Mac Pro 2,1 and OS X Mavericks

[H2SO4]

Messages (also FaceTime etc...) works fine.

Boot Camp I've not tried but should be fine.

Recovery Partition is not created, so I had to create it afterwards.
Though I've yet to boot into it, I do use it for FileVault2 and Fine My Mac, which both work fine.

Nice, that's all I need to hear. IIRC you did post about making a recovery pt earlier, (or somebody did), I'll have a look for that too.

 

[Dark Dragoon]

Nice, that's all I need to hear. IIRC you did post about making a recovery pt earlier, (or somebody did), I'll have a look for that too.

Yeah that was me (or at-least I was one of the people posting about it) on page 2 of this thread, where I posted a link to this thread which gives instructions on how to create a recovery partition after installation.

Though it may not be necessary for you if you already have a recovery partition. I needed to create one as the drives I was installing onto were completely clean, rather than upgrading or replacing an existing installation.

 

[H2SO4]

Yeah that was me (or at-least I was one of the people posting about it) on page 2 of this thread, where I posted a link to this thread which gives instructions on how to create a recovery partition after installation.

Though it may not be necessary for you if you already have a recovery partition. I needed to create one as the drives I was installing onto were completely clean, rather than upgrading or replacing an existing installation.

Same boat as you then. I'm installing onto an external drive using a Mac mini while I work on this MacPro.

 

[Frazzle]

I'm currently using 1085 via Chameleon on a 1,1 with no other hacks like 2,1 firmware.

Well then you could simply replace boot.efi (2 locations) in your 10.8.5 install and skip Chameleon at boot. Allows you to test it first; I did that on my 1,1 with 10.8.5 to make sure Tiamo's hack worked. Quite something to finally see the Mac boot as a Mac again on its existing 10.8.5 installation without any other changes.

 

[H2SO4]

Well then you could simply replace boot.efi (2 locations) in your 10.8.5 install and skip Chameleon at boot. Allows you to test it first; I did that on my 1,1 with 10.8.5 to make sure Tiamo's hack worked. Quite something to finally see the Mac boot as a Mac again on its existing 10.8.5 installation without any other changes.

Never thought of that. Nice, ta.

 

[H2SO4]

Am I the only one constantly checking the Apple Store to see if the new Mac Pro is one sale yet? (Even though I've decided not to buy one for a year).

 

[rpseguin]

That's good. I have a Mac Pro 1,1 and a 2,1 that I want to update to Mavericks or Mountain Lion.

Is there a GOOD and clear tutorial on using MLPostFactor?

Can you document your process?

So far, the tutorials I am running across are not very clear...
I would strongly prefer to be able to install from a USB drive (flash or hard drive, I don't care) and not do some bizarro partitioning install scheme.

I assume that I install my NVidia GTX 680 PC GPU and pull the old Apple graphics card after the Mountain Lion or Mavericks install is complete.

Success! I've installed Mavericks on my Mac pro 1,1 using an external HD partition (instead of a USB key), and a spare HD that I had. Everything works great except for the lame graphics coming from the stock ATI X1900XT (new video card is en route).

Many thanks to Tiamo for his awesome work in managing this, and to oemden for automating the process. This Mac Pro has been an awesome machine for me since 2007, and I'm glad it's going to get a few more years of useful life.

One final question: when it comes time to install Mavericks on my main drive (which is a three-drive SSD RAID array), will the main drive be overwritten, or will Mavericks be installed over top of my Lion installation? I'm not sure how the installer handles this, given the installation is coming from an external USB drive.

Thanks.

 

[Dark Dragoon]

Is there a GOOD and clear tutorial on using MLPostFactor?

You don't need MLPostFactor.

Can you document your process?

Have you tried oemden's automated tool?

Alternatively have you tried Rastafabi's updated guide?

EDIT: The original short guide is here, and here is the slightly updated boot.efi file with verbose disabled

I would strongly prefer to be able to install from a USB drive (flash or hard drive, I don't care) and not do some bizarro partitioning install scheme.

This is how most people are doing the install now, once you've created a Mavericks USB installer you just run it exactly as if you were installing Mavericks on a supported Mac.

I assume that I install my NVidia GTX 680 PC GPU and pull the old Apple graphics card after the Mountain Lion or Mavericks install is complete.

Not sure about whether you need to do that or not. If that card is natively supported by Mavericks then there should be no need except you would be doing the boot selection (choosing to boot from the Mavericks installer on the memory stick) blind. Also that Apple card would need to be one supported by Mavericks.

 

[gdeusthewhizkid]

I don't dispute a single word of that, but I'm not really arguing against your opinions. I'm just putting a different perspective from a different user (hence "what this says to me").

When I bought by Mac Pro in 2006, I was lucky enough to have been pretty much given a blank cheque by the company I worked for to go out and buy a machine to allow me to work from home. They also made it clear that it would be my machine and I'd be able to keep it if I ever left the firm. So, I pretty much went out and bought what was the best machine on the market at the time, reckoning that with upgradability and performance well ahead of the pack it would give me plenty of years of use before it became obsolete. Now, 7 years later, at the back end of 2013, I have a Mac which can still keep pace with what's required for the work I do.

That to me is exactly what I bought it for. I'm delighted that my old beast still manages to pull its weight, and come pretty close to what most PC users would get if they bought a fairly standard desktop machine today. And apart from having to do a little hackery to get the most recent OS onto it, it's been pretty plain sailing all the way.

what's the specs on yours?

 

[azimuthal]

I just wanted to also applaud tiamo for his boot.efi and all the other folks supporting this. I was just able to install Mavericks on my 2006 Mac Pro 1,1.

I also have a question about software update. On my system, I simply created two partitions on an internal 500GB drive one that was about 10GB where I cloned the Mavericks USB startup disk that I created and the second partition I used to install and run Mavericks on. Its working great and now I have a recovery disk of sorts, unless the drive fails

Anyway, with all that said, what I want to make sure I understand is if I run software update, will this overwrite the boot.efi on the partition that I'm running Mavericks on (e.g. the second partition)? I thought we only needed the boot.efi to do the initial install, correct? Or is that version of the boot.efi on the OS drive i created so that if i do run software update it will overwrite the updated boot.efi? When i perform a search on the local system for a boot.efi, i don't see it anywhere and I have ShowAllFiles for Finder set to True.

I still have my Lion OS X on a separate disk so can always fall back to that should something go wrong. And I suppose if it does overwrite it, I can always boot back into Lion and copy over the boot.efi that works.

Anyway, thanks again for all the work! This is really fantastic!

Cheers

Azi

 

[Dark Dragoon]

Anyway, with all that said, what I want to make sure I understand is if I run software update, will this overwrite the boot.efi on the partition that I'm running Mavericks on (e.g. the second partition)? I thought we only needed the boot.efi to do the initial install, correct? Or is that version of the boot.efi on the OS drive i created so that if i do run software update it will overwrite the updated boot.efi?

Most software updates will not touch boot.efi, the ones that might are the point releases such as 10.9.1 however people have checked and at-least for the moment 10.9.1 should be safe once it is released. In the future though other system updates have the potential of overwriting the boot.efi, however this should be rare.

When i perform a search on the local system for a boot.efi, i don't see it anywhere and I have ShowAllFiles for Finder set to True.

Take a look in: /System/Library/CoreServices/

I still have my Lion OS X on a separate disk so can always fall back to that should something go wrong. And I suppose if it does overwrite it, I can always boot back into Lion and copy over the boot.efi that works.

That should work fine.

 

[azimuthal]

Got it...and thanks again!

 

[TiberioG]

Thanks Tiamo!

Are you italian? The meaning of your nickname (ti amo) in italian is "i love you".


I have a mac pro 1.1 and tomorrow i'm going to install 10.9 on it with your patched efi. In my hackintosh i use chameleon so i have the graphics enabler for video card like my 8500gt.
So what should i do in order to use my card with 10.9 with your bootloader?

 

[cscotto]

Success!

Hi, thanks for the reply. Just to be clear, you repaired permissions on the boot drive already installed on the machine. I will try that and just for the hell of it repair the usb stick too.

EDIT: I repaired permissions, same problem. Any ideas?

OK, I bought a new flash drive, only 8 GB. Started the whole process over. Paid much more attention to every step to make sure no errors crept into the process. I did notice that Textedit was substituted smart quotes for straight quote. Fixed the quotes; I know in some languages it makes a difference.

Plugged in the drive, restarted, and 20 minutes later, my MacPro1,1 is running 10.9! Amazing work Tiamo. The operating system is pretty snappy compared to the 5,1 quad core I also have. Wifi worked right off the bat. Everything just worked. Since I have a 5,1, I did this mostly for the learning experience, but now I am wondering if there is some way I can put this second machine to use. Thanks to everyone that chimed in with advice. I would buy you all a beer if you were around.

 

[H2SO4]

Yeah that was me (or at-least I was one of the people posting about it) on page 2 of this thread, where I posted a link to this thread which gives instructions on how to create a recovery partition after installation.

Though it may not be necessary for you if you already have a recovery partition. I needed to create one as the drives I was installing onto were completely clean, rather than upgrading or replacing an existing installation.

Almost. Everything is perfect except messages. I get a console message along the lines of;

identityservicesd[279] [Warning] Registration failed for Registration info (XXXXXXXXXX): [Registered: NO] [Type: AppleID] [Device Name: XXXXXXXXXX] [Service Type: iMessage] [Env: (null)] [Main ID: XXXXXXXXXX] [C2K: YES] [Push Token: <XXXXXXXXXX>] [Region ID: R:GB] [Base Number: +440000000000] [URIs: (null)] [Candidates: (XXXXXXXXXX)] [Auth Cert: XXXXXXXXXX] [Reg Cert: 0x0] [Profile ID: D: XXXXXXXXXX] [Auth Token: <XXXXXXXXXX...>] [Auth User ID: D: XXXXXXXXXX] [Heartbeat Date: (null)] (Error: 9)

Any ideas?

 

[Dark Dragoon]

Any ideas?

Looks like its Messages not signing into your iCloud account.

That happened on one of my installs (after I did a couple of reinstalls of OSX in quick succession),
to fix it I removed the account and re-added it in Messages.

I might have also restarted the computer but I can't remember.

 

[star-affinity]

you can use PC graphics card that are supported in Mavericks but you will not see boot screen.

I am using a GT 240 in mine, I use this machine for music and editing wav files so this card is more then enough. others will work too but the best options are NVidia cards. do you have wifi and bluetooth card in your Mac. I have no problems with sleep but I do not have a wifi/bluetooth card and I am thinking those older ones may be the cuase of sleep issues

Thanks for your reply. Managed to get it all working with the PC version of Radeon HD 4890 I have (but no boot screen of course) although I had to install patched ATI kexts to get proper acceleration (Quartz Extreme, right?). Wake from sleep also works fine now.

BUT! I have this ”ghost monitor” which mean OS X thinks there's a second display connected even if there isn't. This could be fixed when I used the Chameleon boot loader by adding ”GraphicsEnabler Yes” to the ”org.chameleon.Boot.plist”. But now when I'm not using Chameleon I don't know what to do.

Any ideas on how to fix this, anyone?

 

[hwojtek]

I need to join the voices of applause - my Mac Pro 2,1 got much more than "a new lease of life", it's like having a new computer. AWESOME WORK to all the hackers who figured out the way!!!

For reference my scenario was as follows: I partitioned an USB external drive to 10 GB "installer" and 310 GB "clone" partitions, then using SuperDuper cloned my existing Mountain Lion (yeah, I used to run it off Chameleon) partition from the SSD in the Mac Pro to the "clone" partition on the external disk. Then I followed the instructions to create a Mavericks installer on the "installer" partition (the latter I actually did on my Mac Mini running Mavericks). Then I plugged the Chameleon/ML SSD out of the Mac Pro and booted up from the installer partition on the USB disk (it wouldn't start Mountain Lion). I used the installer to upgrade the Mountain Lion contained on the "clone" partition of the USB disk. Once it upgraded, I was able to boot from the Mavericks on the USB disk straight away, so I replugged the SSD, used the SuperDuper again to copy the "clone" partition to the actual disk in the Mac Pro and was ready. This scenario allows for some added safety if you want to upgrade, not do a clean install.

 

[H2SO4]

Looks like its Messages not signing into your iCloud account.

That happened on one of my installs (after I did a couple of reinstalls of OSX in quick succession),
to fix it I removed the account and re-added it in Messages.

I might have also restarted the computer but I can't remember.

I'm gonna give that a try. I think I'll also keep 10.8.5 around as I need to run it in a VM. Mavericks is brilliant but if you sync your iPhone using a cable and not the cloud there's a deal breaker waiting for you.

 

[hwojtek]

Mavericks is brilliant but if you sync your iPhone using a cable and not the cloud there's a deal breaker waiting for you.

But then there's really not much use of Mavericks if you do not leverage the cloud mechanism to the maximum.

 

[Dark Dragoon]

But then there's really not much use of Mavericks if you do not leverage the cloud mechanism to the maximum.

Well there are some fairly big under the hood changes, regarding things like memory management and compression, app nap, timer coalescing.
Admittedly some of these are more useful to me on my MacBook Pro rather than my Mac Pro.

Then there are interface changes such as big improvements when using multiple displays, tabs in Finder and the new tags to replace labels (I preferred labels but I can see the use of tags), as well as the new apps like iBooks and Maps.

So yeah, even though I can't sync my iPhones contacts, calendar, bookmarks etc... with Mavericks (or easily sync it directly with iCloud) I still find that Mavericks has quite a few useful features and improvements over both Lion and Mountain Lion.

 

[lurkingbf]

My GTX-570 arrived yesterday, so I was finally able to try the upgrade install on my main drive as opposed to the test drive. The install went smoothly, and the final result is *almost* perfect. There are some anomalies, like:

1) Computer occasionally and randomly does a full boot on wake from sleep.

2) Bluetooth does not work on wake from sleep. there is either a 30 or so second lag, or I have to pair the devices (mouse and trackpad) all over again. I'm using a third-party USB bluetooth device, so that may be the issue (although it has worked flawlessly in several OS X versions previously). It also doesn't matter whether I plug the USB bluetooth directly into the Mac, or into the USB hub on my monitor--same result.

3) The most serious issue is that I absolutely can NOT get iCloud mail or notes to set up. I have tried numerous times, and receive the message, "Your iCloud Mail account could not be enabled....Try enabling mail again.

Anyone have experience with these issues?

 

[hwojtek]

Well there are some fairly big under the hood changes, regarding things like memory management and compression, app nap, timer coalescing.

You are right, however most of the under the hood changes aren't clearly visible to an average end user, "it just works" (even though it works better than before). On the contrary, the cloud features are a highlight of current Apple technology that is readily available to anyone - the more iCloud-enabled devices one has got, the better. I do adore the new memory management and OpenCL integration, but I am quite sure my dad wouldn't even notice
OK, this is so off-topic. Let's get back to the topic now.

 

[lurkingbf]

One more...just as I completed posting this last note, my entire screen went nearly completely snowy! I was able to see throughout he snow to log out and log back in, and the issue is now gone. But, WTF? I have a two-monitor setup: 30" and 23" Dell Ultra-sharps. What the heck is THAT all about?

 

[Nameci]

One more...just as I completed posting this last note, my entire screen went nearly completely snowy! I was able to see throughout he snow to log out and log back in, and the issue is now gone. But, WTF? I have a two-monitor setup: 30" and 23" Dell Ultra-sharps. What the heck is THAT all about?

I would guess that your issues were caused by your graphics card.