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

[rthpjm]

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?

Hey rdfincher,

If you now have a recovery partition, then you may be able to use my "recover the Recovery HD" script. Search this thread for rrhd.

EDIT: rrhd is posted at #1607

It sounds like you have "made your own" installation some how... Most of the methods we have posted here should have resulted in both an OS partition and a Recovery partition. It's curious that you've ended up with just the OS, and then had to splice a Recovery in!

If you have the time, post the steps you went through to get you where you are today. You don't have to, it's just that I'm curious

 

[OGNerd]

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

The rootless boot argument to disable SIP was killed with the initial release of El Capitan [the functional equivalent to disable SIP is now entering the csrutil disable command from the recovery partition's terminal application], all that is required is the sudo trimforce enable command.

 

[Ant3000]

Just a small side issue that I wonder if anyone else has any information on. My Mac Pro 1.1 upgraded to 2.1 running 10.11.5 has an ATI HD5770 (genuine Apple) card in slot 1 but it only showing as having lane width of x8. I checked the configuration with the utility and it says it is running at max speed but I thought this should work at x16. Tried reseating the card and checked power lead.

So, is this common or is something not working correctly? I can find a couple of people with similar issues but they were old posts so unsure how current the info is. Any help much appreciated.

 

[rthpjm]

Just a small side issue that I wonder if anyone else has any information on. My Mac Pro 1.1 upgraded to 2.1 running 10.11.5 has an ATI HD5770 (genuine Apple) card in slot 1 but it only showing as having lane width of x8. I checked the configuration with the utility and it says it is running at max speed but I thought this should work at x16. Tried reseating the card and checked power lead.

So, is this common or is something not working correctly? I can find a couple of people with similar issues but they were old posts so unsure how current the info is. Any help much appreciated.

Hello Ant,

I have an XFX branded HD5770, flashed with Netkas EFI. The Expansion Slot Utility shows me x16...

 

[Ant3000]

Hello Ant,

I have an XFX branded HD5770, flashed with Netkas EFI. The Expansion Slot Utility shows me x16...

View attachment 634074

Hi, thanks of the info on your set-up. This is what mine looks like...

 

[rthpjm]

Hi, thanks of the info on your set-up. This is what mine looks like...


View attachment 634078

That sort of implies that the card is reporting x8 requirement to the OS.
The expansion slot is configured to accept x16, but your card is "saying" it only needs x8.

 

[Ant3000]

That sort of implies that the card is reporting x8 requirement to the OS.
The expansion slot is configured to accept x16, but your card is "saying" it only needs x8.

Just tried changing the settings and it now reports as x4 - it seems to be halving the amount available.

 

[rthpjm]

Just tried changing the settings and it now reports as x4 - it seems to be halving the amunt available. View attachment 634086

Try re-seating the card

 

[Ant3000]

I had done that but just trying again - tried it in slot 2 set to x8 and it is halving the speed in there too.
How does this compare to the details of your card...



[doublepost=1464906506][/doublepost]Just tried reseating everything, retting NVRAM and the usual but still says x8 in the x16 slot and x4 in the x8 slot. But it is as though the card is only asking for half of the lane width - this is a genuine Apple "Graphics Card Update" version to replace the crappy X1900 vacuum cleaner but it may have been this speed from new. Reading up on it, it doesn't seem to be a big problem according to some and shouldn't slow things down much at all, but wanted to make sure there wasn't anything obviously setup incorrectly.

 

[JazzerAlto]

My Apple 5770 is also showing 8x in a 16x slot. Mac Pro 1,1 upgraded to 2,1 with 10.11.5. Never looked before, strange. I'm pretty sure it used to report at 16x.

 

[Ant3000]

Thanks for the info - I have been trying to find more info but not getting far. Seems the Mac Pro 1.1 were all PCIe 1.0 so not sure if the later HD5770 card is 2.0 and if that makes a difference or if something else is causing the issue. Perhaps the Expansion Slot Utility is reporting the wrong data?

 

[owbp]

Strange thing... Seems to be associated with 5770 only?
No problem with 7950 in cMP1,1 OS X 10.11.6 Beta

Btw, the only difference i had with 7950 in x16 and x8 slots are few (small) numbers in benchmarks. No way anyone can see a real difference in everyday use.

 

[Ant3000]

Thank owbp, good to know the speed shouldn't be affected too much. The initial idea of half the 'bandwidth' seems more alarming that it actually is in reality. I assume you upgraded your graphics card - do you notice a big improvement from the stock card?

 

[owbp]

The initial idea of half the 'bandwidth' seems more alarming that it actually is in reality

Yes it does, but actually it's nothing to worry about. For example here is same card, just tested, in x8 and x16 slot


For comparison, same HD7950 in x16 slot but with stock Mac ROM speed @800 MHz (vs Gigabyte's 1000MHz) gives much lower result

I assume you upgraded your graphics card - do you notice a big improvement from the stock card?

Well, stock card was 7300GT so yes but i had a HD6850 for some time and installing HD7950 after it was night and day difference. It just flies in FCPX (there's no way you can make it stutter, but i don't go above 1080p) and in Bootcamp it is a real joy too (Fallout 4, Witcher 3 and similar "pro" apps ).

 

[Ant3000]

Did you flash it yourself? Are all versions of this card suitable for Macs do you know (subject to flashing)? It's tempting to keep upgrading this machine but I guess I have to stop somewhere ;-)

 

[owbp]

Yes i did, it was a breeze after reading few topic here and on netkas' forum.
Also, there are people here that will help you with that if you're afraid to edit BIOS yourself (counting myself in).
Best bet for flashing are cards with reference board and outputs (DVI, HDMI and two mDP). The ones i see most used are Sapphire, MSI and Gigabyte.

I hear you regarding upgrading this machine, but i try to look at it like this - upgrades that are "locked" to this machine are CPU and RAM, everything else you can (and hopefully will) transfer to another machine when the time comes.

 

[Ant3000]

I agree, the SSD and other "improvements" can hopefully be recycled into a future Mac when something forces an upgrade. Although I may stay at this sort of level for a while - Adobe CS6 products are just about hanging on with El Cap but not sure how much further they will work and I don't fancy signing up to their rental scheme. So unless there is some major change in hardware or software that is outstanding, I am happy with the current sort of set-up. Thanks for your help.

 

[rdfincher]

Hey rdfincher,

If you now have a recovery partition, then you may be able to use my "recover the Recovery HD" script. Search this thread for rrhd.

EDIT: rrhd is posted at #1607

It sounds like you have "made your own" installation some how... Most of the methods we have posted here should have resulted in both an OS partition and a Recovery partition. It's curious that you've ended up with just the OS, and then had to splice a Recovery in!

If you have the time, post the steps you went through to get you where you are today. You don't have to, it's just that I'm curious

 

[rdfincher]

Hi rthpjm,
Only too glad to post steps which led to my current configuration, specially if it helps you and others to keep these lovely old MacPros running. Mine is a 1.1 with 2 x 2 GHz dual core Intel Xeon processors, 10 GB DRAM, an NVIDIA GeForce GT120 512 MB video card from MacVid, and a 120 GB SSD from OWC.

In January 2016, I installed OS X 10.11.2 using Piker-Alpha's boot.efi files in place of the Apple files. I followed your procedure in posts #1390 and #1391 of this thread, and checked that your Boot64v3 was properly installed. Everything worked beautifully, and I had no problems with just 10 GB of DRAM. When updates 10.11.3 and 10.11.4 were released, I downloaded and installed them straight from the App Store without problems. But after using the same procedure for 10.11.5, the update installed but wouldn't boot.

1 Sure enough, this last update had overwritten the Piker-Alpha boot.efi files with new Apple files.
2 I manually deleted the Apple boot.efi files and replaced them with the P-A files in the S/L/CoreServices and usr/standalone/i386 folders. I also had to add again my video card details in the PlatformSupport.plist.
3 After this, the MacPro boots successfully into OS X 10.11.5. I'm using it now for this post.
4 So, thinking that the Boot64v3 script wasn't doing its job of rewriting the boot.efi files overwritten by the standard Apple update, I reverted to your post #1391 to check. "Operation Not Permitted" was the return in Terminal to the code "touch /S/L/CS/boot.efi". Therefore I assumed that Boot64v3 wasn't working.
5 Next I tried to reboot from the Recovery Partition, as per post #1391, without success - there was NO Recovery Partition! A quick Forum search suggested reinstalling OS X 10.11.5 would create a Recovery Partition.
6 Using a bootable 10.11.5 USB drive to reinstall OS X did not create a Recovery Partition on the SSD drive. Further, there was no Recovery Partition on the bootable USB drive either.
7 I managed to create a RP on the USB drive by using Chris Silvertooth's Create Recovery Partition v 4.x. However, I could not boot from this RP.
8 So I used the same script to successfully create a 650 MB RP on the SSD. This RP is visible in Terminal (diskutil list) and in Disk Utility, and on the start-up screen after holding Command + R during booting. As I said in my reply to Ant3000 in post # 2314, booting seems to be initiated from the Recovery Partition, but then continues a normal boot through to completion. I definitely do not get the normal Recovery screen with its Disk Utility/Internet Recovery/Time Machine etc options.
9 Right now I'm about to bless the appropriate /Volumes/SSDName folder and files as suggested by you and Lancebroyles in posts #2324 and #2325.

But I'm going to wait for any response you might have to all of the above before doing so. Thanks in anticipation!

 

[rthpjm]

Hi rthpjm,
Only too glad to post steps which led to my current configuration, specially if it helps you and others to keep these lovely old MacPros running. Mine is a 1.1 with 2 x 2 GHz dual core Intel Xeon processors, 10 GB DRAM, an NVIDIA GeForce GT120 512 MB video card from MacVid, and a 120 GB SSD from OWC.

In January 2016, I installed OS X 10.11.2 using Piker-Alpha's boot.efi files in place of the Apple files. I followed your procedure in posts #1390 and #1391 of this thread, and checked that your Boot64v3 was properly installed. Everything worked beautifully, and I had no problems with just 10 GB of DRAM. When updates 10.11.3 and 10.11.4 were released, I downloaded and installed them straight from the App Store without problems. But after using the same procedure for 10.11.5, the update installed but wouldn't boot.

1 Sure enough, this last update had overwritten the Piker-Alpha boot.efi files with new Apple files.
2 I manually deleted the Apple boot.efi files and replaced them with the P-A files in the S/L/CoreServices and usr/standalone/i386 folders. I also had to add again my video card details in the PlatformSupport.plist.
3 After this, the MacPro boots successfully into OS X 10.11.5. I'm using it now for this post.
4 So, thinking that the Boot64v3 script wasn't doing its job of rewriting the boot.efi files overwritten by the standard Apple update, I reverted to your post #1391 to check. "Operation Not Permitted" was the return in Terminal to the code "touch /S/L/CS/boot.efi". Therefore I assumed that Boot64v3 wasn't working.
5 Next I tried to reboot from the Recovery Partition, as per post #1391, without success - there was NO Recovery Partition! A quick Forum search suggested reinstalling OS X 10.11.5 would create a Recovery Partition.
6 Using a bootable 10.11.5 USB drive to reinstall OS X did not create a Recovery Partition on the SSD drive. Further, there was no Recovery Partition on the bootable USB drive either.
7 I managed to create a RP on the USB drive by using Chris Silvertooth's Create Recovery Partition v 4.x. However, I could not boot from this RP.
8 So I used the same script to successfully create a 650 MB RP on the SSD. This RP is visible in Terminal (diskutil list) and in Disk Utility, and on the start-up screen after holding Command + R during booting. As I said in my reply to Ant3000 in post # 2314, booting seems to be initiated from the Recovery Partition, but then continues a normal boot through to completion. I definitely do not get the normal Recovery screen with its Disk Utility/Internet Recovery/Time Machine etc options.
9 Right now I'm about to bless the appropriate /Volumes/SSDName folder and files as suggested by you and Lancebroyles in posts #2324 and #2325.

But I'm going to wait for any response you might have to all of the above before doing so. Thanks in anticipation!

Hi rdfincher,

I keep using the caveat that Apple are still developing SIP, and as it develops it will probably break Boot64!

I had some trouble from 10.11.1 to 10.11.2 ( I think I figured it out and fixed it )
I also had some trouble from .3 to .4 ( I didn't really investigate here )
Finally, .4 to .5 I had the same experience as you. ( I haven't had time to investigate yet )

I "think" that .3 to .4 was simply that the "flags" ( as in chflags ) still had the user change flag set (uchg), which uninutatively means users are not allowed to change the file (compared with nouchg, which means users are allowed to change the file!).

I "think" that .4 to .5 may have completely broken the Boot64 technique (.4 probably introduced something, it only becomes apparent when the next upgrade came along). I'll investigate further, but it looks like the Sandbox exclusion is not being honoured, so the /S/L/C/boot.efi remains protected by SIP.

Boot64 will continue to operate if you completely disable SIP. Of course to do this you need a Recovery partition!

Thanks for the "how I got here" list. It hasn't really helped though!
I remain confused, if you followed #1390, then you should have a recovery partition. It's just odd.
There's probably no point going down that road any further, "you are where you are"....

The symptoms you describe are a common effect. When booting into the recovery partition, it's a two-stage process.
Stage 1 boots using the boot.efi file found at /Volumes/Recovery HD/com.apple.recovery.boot/
There are a number of files in that folder including a BaseSystem disk image (it's hidden in the Finder)
Stage 1 is set up to create some RAM disks which are populated from the BaseSystem

Stage 2 sees the initial boot-from-disk hand over to to the newly created RAM-disks (effectively a soft reboot)

This usually means that you have to replace the boot.efi files in both the Recovery HD, and the BaseSystem disk image in order to boot into the Recovery environment.

If the boot.efi is replaced in just the com.apple.recovery.boot folder but not in the BaseSystem disk image, you will usually experience your symptoms. As stage 1 hands over to stage 2, that second boot.efi copy is not correct so the stage 2 boot fails. The firmware reverts back to its "search for a bootable partition" mode which will usually find your main Mac OS X partition as the first candidate, it boots from that.

I'm not familiar with the script you referred to that builds a recovery partition, I can't comment on its results.

My #1390 pikify method takes all this into account. The USB install media is already modified to put the Pike R Alpha boot.efi files into the right places. When the (Apple) installer runs it creates a Recovery HD partition first, it copies the BaseSystem.dmg from the USB stick which is already modified with the PA boot.efi, it also copies the boot.efi file from the USB stick into the com.apple.recovery.boot folder (which of course is also the PA version on the USB stick already). Therefore the Recovery HD is correct if you use the #1390 pikify method.

Note: the 10.11.2 update had a Recovery partition upgrade embedded, one of the files the RHD upgrade replaced was the boot.efi file in com.apple.recovery.boot. It didn't replace the BaseSystem.dmg. To fix the 10.11.2 RHD you need to put the PA boot.efi file back into com.apple.recovery.boot.

Because lots of people use the alternative method of installing El Capitan, by connecting their MacPro disk to a newer supported Mac running the installer from there, they end up with an install and Recovery HD that has Apple boot.efi files in all locations. Whilst most people know to replace the boot.efi files in the main OS partition they often don't know what to do to get the RHD working. That's why I wrote the rrhd script....

 

[rdfincher]

Hi rthpjm,
As you say, "..I'm where I am", and will probably stay there until 10.11.6 or 10.12. But I'd like to go further and nail this issue. I'm amazed though at the knowledge that you and others on this Forum have about the inner workings of the boot process. How do you acquire it? In my pre-Mac days when I hacked PC's to run Mountain Lion, I would boot in verbose mode to try and understand just what was going on, but the process was complex and beyond my experience base. I've never studied Unix or C etc, nor ever found any literature which describes the boot process. And my memory at 73 is no longer able to retain pages of detail like the verbose screens show. So it's great to pick up stuff like in your above post and try to absorb and comprehend. I might go back to post #1390 and start over. I've got a SuperDuper! clone of the SSD as a safeguard against making errors, plus TM backups etc. I can only dream about writing scripts like Boot64 and RPC 4.x (check out musings.silvertooth.us/2014/07/recovery-partition-creator-3-8/#comment-304411). However if I can help with testing of new scripts etc, please advise. Cheers Rob

 

[EpiV1988]

I have a MP 1,1 with flashed Radeon 5770 and want to get El Cap running completely. While I get it running, I lose bluetooth, wifi, and detection of flash drives (Mouse and Keyboard work). Any Ideas? The commands to disable SIP in recovery ALSO do not work.

 

[Ant3000]

Not sure I understand - at what point do these things stop working - before you install, during or after? How are you trying to install - How much RAM and what configuration of modules do you have?

 

[EpiV1988]

Not sure I understand - at what point do these things stop working - before you install, during or after? How are you trying to install - How much RAM and what configuration of modules do you have?

Initially I used this tutorial:

and restored the downloaded Macintosh HD.dmg. From there I continued by replacing with Pike's Boot.efi as the tutorial said. Upon booting (and migrating from Lion HDD) is where I face the issues of Bluetooth, Wireless, and USB. All are immediate from startup. It's also on this install that I attempt to disable SIP in recovery and it fails.

I'm creating an install media currently with Pikify 3.1 to attempt a fresh install with this hardware and not just cloning. I will try as soon I can.

MY HARDWARE:
MacPro 1,1
2x Dual Core 2.66 Ghz Xeon
4 4gb Ram Modules (I know about the 12gb minimum)
ATI Radeon HD 5770 (Flashed)
1TB 10.7.5 Lion
1TB for El Capitan
Bluetooth Card OEM
Airport Card from Macbook Pro 1,1 (AR5BXB6)

 

[Ant3000]

I used the installer on a similar set-up and it worked fine. Are you doing the changes on the same Mac you are having the issues, or on another Mac and then cloning the install?.

Just wondering if the drivers for some of the "broken" stuff are not being installed as they are not on the Mac where the initial install is taking place. Or could it be some of the items such as the Airport card are not supported under El Capitan. The only time I have heard of USB issues is when trying to get El Capitan on an older Macbook using the methods that work on a Mac Pro.

The Pikify method of creating the installer also means you can use the latest version of ElCap from the App Store (providing you can download it) which saves a lot of updates once installed.