installed. Will report back.

Thanks again
Rob

 

[Ant3000]

Did you install Boot64 following rthpjm's instructions by booting into recovery and disabling SIP, copying and pasting the script in Terminal. The mistake I made was not doing that just running the installer, but caught it before actually updating.

I also have earlier versions of OSX on different installed drives - if there is an issue with an update it will boot into the next version of the OS it can find - I assume from what you say you don't have this. It is good practice to have this as it makes it easier to recover.

I seem to have problems with InDesign CS6 and ElCap now but not due to any of this process.

 

[rdfincher]

Did you install Boot64 following rthpjm's instructions by booting into recovery and disabling SIP, copying and pasting the script in Terminal. The mistake I made was not doing that just running the installer, but caught it before actually updating.

I also have earlier versions of OSX on different installed drives - if there is an issue with an update it will boot into the next version of the OS it can find - I assume from what you say you don't have this. It is good practice to have this as it makes it easier to recover.

I seem to have problems with InDesign CS6 and ElCap now but not due to any of this process.

Hi Ant3000 - I think that's where I made a mistake too. I don't have a Recovery Partition on my 10.11.5 install, so I'm in the process of downloading 10.11.5 again from the App store, and proceeding in accordance with rthpjm's instructions in post # 1484. When I first installed 10.11 back in January 2016, I hadn't read #1484, only #1391. The later post gave less ambiguous instructions, and I hope that by following these, all will be well. BTW I do have earlier versions of Yosemite and El Cap on different installed drives, but again they do not have recovery partitions. Fortunately (?) I don't use InDesign CS6. Thanks again for your help.
Rob

 

[Ant3000]

I have found that if something happens and for some reason the OS won't boot it just automatically finds the next best option and boots into that. This is quite worrying as all the files you expect to see on the desktop are not there.
I just spotted you are in Melbourne - me too, but in Derbyshire UK.

 

[dphotog]

Quick question to those who have successfully updated to 10.11.5, did you update directly from the App Store? And how did you replace the two boot.efi after that? Thanks a lot!

 

[Ant3000]

I had installed Boot64 as referenced above with full details in the posts referred to. This basically ensures the boot.efi files are not overwritten by the Apple versions. The update can then be run directly from the MAS.
Or, you can download the update and change the boot.efi files manually - again, this is detailed in depth on this thread.
If you are doing a clean install using the USB installer script by rthpjm you could use the MAS 10.11.5 installer and be up to date but you still need to be aware of future updates and use one of the methods listed to ensure everything keeps working. It sounds like you have El Cap running already, but bear in mind the RAM requirements if clean installing via USB installer.

 

[spin498]

I have been unable to upgrade my El Capitan install on my 2006 Mac Pro, beyond 10.11.3. From reading the posts here, it's suggested to disable SIP. If I do that and the upgrade works, will re enabling SIP afterwards kill the upgrade?

 

[rdfincher]

I have found that if something happens and for some reason the OS won't boot it just automatically finds the next best option and boots into that. This is quite worrying as all the files you expect to see on the desktop are not there.
I just spotted you are in Melbourne - me too, but in Derbyshire UK.

(Off topic:Yes, we live about 100 km south of Melbourne, and coincidentally, my great great grandfather lived and died in Derby).
I'm experiencing something similar - when I try to boot from a bootable El Cap USB stick, it seems that nothing much happens, until the black screen plus Apple logo appears, and booting completes itself, but from the OS on the internal SSD. If I have a Terminal window open during this process, a message appears stating "Recovered on ....Date....ime..etc". This suggests that the boot process is started from the Recovery Partition (*) on the USB stick, then is transferred to the main SSD and completed from there. If I didn't know that a message had appeared in Terminal, then I would have thought - like you - that the OS at first didn't boot, then found the next best option on the internal SSD.

BTW, neither the downloaded-to-USB install El Capitan.app, nor the one on my SSD have created a Recovery Partition(*). At least not one that can be seen either by Disk Utility or in Terminal "diskutil list". So at this stage I can't follow the instructions in rthpjm's Post #1391 to "...boot off another partition" and temporarily defeat SIP so that Boot64v3 can work its magic. and of course when I enter in Terminal the code "touch /S/L/CS/boot.efi" it returns "Operation not permitted". Which simply means that App Store upgrades overwrite the boot.efi files and necessitate a manual restoration.

(*) NB I was able to use Chris Silvermouth's Recovery Partition Creator v 4.01 to create a RP on the USB stick, but NOT on the SSD. I'm waiting for advice from him regarding this.

 

[Ultracyclist]

I have been unable to upgrade my El Capitan install on my 2006 Mac Pro, beyond 10.11.3. From reading the posts here, it's suggested to disable SIP. If I do that and the upgrade works, will re enabling SIP afterwards kill the upgrade?

No it won't.

 

[rthpjm]

I'm experiencing something similar - when I try to boot from a bootable El Cap USB stick, it seems that nothing much happens, until the black screen plus Apple logo appears, and booting completes itself, but from the OS on the internal SSD. If I have a Terminal window open during this process, a message appears stating "Recovered on ....Date....ime..etc". This suggests that the boot process is started from the Recovery Partition (*) on the USB stick, then is transferred to the main SSD and completed from there. If I didn't know that a message had appeared in Terminal, then I would have thought - like you - that the OS at first didn't boot, then found the next best option on the internal SSD.

Hello rdfincher,

If you have used your USB memory stick successfully already, then it will not boot again until you re-bless the correct location.

One of the last steps that Apple's Install Assistant performs before it reboots is to bless the USB memory stick pointing to the "standard" location. Unfortunately, this step occurs after it runs my modification, so there is no opportunity (that I can find) to intercept and correct this behaviour.

The solution is to bless the USB memory stick before each subsequent use.

sudo -s
[YourLoginPassword]

bless --folder /Volumes/Install\ Mac\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan/.IABootFiles --file /Volumes/Install\ Mac\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan/.IABootFiles/boot.efi

 

[daavYo]

hi

i just installed El Capitan on a MacPro 1.1

i followed the instructions posted by rthpjm on post #1390, #1391

thanx to Pike, rthpjm & all others involved

u guys rock !!!

pour les francophones, ne faites pas les petits malins comme j'ai essayé de faire
en saisissant
cd ~/Téléchargements/pikify3.1
au lieu de
cd ~/Downloads/pikify3.1

entrez exactement le code qu'on vous donne : ça maarche !

 

[macprobuffalo]

So just to confirm- if I have the Boot64 daemon installed it should replace the boot files automatically when I do the 10.11.5 update ?


Following the test instructions in this post my system checks out. I didn't install 10.11 until 10.11.3 and never had to boot into recovery to install the Boot64 Daemon (assuming because it it a newer version than the ones mentioned in the few previous posts).

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...os-x-el-capitan.1890435/page-60#post-22366144

Thanks

 

[daavYo]

So just to confirm- if I have the Boot64 daemon installed it should replace the boot files automatically when I do the 10.11.5 update ?


Following the test instructions in this post my system checks out. I didn't install 10.11 until 10.11.3 and never had to boot into recovery to install the Boot64 Daemon (assuming because it it a newer version than the ones mentioned in the few previous posts).

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...os-x-el-capitan.1890435/page-60#post-22366144

Thanks

as far as i know boot64 doesnt replace the good boot.efi on 10.11.5 update
i had to reboot from another disc, then replace manually the boot.efi before reboot from el Capitan disc as said on post #2302

 

[Ant3000]

So just to confirm- if I have the Boot64 daemon installed it should replace the boot files automatically when I do the 10.11.5 update ?


Following the test instructions in this post my system checks out. I didn't install 10.11 until 10.11.3 and never had to boot into recovery to install the Boot64 Daemon (assuming because it it a newer version than the ones mentioned in the few previous posts).

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads...os-x-el-capitan.1890435/page-60#post-22366144

I installed at 10.11.4 and then added Boot64 following instructions. Update to 10.11.5 was fine without further manual changes being required. It failed once for me through my error on installing Boot64 but I found it updated fine when installed correctly. I also did the same on an earlier version and again it was fine.

 

[Jon.bux]

I'm looking at trying this again soon. Do I need to update to Yosemite first? Or can I simply update from 10.7 Lion to El Cap without problems? Here's a look at what I'm thinking of doing:

Clone existing drive to SSD
Install El Cap on SSD
Remove HDD containing 10.7 and setting SSD as boot drive.

Do I need to worry about TRIM on the SSD with El Cap? If so, what do I need to alter in these steps to get this to work?

Thanks again in advance for all the help. I'm super stoked to get this up and running!

 

[wolf1734]

I'm looking at trying this again soon. Do I need to update to Yosemite first? Or can I simply update from 10.7 Lion to El Cap without problems? Here's a look at what I'm thinking of doing:

Clone existing drive to SSD
Install El Cap on SSD
Remove HDD containing 10.7 and setting SSD as boot drive.

Do I need to worry about TRIM on the SSD with El Cap? If so, what do I need to alter in these steps to get this to work?

Thanks again in advance for all the help. I'm super stoked to get this up and running!

Hello Jon.bux
Here is what to do to activate trim under El Capitan.
Cordially
[doublepost=1464756972][/doublepost]

Hello Jon.bux
Here is what to do to activate trim under El Capitan.
Cordially

Aller dans le terminal et tapez la commande n° 1

puis tapez le mot de passe, ensuite la commande n° 2 sans les guillemet.

Répondre au question par ( y ) et après le redémarrage ,

tapez la commande n° 3. les trip sont activées


1. Disable Rootless (sudo nvram boot-args=rootless=0)

2. Run "sudo trimforce enable" read it's text and do what it asks you for.

3. Enable Rootless again (sudo nvram -d boot-args)

 

[Ant3000]

I'm looking at trying this again soon. Do I need to update to Yosemite first? Or can I simply update from 10.7 Lion to El Cap without problems? Here's a look at what I'm thinking of doing:

Clone existing drive to SSD
Install El Cap on SSD
Remove HDD containing 10.7 and setting SSD as boot drive.

Do I need to worry about TRIM on the SSD with El Cap? If so, what do I need to alter in these steps to get this to work?

Thanks again in advance for all the help. I'm super stoked to get this up and running!

I would keep the drive with Lion in there in case you ever need to boot from it at a later date should anything ever go wrong. I recommend you read page 1 of this thread (at least) for important information on how to do the update and RAM requirements should you create a USB installer and how to protect future updates.

 

[rdfincher]

Hello rdfincher,

If you have used your USB memory stick successfully already, then it will not boot again until you re-bless the correct location.

One of the last steps that Apple's Install Assistant performs before it reboots is to bless the USB memory stick pointing to the "standard" location. Unfortunately, this step occurs after it runs my modification, so there is no opportunity (that I can find) to intercept and correct this behaviour.

The solution is to bless the USB memory stick before each subsequent use.

sudo -s
[YourLoginPassword]

bless --folder /Volumes/Install\ Mac\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan/.IABootFiles --file /Volumes/Install\ Mac\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan/.IABootFiles/boot.efi

G'day rthpjm,
Thanks for your response - I'd more or less resigned myself to being unable to successfully create a Recovery Partition. Hence my slow response. I'll try your suggestion tomorrow and advise the outcome.

However, I also have managed to create a recovery partition on the internal SSD, using Chris Silvermouth's script, and of course I can't boot off that partition either. Am I correct in assuming a similar bless process is required for the equivalent folder on/in the SSD recovery partition?

 

[Lancebroyles]

G'day rthpjm,
Thanks for your response - I'd more or less resigned myself to being unable to successfully create a Recovery Partition. Hence my slow response. I'll try your suggestion tomorrow and advise the outcome.

However, I also have managed to create a recovery partition on the internal SSD, using Chris Silvermouth's script, and of course I can't boot off that partition either. Am I correct in assuming a similar bless process is required for the equivalent folder on/in the SSD recovery partition?

I could be mistaken, but I think the Answer to your question might be here.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2006-2007-mac-pro-1-1-2-1-and-os-x-yosemite.1740775/page-79

Post# 1956