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macOS boot.efi developer's thread
- Thread starter mikeboss
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SUPER happy to hear that Pike is on the mend! 
I'm just thinking out loud and if someone who knows about low-level memory management wants to validate or invalidate my thinking, I'm always eager to be educated. Here's my $.02:
TLDNR: 512MB modules were never a part of the equation in terms of El Capitan's development or testing. For whatever reason, and despite passing any and all tests, 512MB modules (anywhere) choke the installer and evidently, even the createinstallmedia script(s). EC will sort of work with 512MB modules, but as soon as anything requires moving large chunks of memory around (CCCloner, for example), the kernel chokes and panics.
1. Apple positively tests every OS against minimum specs for all supported machines at the time of release...
2. MacPro1,1 & 2,1's shipped with a minimum of 2 matched 512MB DIMMs and a max of 8x2GB DIMMs (as BTO for many thousand $. And yes, we all know they can support at least 32GB without an issue. We're talking about minimums, here)
3. When Lion was introduced, Apple was shipping MacPros with 1GB DIMM's, but Lion was officially supported on (our) MacPro1,1 & 2,1 as long as they had 2GB. Apple presumably tested Lion on MacPros with 512MB x 4 (OEM) as the minimum.
4. Cut to Mountain Lion: 2GB minimum spec. Supported Macs all shipped with 1GB or 2GB DIMMs and every supported Mac has multiple cores. There were probably very few, if any, 512MB DIMMs in any box that Apple tested on, maybe none.
5. I'm guessing that the El Capitan installer is designed to take advantage of all the cores and a minimum "chunk" of 1GB of memory. My supported iMac has 2x1GB @ 667MHz...
Conclusion/Recommendation to anyone having issues: 2GB modules are DIRT cheap (<$20US for 4, new on Amazon, and "for MacPro" with the big, finned heat-sinks). Get at least 4 and toss your old ram. It worked for me and now I'm gonna upgrade to 8x4GB for ~$80US
Any thoughts?
I'm just thinking out loud and if someone who knows about low-level memory management wants to validate or invalidate my thinking, I'm always eager to be educated. Here's my $.02:
TLDNR: 512MB modules were never a part of the equation in terms of El Capitan's development or testing. For whatever reason, and despite passing any and all tests, 512MB modules (anywhere) choke the installer and evidently, even the createinstallmedia script(s). EC will sort of work with 512MB modules, but as soon as anything requires moving large chunks of memory around (CCCloner, for example), the kernel chokes and panics.
1. Apple positively tests every OS against minimum specs for all supported machines at the time of release...
2. MacPro1,1 & 2,1's shipped with a minimum of 2 matched 512MB DIMMs and a max of 8x2GB DIMMs (as BTO for many thousand $. And yes, we all know they can support at least 32GB without an issue. We're talking about minimums, here)
3. When Lion was introduced, Apple was shipping MacPros with 1GB DIMM's, but Lion was officially supported on (our) MacPro1,1 & 2,1 as long as they had 2GB. Apple presumably tested Lion on MacPros with 512MB x 4 (OEM) as the minimum.
4. Cut to Mountain Lion: 2GB minimum spec. Supported Macs all shipped with 1GB or 2GB DIMMs and every supported Mac has multiple cores. There were probably very few, if any, 512MB DIMMs in any box that Apple tested on, maybe none.
5. I'm guessing that the El Capitan installer is designed to take advantage of all the cores and a minimum "chunk" of 1GB of memory. My supported iMac has 2x1GB @ 667MHz...
Conclusion/Recommendation to anyone having issues: 2GB modules are DIRT cheap (<$20US for 4, new on Amazon, and "for MacPro" with the big, finned heat-sinks). Get at least 4 and toss your old ram. It worked for me and now I'm gonna upgrade to 8x4GB for ~$80US
Any thoughts?
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This is suggesting to me that the minimum RAM required for successful install is 12GB.
And for the moment and that for the moment... you could have Board A as 4 x 2GB and Board B as 4 x 1GB to reach 12GB, or with Board B as 4 x 512MB to reach 10GB (that's 2 x configurations for install that we need to test). Can anyone do that? - I'm not able to at this point.
- David
Thank you for your kind words.
Last night I decided to test a "low memory" installation because a number of people have reported trouble. My MacPro has 32GB of RAM (8 x 4GB), so I pulled the lower riser entirely, and ejected two of the RAM sticks from the upper riser. The result is 8GB. I then ran the installer. I too found that the installer then kernel panics whilst extracting the Essentials.pkg.
---------------------- Edit ------------------------------------
I now don't think that the Installer causes a Kernel Panic (KP). The installer fails because it cannot fully "stream decode" the Essentials.pkg.
Code:
Nov 21 10:19:03 Mac-Pro OSInstaller[485]: PackageKit: Extracting file:///System/Installation/Packages/Essentials.pkg (destination=/Volumes/El Capitan/.OSInstallSandboxPath/Root, uid=0)
Nov 21 10:20:45 Mac-Pro OSInstaller[485]: /BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/AppleFSCompression/AppleFSCompression-80/Common/StreamCompressor.cpp:1352: Error: chunk 728 of /Volumes/El Capitan/.OSInstallSandboxPath/Root//Library/Fonts/Kaiti.ttc decompressed to 12924, expected 65536
Nov 21 10:20:45 Mac-Pro OSInstaller[485]: /BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/AppleFSCompression/AppleFSCompression-80/Common/StreamCompressorQueue.c:371: 0x11b7475bf 0x11b74aa6b 0x11b749717 0x11b749533 0x11b749679 0x114ee68ff 0x114edb453 0x114eedbd7 0x114eedbd7 0x114edf2e3: Error: setting queue error to 22 (Invalid argument)
Nov 21 10:20:45 Mac-Pro OSInstaller[485]: PackageKit: Got copier error 22 extracting to path /Volumes/El Capitan/.OSInstallSandboxPath/Root//Library/Fonts/Kannada Sangam MN.ttc: Invalid argument
Nov 21 10:20:45 Mac-Pro OSInstaller[485]: /BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/AppleFSCompression/AppleFSCompression-80/Common/StreamCompressor.cpp:731: Error: freed StreamCompressor for /Volumes/El Capitan/.OSInstallSandboxPath/Root//Library/Fonts/Kannada Sangam MN.ttc that is still has a curBuffer
Nov 21 10:20:45 Mac-Pro OSInstaller[485]: /BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/AppleFSCompression/AppleFSCompression-80/Common/StreamCompressor.cpp:739: Error: freed StreamCompressor for /Volumes/El Capitan/.OSInstallSandboxPath/Root//Library/Fonts/Kannada Sangam MN.ttc that is still has a compressionBuffer
Nov 21 10:20:45 Mac-Pro OSInstaller[485]: /BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/AppleFSCompression/AppleFSCompression-80/Common/StreamCompressorQueue.c:397: Error: returning errno 22 (Invalid argument) from DrainStreamCompressorQueue
Nov 21 10:21:30 Mac-Pro OSInstaller[485]: PackageKit: Install Failed: Error Domain=PKInstallErrorDomain Code=110 "An error occurred while extracting files from the package “Essentials.pkg”." UserInfo={NSUnderlyingError=0x7fdc26839940 {Error Domain=BOMCopierFatalError Code=1 "Block-compressed payload operation failed" UserInfo={destinationPath=/Volumes/El Capitan/.OSInstallSandboxPath/Root, offset=20304280, type=BOMCopierFatalError, sourcePath=/System/Installation/Packages/Essentials.pkg, NSLocalizedFailureReason=Block-compressed payload operation failed}}, NSFilePath=/Volumes/El Capitan/.OSInstallSandboxPath/Root, NSURL=Essentials.pkg -- file:///System/Installation/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg#Distribution, PKInstallPackageIdentifier=com.apple.pkg.Essentials, NSLocalizedDescription=An error occurred while extracting files from the package “Essentials.pkg”.} {
NSFilePath = "/Volumes/El Capitan/.OSInstallSandboxPath/Root";
NSLocalizedDescription = "An error occurred while extracting files from the package \U201cEssentials.pkg\U201d.";
NSURL = "Essentials.pkg -- file:///System/Installation/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg#Distribution";
NSUnderlyingError = "Error Domain=BOMCopierFatalError Code=1 \"Block-compressed payload operation failed\" UserInfo={destinationPath=/Volumes/El Capitan/.OSInstallSandboxPath/Root, offset=20304280, type=BOMCopierFatalError, sourcePath=/System/Installation/Packages/Essentials.pkg, NSLocalizedFailureReason=Block-compressed payload operation failed}";
PKInstallPackageIdentifier = "com.apple.pkg.Essentials";
}The graphical installer failed "gracefully" for me and told me the machine needed to restart (I even think the automatic 10 second countdown applies here). On reboot, my mac showed a startup screen that looks very like a KP screen, but it wasn't. It was just a nice message telling me that a previous installation had failed, press a key or wait a short time, and the regular reboot occurred.
----------------------------- End edit -----------------------------------------------
To test the result, I immediately re-installed the two RAM sticks into the upper riser (now 16GB), and re-ran the installer with success.
It appears that the installer is RAM-sensitive, and 8GB of RAM is not enough!!!!.
I'll investigate some more. But for now you will need more than 8GB of RAM to use the modified installer (pikify3.1).
---------------------- Edit 2 ------------------------------------
I have done a bit more testing. I have tried to use just the straightforward Apple createinstallmedia, the only change I made was to replace the /.IABootFiles/boot.efi file so that the Installer will boot. Using this method creates a 2-pass install, the initial boot and run of the installer allows you to pick the destination disk. Your destination disk is then "prepared" (OS X Install Data folder is created). The installer repairs itself by putting the Apple boot.efi file back into the .IABootFiles folder, and then restarts the machine booting back into the installer (so here I had to go overwrite the .IABootFiles/boot.efi file again, then restart!). In the 2nd pass the Installer now automatically starts.
With 8GB of RAM the install fails in the same manner as my pikify3.1 build.
With 16GB of RAM the install succeeds. (I can only test with 16GB since I only have 4GB modules).
I therefore conclude that more than 8GB of RAM is required, probably because the installer OS is held in RAM disks and the decompression of the Essentials.pkg must just trip over the limits of the remaining RAM.
I was worried that the modifications I made for the pikify3.1 build were the cause of the 8GB threshold, but I believe my testing proves that the pure Apple (or at least as close as I could get to it) installer has the same issue. Phew!
---------------------- End edit 2 ------------------------------------
You can find the script to create a pikified installer at post #807
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Hi
I have been able to do three El Capitan installs using your instructions. The problem was not enough ram. I increased the ram in my Macpro1,1 fro 6 GB to 12 GB and the install worked!
Thank you very much.
Sincerely,
Don James
Got this MP with 4GB (8x512 crappy factory sticks). Successful install was with 32GB of new memory.
This is quite surprising as Apple claims that 2GB RAM is the minimum requirement for El Capitan.
Maybe RAM banks are organised differently in newer Macs with Intel´s Nahalem or later microarchitecture ?
Or could that be a result of the EFI64 --> EFI 32 translation in the boot loader ?
----------------------- Edit -------------------------------------
My raisers are configured 2x2GB+2x1GB (total of 6GB) each, so I just did a quick check by pulling one of them. Installer can be created with rthpjm's script but fails before finishing installation with a restart and the usual black box telling that something made the Mac restart.
I can confirm that installation works with 12GB
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Hi David,
I have tested the following RAM configurations (sorry for the bad table format):
Total RAM -----|-------Raiser A ------|---- Raiser B --------|-------- Installer -----|
.....................|.....Slot 1: 2GB........|.....Slot 1: 2GB.......|
12GB.............|.....Slot 2: 2GB.........|....Slot 2: 2GB.......|...........success........|
.....................|.....Slot 3: 1GB........|.....Slot 3: 1GB.......|
.....................|.....Slot 4: 1GB........|.....Slot 4: 1GB.......|
-----------------|-----------------------|-----------------------|-----------------------|
.....................|.....Slot 1: 2GB........|.....Slot 1: 2GB.......|
10GB.............|.....Slot 2: 2GB.........|....Slot 2: 2GB.......|.fails @ 5 minutes.....|
.....................|.....Slot 3: 1GB........|.....Slot 3: empty....|.remaining...............|
.....................|.....Slot 4: 1GB........|.....Slot 4: empty....|
-----------------|-----------------------|-----------------------|-----------------------|
.....................|.....Slot 1: 2GB........|.....Slot 1: empty....|
..6GB.............|.....Slot 2: 2GB.........|....Slot 2: empty....|.fails @ 15 minutes...|
.....................|.....Slot 3: 1GB........|.....Slot 3: empty....|.remaining...............|
.....................|.....Slot 4: 1GB........|.....Slot 4: empty....|
-----------------|-----------------------|-----------------------|-----------------------|
This confirms the minimum RAM needed being 12 GB and the variation in time of failure suggests that data is stored in RAM during installation, obviously with a disfunctional allocation. Otherwise, it would quit with a proper message rather than a restart. Would be interesting to find out, how much RAM is needed on a qualifying Mac to install El Capitan. My prime suspect is still the EFI64 --> EFI32 translation, but I don´t understand enough to analyze Pike´s source code in that regard.
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If there is anyone out there with a 3,1 / 4,1 / 5,1 that can organise their RAM to 8GB, and then use "/Applications/
Install OS X El Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia" to build an unmodified Apple-based installer. It would be great to find out if the same failure occurs....
If I'm getting this right: you think that amount of installed memory while building the installer matters?
If so, I think it's not the case here. My pikified installer was created on a 5,1 with 48GB.
we are rather concerned about low RAM. Any chance you can reduce the 48 GB to 8 GB and run the installer with that ? This would most likely mean only one 8GB module left, don´t know, if that even works on regular operation ... unless you have two 4GB modules flying around.
Hello 666sheep,
No not "build the installer", I mean "run the installer". I'm curious to know if the apparent memory issue is limited to the 32-bit-efi machines, or whether a supported 64-bit-efi machine has the same issue after creating an installer with createinstallmedia...
Inspector42 was postulating that the issue might be a manifestation of the 32-64bit efi thunking. I'm wondering if it is simply an issue with createinstallmedia...
If you are up for it, can you drop your RAM configuration to 8GB on your 5,1 machine, and then try one or both of pikify3.1 installer, and/or a straight Apple createinstallmedia. Run the installer(s) with 8GB RAM and see if they complete or fail....
We could log a bug report with Apple if a supported machine fails to install from media created with createinstallmedia (at 8GB - given that the minimum RAM check is for 2GB!). Obviously I can't log a bug against my unsupported 1,1->2,1, but if a 5,1 demonstrates the issue we "could"...
For those of us lucky enough to have a bucket-full of RAM it's never been an issue, but others with lower RAM have struggled.
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Thanks 666sheep for testing.
If it works with 2GB on a supported Mac, are we looking at a "memory leak" on unsupported Macs ? This would explain, why it needs at least 12GB to finish successfully. With less memory, we would run into an overflow before the installer finishes, triggering the restart. Just a theory for now and I have no idea, how to prove this.
I very much doubt the issue is related to the amount of RAM per se. If the official requirement is 2GB, that's probably true. The problem might be related to the parity characteristics of the RAM modules. Perhaps the older 512MB modules aren't compatible with El Capitan installation, but newer ones are OK.
@666sheep
I echo Inspector42. Thanks for testing. There was no particular reason for 8GB, other than the tests by myself and Inspector42 seemed to say 12GB works, 10GB was borderline, and 8GB was well within the failure envelope.
So 2GB of RAM on a supported MacPro is okay from your testing, as Inspector42 says, our combined results suggest the MacPro1,1 and 2,1s are affected. It could be a memory leak as suggested but that's going to be tricky to track and prove (given the constraints of the installer environment).
I think we should just accept it at the moment. We have a number of methods for MacPro1,1 and 2,1:
- Connect your disk to a newer Mac, install from there, and manually change the boot.efi files post install before putting the disk back into the old MacPro
- Follow Peter's guide.
- Use the pikify3.1-based installer, but make sure you have 12GB of RAM or more
Peter, see posts #855 and #859. The issue occurs with 1,2 and 4GB sticks as well, unless total amount exceeds 8GB.
I may have misunderstood some of the comments. Didn't you say you were able to install El Capitan on just 2GB?
Yes, but on a 4,1 using non-modified installer. Other users tests on 1,1/2,1 with all possible module sizes failed below unless they had more than 8GB total.
512MB sticks themself seem to be compatible, as driftchie said above.
I wouldn't know myself. My Mac Pro has 18GB of RAM. But I still think the way parity is/isn't achieved in RAM modules may be more decisive than the amount of RAM itself for the reported failures.
Hello guys. just to let you know that I am alright. Still suffering a bit from double vision, but I can workaround it by using a cloth for one eye. But only temporarily only of course. Will be corrected with a small operation next week.
Anyway. I added some new debug output to see if the memory modules are detected correctly. Should be fine, and I cannot look into memory leaks right now, but since the same (compiled) source code works with Yosemite... I'd say this is an issue with the installer and friends.
Anyway. I added some new debug output to see if the memory modules are detected correctly. Should be fine, and I cannot look into memory leaks right now, but since the same (compiled) source code works with Yosemite... I'd say this is an issue with the installer and friends.
It's great to have you back, Pike. Anyway, have your doctors said you can work? I wouldn't overwork my eyes if I were you. Please, take care.