MP 1,1-5,1 Apple Raid Card (SAS Drives) on Catalina w/ Open Core

[eksu]

With OpenCore able to load kexts for things like Hardware Acceleration and enabling NightShift, I thought about if it would be possible to load a kext from Mojave to get my Apple RAID Card working. It turns out this works!

I was able to load AppleRAIDCard.kext copied over from Mojave with OpenCore and I can now access my old RAID Array.

Catalina is missing "Raid Utility.app" as well as the command line tool "raidutil", so it is missing a way to manage an existing array, so rebooting back to Mojave to add disks or check on health is currently required.

I've put some effort into getting "Raid Utility.app" or "raidutil" running on 10.15 by reading how the Reactive folks got older applications running. The "Raid Utility.app" initially crashes with an error saying it's missing CoreRAID.framework, but upon bringing this across and linking it the app now crashes on startup (or is just "killed" when ran from the terminal) with no error message.

I also tried to copy over version of the "raidutil" command line tool, but get the error "Unable to acquire a device for controller-type: 'AppleRAIDCard'" on any operations.

Might be useful to be able to access a Hardware RAID array or a SAS drive in Catalina, might not be. Just wanted to share.

 

[Flint Ironstag]

Very cool, and thanks for sharing!

 

[eksu]

I think the ideal configuration would be to set up some drives in Mojave as JBOD and this should allow SAS drives through the backplane in newer OS's.

 

[Cay Hecker]

Hi there,
i just updated my flashed MP5,1 to Catalina today via OpenCore and sadly was missing my RaidCard's Array...

could you specify what you did to at least get access to it under 10.15?
I tried to google how to inject kexts, but i don't know how to... seems pretty confusimg for the moment!


THANK YOU!
Cay

 

[eksu]

Hi Cay,

I searched in finder and found AppleRAIDCard.kext in Mojave. I copied it over and placed it into my OpenCore partition in EFI/OC/Kexts (this folder should already exist.)

If you don't have a Mojave HDD / SSD you should get a second drive so if OpenCore breaks you can repair from Mojave.

Another reason you need a Mojave HDD / SSD in this configuration is that although you can read and write to the RAID card, currently you can not manage your RAID array from Catalina. So you can't check if it's healthy, add spare, rebuild, or enable the write cache. So you will want to have Mojave on hand for these things.

Something else cool I noticed in OpenCore today was that I could see the AppleRaid partition in OpenCore's bootloader so it might even be possible to boot off of the Raid Array with this and newer versions of MacOS.

Then I went to my config.plist for OpenCore and told it to use the new kext by adding a value in the Kernel Add section. I set the Minimum Kernel to 19.0.0 so it loads in Catalina but otherwise anything older uses what is built into the OS.

<key>Kernel</key>
    <dict>
        <key>Add</key>
        <array>
            <dict>
                <key>BundlePath</key>
                <string>AppleRAIDCard.kext</string>
                <key>Comment</key>
                <string>Apple RAID Card</string>
                <key>Enabled</key>
                <true/>
                <key>ExecutablePath</key>
                <string>Contents/MacOS/AppleRAIDCard</string>
                <key>MaxKernel</key>
                <string></string>
                <key>MinKernel</key>
                <string>19.0.0</string>
                <key>PlistPath</key>
                <string>Contents/Info.plist</string>
            </dict>
        </array>

Depending on how you have OpenCore set up this section might be empty or might already have a few values in the array. If it is empty it will look like this and you will have to add <array> in the after add and the <dict> section:

<key>Kernel</key>
    <dict>
        <key>Add</key>
        </array>
        <key>Block</key>
        <array/>

If it already has other values in the array, this one can just go next to the other ones, like this:

<key>Kernel</key>
    <dict>
        <key>Add</key>
        <array>
            <dict>
                <key>BundlePath</key>
                <string>AppleMCEReporterDisabler.kext</string>
                <key>Comment</key>
                <string>DisableAppleIntelMCEReporter</string>
                <key>Enabled</key>
                <true/>
                <key>ExecutablePath</key>
                <string></string>
                <key>MaxKernel</key>
                <string></string>
                <key>MinKernel</key>
                <string>19.0.0</string>
                <key>PlistPath</key>
                <string>Contents/Info.plist</string>
            </dict>
            <dict>
                <key>BundlePath</key>
                <string>AppleRAIDCard.kext</string>
                <key>Comment</key>
                <string>Apple RAID Card</string>
                <key>Enabled</key>
                <true/>
                <key>ExecutablePath</key>
                <string>Contents/MacOS/AppleRAIDCard</string>
                <key>MaxKernel</key>
                <string></string>
                <key>MinKernel</key>
                <string>19.0.0</string>
                <key>PlistPath</key>
                <string>Contents/Info.plist</string>
            </dict>
        </array>
        <key>Block</key>
        <array/>

If you have a dual tray CPU, you should have the AppleMCEReporterDisabled.kext, otherwise you don't need it. If you are using the Active AMD hardware acceleration there will be WhateverGreen & Lilu here. I also am using Radeon Boost and NightShiftUnlocker if you are looking for other things to add.

If you are having more trouble, I can try to make an OpenCore package for you.

 

[Cay Hecker]

Thank you soooo much!

with your tree span i was able to get it up and running...
also managed to enable HW-Accel for H.264 and am very happy indeed!

could you just tell me what AppleMCEReporterDisabler.kext does?
i do indeed have a dualTray (flashed) 4,1 with x5680s.
as i understand it corrects a kernel-panic issue, but i didn't encounter any of that berforehand...

anyway,
KINDEST REGARDS (you saved my life/files)

 

[eksu]

My understanding is that with Catalina they removed some code that was Dual CPU aware because there aren't any supported Macs that use Dual CPU's anymore (same way they removed Apple Raid support even though they didn't need to).

The AppleMCEReporterDisabler.kext catches this issue when it happens without your machine Kernel Panicing. I have it enabled and I also personally needed to enable <key>PowerTimeoutKernelPanic</key> under Quirks to stop Kernel Panics I was having complaining about power management (Turbo Boost, sleep states, etc) when I am under load especially Disk I/O. Not sure if anyone else has this experience or if I have slightly more faulty hardware. I'm on a 4,1 -> 5,1 with X5690's.

I am digging for a less hand-wave-y explication of what AppleMCEReporterDisabler does but I am having a hard time finding more information. I know it enables AMD CPU's to run in Hackintoshes. I will look more or if anyone wants to chime in and enlighten us

 

[rickosx]

Hi, I wish I could understand even half of what's happening but here it goes

I have 4x 4TB SAS discs and I'm trying to use them on a Mac Pro 2008. (Running dosdude's Catalina) I have an apple raid card, the black one but the battery need replacing. Is there a way for me to use the SAS discs just as storage? I don't need the RAID option. Just want to be able to use the discs separately.

Much appreciated if I could get some help

 

[mattpeyton]

I found this thread because I was searching based on a completely different problem. I'm a newbie to Opencore and was upgrading to Big Sur using the very complete Andrew Days instructions. Since I'm not entirely sure where things need to sit and how OC works I managed to unblessed my system and not have a retrograde Mojave install disk to boot up from! I had upgraded both of them to Big Sur - One as master and one as back up. Anyhow I did a reinstall of Mojave and noticed that I could not see the EFI folders through clover config… Or bless them. It took me hours to figure out why. My system runs a High Point raid 7101A… And I had not reinstalled the raid controller software. Somehow or other having a bunch of raid zero partitions that were not controlled/linked caused all sorts of havoc for Opencore tools. I'm only putting this out there in case anyone is experimenting with what you mentioned above and has the same problem… I literally could not open an EFI partition or bless it until I reinstalled the High Point software and then Clover config and then bless worked as normal.