MP 1,1-5,1 Booting disaster(s) after recent Mojave update - Mac 4,1 to 5,1?

[knathanson]

Greetings; new poster here. Lurked for a long time and learned a lot, but obviously not enough.

I took the most recent Mojave system update from Apple on Tuesday, and I have not been able to boot the machine into Mojave since. I could, and probably will, write paragraphs about what has happened, what I tried, what THEN happened, etc., but the TL/DR version is I just keep making it worse.

The purpose of this post is to ascertain whether this situation is unique to me, or if others with machines of similar configuration have (ever?) experienced issues after a Mojave update application?

System description:
MacPro 4,1 flashed to 5,1, single CPU tray replaced by dual tray
dual X5690 3.46GHz cpus
64GB of 1333Mhz ECC RAM (2Rx4) 8GB x 8 sticks
PCIe slot 1 (16x) Highpoint 7101 A PCIe RAID card:

One 1TB Sabrent Rocket NVMe M.2 2280 3rd Gen SSD (boot drive Mojave 10.14.6)
Two 512GB Sabrent Rocket NVMe M.2 2280 3rd Gen SSD (striped into RAID 0 Content Drive)
One 512GB Sabrent Rocket NVMe M.2 2280 3rd Gen SSD (scratch/cache drive)

PCIe slot 2 (16x) Sapphire RX590 Pulse GPU 8GB w/ two mini 6 pin sata to one 8pin power cable adapter (2x slot width; blocks slot 3)
PCIe slot 4 (4x) Ableconn USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type C (1) and Type A (1) PCIe x4 Host Adapter Card
Four SATA2 Hard Disc Drives: 4TB, 2TB, 2TB, 1TB

I've reinstalled the original video card in order to get the boot screen, but even THAT is flaky, and I cannot get it to go into recovery mode on boot in order to reinstall the OS. Resetting the PRAM was not helpful, and actually messed up the startup drive mapping. I have High Sierra on one of the HDs, and Yosemite on two others, and those do boot, but without recognizing the RAID or SSDs.

I applied the update with SIP off (probably stupid; I know...) and it all went downhill from there. I use symbolic links etc. to manage SSD real estate allocation, and all that stuff is now toast no matter what path I boot into. I'm sure I can figure out a way to start over and rebuild EVERYTHING, and the SSDs ARE backed up, but that is an enormous amount of work, so if there is someone who has been down this road and lived to tell about it, I am VERY interested in your story!

Thanks!

 

[MIKX]

If you updated with the COMBO and later, the Supplemental that could possibly be the cause of your problems.
There have been so many revisions of the FULL 6.05gb installer with 18G103 being the latest.

After the first 10.14.6 release it was quickly followed up with the Supplemental.
Then a series of revised 10.14.6 builds were released and even a revised Supplemental.

Then a lot of macrumors posts complaining about kernel panics, wake from sleep problems etc. started to accumulate. the majority of posts seem to indicate that the posters had upgraded with the first 10.14.6 build 18G84 AND the Supplemental.

EDIT : Did you do THREE CONSECUTIVE PRAM resets ? Just might help.

I opted to do an absolutely clean, full install of ( first ) the 18G95 build and then later, the final 18G103 build.I have always done this with all of the final GM upgrades since Sierra.

I had absolutely no issues whatsoever with the latest 18G103 full installer and after a couple of days testing and getting a feel for 10.14.6 I finally Carbon Copy Cloned the 18G103 build to an HFS+ Samsung M.2 970 EVO.

On the 970 EVO everything is working perfectly.

If you still have the FULL 18G103 6.5 gb 10.14.6 installer and another mac that can handle Mojave it would be worth doing a new, clean install to a spare drive, any type of drive will do if you can format it to APFS and then try booting from that drive in your cMP.

Anyway, Good Luck, I sympathise.

PS : I presume that you are on bootrom 144.0.0.0.0

If the above works for you please let us know.

 

[solaris8x86]

If it cannot even be booted into recovery mode. It is over.

 

[knathanson]

If you updated with the COMBO and later, the Supplemental that could possibly be the cause of your problems.
There have been so many revisions of the FULL 6.05gb installer with 18G103 being the latest.

After the first 10.14.6 release it was quickly followed up with the Supplemental.
Then a series of revised 10.14.6 builds were released and even a revised Supplemental.

Then a lot of macrumors posts complaining about kernel panics, wake from sleep problems etc. started to accumulate. the majority of posts seem to indicate that the posters had upgraded with the first 10.14.6 build 18G84 AND the Supplemental.

EDIT : Did you do THREE CONSECUTIVE PRAM resets ? Just might help.

I opted to do an absolutely clean, full install of ( first ) the 18G95 build and then later, the final 18G103 build.I have always done this with all of the final GM upgrades since Sierra.

I had absolutely no issues whatsoever with the latest 18G103 full installer and after a couple of days testing and getting a feel for 10.14.6 I finally Carbon Copy Cloned the 18G103 build to an HFS+ Samsung M.2 970 EVO.

On the 970 EVO everything is working perfectly.

If you still have the FULL 18G103 6.6 gb 10.14.6 installer and another mac that can handle Mojave it would be worth doing a new, clean install to a spare drive, any type of drive will do if you can format it to APFS and then try booting from that drive in your cMP.

Anyway, Good Luck, I sympathise.

PS : I presume that you are on bootrom 144.0.0.0.0

If the above works for you please let us know.

Thanks much for the advice; I have managed to get a current install (need to check version for 18G103...) onto one of my internal HDD volumes and boot from it. I will probably end up having to blow away the (non)booting 1TB SSD and rebuild it completely and hope that I can reinstall and remap with new symbolic links etc.

If I may ask, do you leave SIP on by default or off? I have some utilities that need it to be off in order to fully install, but I think they all can run with it on once they are in place on the drive(s). I just never turned it back on, but I think that may have led to the failures I experienced when the Mojave incremental update encountered a boot volume not protected by SIP.

 

[MIKX]

Yes, SIP "ON" The last time I had to turn SIP off was during the D.I.Y. bootrom upgrade for NVMe booting. 😄