macOS 10.14 Mojave on Unsupported Macs Thread

[flygbuss]

But should I just use the patcher or native update?

I always used the patcher even if my drive is AFPS. When DP7 came out I used the Software Update within System Preferences once and ended up with a broken OS.
(Finder wouldn't start and all the OS included apps failed to load.)
So I downloaded the full installer of DP7 via the patcher and created a new boot stick.
With that it worked flawlessly.
I know what they say about the lightning but if you've been struck once, you're not taking the chances.
Especially since the installation via the patcher is not a big deal..
[doublepost=1534505478][/doublepost]Oh and I have a MBP 8,1 late 2011

 

[imessage1]

Alright, I've finally finished it... APFS ROM Patcher is finally done! Some precautions:

- APFS ROM Patcher is to be used AT YOUR OWN RISK! There is always the possibility that your machine could become bricked as a result.
- DO NOT apply APFS ROM Patcher if your machine already can boot from APFS volumes
- If you get the following dialog, it is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you open your machine, remove your logic board if necessary, and verify the exact EEPROM type your machine has. Selecting the wrong EEPROM model will MOST LIKELY result in a bricked system!

View attachment 776034

Download here. Please be sure to post results!

Hi Dosdude1

I am using a mid 2009 Macbook Pro 13inch (model 5,5) with an ssd and it is running High Sierra with the APFS file system.
I patched the boot rom a few months ago using your APFS boot rom patcher version 1.0.2

I have also patched the boot rom today using your latest APFS boot rom patcher version 2.0.0

I would like to install Mac OS Mojave when the final release is made available later this fall.
Would it be possible to do an upgrade from my current High Sierra system to Mojave, or do I have to do a clean install
of Mojave ?

Thank you

 

[flygbuss]

Hi Dosdude1

I am using a mid 2009 Macbook Pro 13inch (model 5,5) with an ssd and it is running High Sierra with the APFS file system.
I patched the boot rom a few months ago using your APFS boot rom patcher version 1.0.2

I have also patched the boot rom today using your latest APFS boot rom patcher version 2.0.0

I would like to install Mac OS Mojave when the final release is made available later this fall.
Would it be possible to do an upgrade from my current High Sierra system to Mojave, or do I have to do a clean install
of Mojave ?

Thank you

You can either do a clean install of Mojave and migrate your data or upgrade your High Sierra partition.
Though I think migration is recommend.
I did a Mojave update on my HS partition yesterday and I experienced some trouble with iCloud and Keychain afterwards.
Most certainly this happened because I put the hard drive into another machine and not because of the upgrade.

Good luck!

 

[pkouame]

Also, I talked with an apple support agent, and he tipped me off that when macOS Mojave releases to the public, APFS will be mandatory in order to run Mojave. He didn't seem like the most insightful guy, but that surprised me. He also said that currently the apple developers working on Mojave are all using HFS+ instead of APFS due to some bugs happening with APFS right now. Don't know what this means for the future of unsupported macs, but APFS seems like the only future to Apple, even though its buggy.
[doublepost=1534486302][/doublepost]

I think your assumption is correct due to my findings talking to support.

Thanks. Very interesting tid bit from Apple support (hope he’s not the guy on those ingenius commercials )
HFS+ held up for quite a while now but it’s admittedly a little old in the tooth. Hope they iron out their bugs. I wonder if it’s related to the T2 SSD crashes on the latest models? I’ve been following that closely and I don’t think they have a solution yet. Consequences are dire: logic board replacement and unusable encrypted SSD...Apple is screwing up big time these days..I’m about to kit my pro 3.1 with NVME SSD (per a recommendation on this site) so APFS will make even more sense for me.
[doublepost=1534512685][/doublepost]

Hi Dosdude1

I am using a mid 2009 Macbook Pro 13inch (model 5,5) with an ssd and it is running High Sierra with the APFS file system.
I patched the boot rom a few months ago using your APFS boot rom patcher version 1.0.2

I have also patched the boot rom today using your latest APFS boot rom patcher version 2.0.0

I would like to install Mac OS Mojave when the final release is made available later this fall.
Would it be possible to do an upgrade from my current High Sierra system to Mojave, or do I have to do a clean install
of Mojave ?

Thank you

Can’t speak for @dosdude1 but as long as Apple/Intel don’t make radical changes to the APFS.efi you should be good to go.
[doublepost=1534513732][/doublepost]

Sort of. You can use a tool like Hopper Disassembler to decompile a program into assembler, but this is much more low-level and harder to read than the original C++ or whatever code. Then you can edit the assembler and create a new executable. This is how I fixed the nVidia Tesla crash.
[doublepost=1534480324][/doublepost]
This looks super familiar, almost like the telemetry plugin crash @jackluke and I fixed back on like page 70. Never used the patcher but have you installed whatever the Penryn/C2D patch?
[doublepost=1534480373][/doublepost]Also, for what it's worth. Panic logs like this are only kind of useful. Boot with keepsyms=1 to show the actual function names in the stack trace.
[doublepost=1534480453][/doublepost](Sorry for the spam...)

Could somebody fill me in on the HFS+ vs APFS difficulties? I'm using DP7 on HFS+ with zero problems. I'm on a MacBook7,1 though so I should really convert the SSD to APFS anyways.

Also! DP7 fixes the save dialogs so that it remembers the previous folder
[doublepost=1534481065][/doublepost]@dosdude1, out of curiosity what is the exact reason the newer AMD drivers won't load? Is this because they use SSE4.2 instructions? Or is it something else? (I don't have a computer with that hardware or I'd be testing it myself.)

If I were to attempt this, I would find the load points for the various shaders, especially the (deprecated) OpenGL transparency/translucency ones, and start inspecting those. Problems is, those shaders are also compiled. If I have time I’ll look into the possibility of decompiling the shaders themselves. There may be a clue there. But the light/dark mode glitch bug may be else where embedded in one of Skylight’s zillion frameworks.

The fact that metal accelerated gpus don’t manifest the same glitches pretty much takes metal out of the picture.

Another way to debug the glitch would be to remotely debug a non metal window server/skylight Mohave machine via Xcode gpu framebuffer tracers and tools . A fun exercise for those so inclined...I’m itching to try, but haven’t found the time to.

 

[zoeloe]

You can either do a clean install of Mojave and migrate your data or upgrade your High Sierra partition.
Though I think migration is recommend.
I did a Mojave update on my HS partition yesterday and I experienced some trouble with iCloud and Keychain afterwards.
Most certainly this happened because I put the hard drive into another machine and not because of the upgrade.

Good luck!

Is it me or false alert from an older ClamXav (3.4.1)?
ClamXav just barfed in
17 Aug 2018, 14:56:00
APFS ROM Patcher.zip: Osx.Malware.Agent-6543462-0 FOUND

Headsup,.. any ideas ?

my 2 cents.

 

[TimothyR734]

No i don´t

Kextutility will repair permissions sometimes that works
[doublepost=1534518243][/doublepost]

would you be kind enough to punctuate your (decidedly useful) postings? they ARE hard to read, and require more time to decipher. thank you.

To make a long story short I have had my iMac 9,1 formatted with APFS since developers beta 2 and been using the software update to update since smoothly

 

[thegurgz]

I always used the patcher even if my drive is AFPS. When DP7 came out I used the Software Update within System Preferences once and ended up with a broken OS.
(Finder wouldn't start and all the OS included apps failed to load.)
So I downloaded the full installer of DP7 via the patcher and created a new boot stick.
With that it worked flawlessly.
I know what they say about the lightning but if you've been struck once, you're not taking the chances.
Especially since the installation via the patcher is not a big deal..
[doublepost=1534505478][/doublepost]Oh and I have a MBP 8,1 late 2011

Yeah, tried the software update again last night, and it did the same thing. Deleted my recovery partition and won’t boot. Going to try to install DP7 from the patcher over the broken OS, but it probably won’t work.

 

[pkouame]

Kextutility will repair permissions sometimes that works
[doublepost=1534518243][/doublepost]
To make a long story short I have had my iMac 9,1 formatted with APFS since developers beta 2 and been using the software update to update since smoothly

On to dp8 next week!

I quickly ran some graphics and performance benchmarks on dp7 comparing them to my dp3 ones (posted a while ago) and the numbers are slightly better. Nothing to shout about, but I noticed a slightly newer (internal) Nvidia driver version and some slightly better OpenGL marks! (go figure). Metal performance has been very steady, so it looks like the metal frameworks are getting close to shippable. Let's hope APFS is debugged completely (it's been a while now Apple...come on...)

 

[TimothyR734]

On to dp8 next week!

I quickly ran some graphics and performance benchmarks on dp7 comparing them to my dp3 ones (posted a while ago) and the numbers are slightly better. Nothing to shout about, but I noticed a slightly newer (internal) Nvidia driver version and some slightly better OpenGL marks! (go figure). Metal performance has been very steady, so it looks like the metal frameworks are getting close to shippable. Let's hope APFS is debugged completely (it's been a while now Apple...come on...)

It should be nice to find what the software update looks for in the APFS container and lets hope no more gotcha's
[doublepost=1534521798][/doublepost]

Yeah, tried the software update again last night, and it did the same thing. Deleted my recovery partition and won’t boot. Going to try to install DP7 from the patcher over the broken OS, but it probably won’t work.

I have not had any issues installing over a OS I accidentally broke my software update and reinstalled over it and the software update is fixed. Maybe the recovery partition is not useable in APFS or buggy as Apple support mentioned

 

[dosdude1]

Anyone has made a usb with APFS format and install it with APFS format on a macbook with no issues? Just to check something, please.

Edit - Gives me error. Can't do it. Is there a way to do it? I am on a MacBook Pro late 2011.

USB installer drives should be HFS ONLY! There is no reason to format one as APFS.
[doublepost=1534523425][/doublepost]

Is it me or false alert from an older ClamXav (3.4.1)?
ClamXav just barfed in
17 Aug 2018, 14:56:00
APFS ROM Patcher.zip: Osx.Malware.Agent-6543462-0 FOUND

Headsup,.. any ideas ?

my 2 cents.

False alert... It's just because it includes DirectHW.kext and flashrom.

 

[saudor]

So this is the issue that needs to be investigated. Man, I really want to screw around with this. What's the cheapest of these machines I can find on eBay or the like?



I'm convinced. Will be booting from my HS drive and converting to APFS sometime soon. Thanks for the in-depth explanation!

i can replicate this issue on my hackintosh with the HD 5770. There’s partial acceleration

 

[jbarley]

Anyone figured out a method to change the default Folder icon?
None of the methods used in the past work for me.

edit:I stand corrected, just now discovered that I can drag-n-drop a new icon to some of the folders.
I'll report back after I dig deeper into this.
edit#2: this worked for me...
Go to Folder (/System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/)
Locate and modify the "GenericFolderIcon.icns" to what you want.
I deleted the original and moved my new icon into its place keeping the original name.

Clear the icon cache using this in a terminal window
(sudo rm -rfv /Library/Caches/com.apple.iconservices.store; sudo find /private/var/folders/ \( -name com.apple.dock.iconcache -or -name com.apple.iconservices \) -exec rm -rfv {} \; ; sleep 3;sudo touch /Applications/* ; killall Dock; killall Finder)

Log out and back in.

 

[arqueox]

USB installer drives should be HFS ONLY! There is no reason to format one as APFS.
[doublepost=1534523425][/doublepost]
False alert... It's just because it includes DirectHW.kext and flashrom.

Yes. I figured it out. Done already. USB stick to hpfs and ssd APFS. Made clean install of DP7. Working great. Only trackpad preferences crashes.. any idea why and how can I fix it?

 

[jackluke]

Anyone figured out a method to change the default Folder icons?
None of the methods used in the past work for me.

edit:I stand corrected, just now discovered that I can drag-n-drop a new icon to some of the folders.
I'll report back after I dig deeper into this.

This should work too on Mojave: macOS Sierra: Create custom icons for files or folders

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201737

 

[StratUk]

I finally (I believe) flashed the APFS Boot ROM (anyone know how to check it did other than try and boot APFS?).

I first stripped out all my drives and USB 2 & 3 devices (except for the keyboard mouse and boot drive).
I first tried booting in Firmware Programming Mode on my HS Drive - got a reboot before the desktop.
I then replaced the HS boot drive with an old El Captain boot drive - this booted fine but because I hadn't used it in a while it went into Update frenzy.
After updating everything I tried again rebooting it in Firmware Programming mode and got stuck with the processors at max the fans banging away and enough heat out the thing to run a sauna, so I gave that up as a dangerous option.
I finally decided to do a clean install of El Captain on my Mojave drive (was planning to redo it next week with Beta 8 anyhow) - and went through it's updates and made sure it booted and rebooted cleanly and was set as the Startup Drive.
I then bit the bullet, rebooted in FPM and applied the patch - took 20 minutes with me in nervous breakdown mode.
I then rebooted and it took 5 minutes for the Apple Logo to appear with me thinking I'd bricked my machine.
The boot finally kicked in and took a while longer than normal.
After finally reaching the Temp El Captain, I shut it all down - put my other disks back in - deciding to keep the clean El Captain disk to do future ROM burns (as, call me a cynic, I expect Apple to do further changes) - linked up my USB device and rebooted on my HS patcher, set the HS Drive as the Startup Drive - and now back to "normal"

The reason for this long post is to advise a similar procedure of booting on a clean build to do the patch - although I expect to be shot down in flames

 

[ipedro]

Anybody using this build on a Mac with a Fusion Drive?

In previous builds, it appears that APFS on Fusion Drives is still not supported. Users have reported running out of space at around 100GB "free space" which is consistent with the issue High Sierra users reported trying APFS on their Fusion Drives, which lead to support on High Sierra being pulled before its release last year.

I started a thread for the Mojave APFS Fusion Drives here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mojave-apfs-on-fusion-drives.2132845/

Please report back if you're on a Fusion Drive and Mojave seems to be fully supporting it.

 

[thegurgz]

It should be nice to find what the software update looks for in the APFS container and lets hope no more gotcha's
[doublepost=1534521798][/doublepost]
I have not had any issues installing over a OS I accidentally broke my software update and reinstalled over it and the software update is fixed. Maybe the recovery partition is not useable in APFS or buggy as Apple support mentioned

It did not work, gave me error code 0 and told me to try again. Going to clean install on HFS again.

 

[pkouame]

I finally (I believe) flashed the APFS Boot ROM (anyone know how to check it did other than try and boot APFS?).

I first stripped out all my drives and USB 2 & 3 devices (except for the keyboard mouse and boot drive).
I first tried booting in Firmware Programming Mode on my HS Drive - got a reboot before the desktop.
I then replaced the HS boot drive with an old El Captain boot drive - this booted fine but because I hadn't used it in a while it went into Update frenzy.
After updating everything I tried again rebooting it in Firmware Programming mode and got stuck with the processors at max the fans banging away and enough heat out the thing to run a sauna, so I gave that up as a dangerous option.
I finally decided to do a clean install of El Captain on my Mojave drive (was planning to redo it next week with Beta 8 anyhow) - and went through it's updates and made sure it booted and rebooted cleanly and was set as the Startup Drive.
I then bit the bullet, rebooted in FPM and applied the patch - took 20 minutes with me in nervous breakdown mode.
I then rebooted and it took 5 minutes for the Apple Logo to appear with me thinking I'd bricked my machine.
The boot finally kicked in and took a while longer than normal.
After finally reaching the Temp El Captain, I shut it all down - put my other disks back in - deciding to keep the clean El Captain disk to do future ROM burns (as, call me a cynic, I expect Apple to do further changes) - linked up my USB device and rebooted on my HS patcher, set the HS Drive as the Startup Drive - and now back to "normal"

The reason for this long post is to advise a similar procedure of booting on a clean build to do the patch - although I expect to be shot down in flames

Long posts with lots of detail are useful for the ad-hoc support staff here So don't worry.

Question: so did you reformat your disk to APFS yet? Can't tell. That's the ultimate indication that your rom flashed correctly! diskutil erase -> APFS (first option on the list).
[doublepost=1534529880][/doublepost]

Anybody using this build on a Mac with a Fusion Drive?

In previous builds, it appears that APFS on Fusion Drives is still not supported. Users have reported running out of space at around 100GB "free space" which is consistent with the issue High Sierra users reported trying APFS on their Fusion Drives, which lead to support on High Sierra being pulled before its release last year.

I started a thread for the Mojave APFS Fusion Drives here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mojave-apfs-on-fusion-drives.2132845/

Please report back if you're on a Fusion Drive and Mojave seems to be fully supporting it.

Fusion drives were so problematic...lots of old iMac buddies cracked their heads against it with bootcamp and other nonsense types of problems. I think Apple doesn't support it cause it never worked correctly in the first place. I would just consider moving to straight NVME SSD if possible. Avoid some pain if you have to...

 

[flygbuss]

Yes. I figured it out. Done already. USB stick to hpfs and ssd APFS. Made clean install of DP7. Working great. Only trackpad preferences crashes.. any idea why and how can I fix it?

Have the same issue, though it worked well before (DP6).
I think a solution was somewhere earlier in this thread but its not bugging me enough to start looking..

 

[Arnold2018]

How to return to DP4 because of clear installation of MS Office on DP7 crashes?

 

[arqueox]

Somebody help me please. As I said above, made a clean install of DP7 on an APFS file system on SSD. I got System Preferences random crashes when I try to choose trackpad once or mouse options.. Anybody with this? I attached the log file. Thnx

 

[pkouame]

Somebody help me please. As I said above, made a clean install of DP7 on an APFS file system on SSD. I got System Preferences random crashes when I try to choose trackpad once or mouse options.. Anybody with this? I attached the log file. Thnx

Never had Preferences pane crash on a clean dp7 on APFS. I'm on pro 3,1 - what's your box and was it truly a clean fresh install (i.e. reformat your SSD then install)? What about post-install - did it go well with all the default options and rebuild pre-kernel checked?

 

[arqueox]

Never had Preferences pane crash on a clean dp7 on APFS. I'm on pro 3,1 - what's your box and was it truly a clean fresh install (i.e. reformat your SSD then install)? What about post-install - did it go well with all the default options and rebuild pre-kernel checked?

Yes. All went as expected. Format ssd, install, post install patches as usual. Never happened when I had hfs system file on ssd...

all works well but this 2 items. Trackpad and mouse preferences...

and trackpad and mouse works great, by the way. The problem is on system preferences pane

 

[sapphade]

View attachment 776483 Evening all ,
After much nail biting and nerves I have finally managed to use the apfs patch on two 2009 Macbook pros . One was 13 and the other 15 inch . What solved my problem was a new drive . Then I reinstalled HS and patched it with sip disabled and followed dosdude’s patch instructions. It’s gave me 3 options for the chip . Thankfully I physically inspected the logicboards ( as suggested by Dosdude ) as mine were were different than the default .

Thanks all for your patience and kudos again to all the hard working people who keep our old machines from being obsolete . I am happy out

 

[StratUk]

I haven't done the APFS reformat as I don't have an SSD - I was going to go for an SSHD but it seems not to be recommended. might have to wait a lot longer to afford an SSD big enough.

It just concerns me that APFS now seems to be required so HDD is not good enough.