macOS 10.14 Mojave on Unsupported Macs Thread

[0403979]

To those who use Mojave on APFS file system, I have managed to "fix" the APFS Recovery Volume to make it bootable with CMD+R and mainly with USB input devices responsive, working wifi and everything else, just follow next steps, boot from a Mojave APFS Volume, launch Terminal and type:

diskutil apfs list
{locate your "APFS Recovery Volume" diskXs3 [for an internal "APFS Container" is typically mounted on disk1s3]}

diskutil mount diskXs3
open /Volumes/Recovery

landing on Finder, double tap on the "random-numbers-letters" folder, once inside rename these files:

prelinkedkernel into prelinkedkernelbackup
immutablekernel into immutablekernelbackup
PlatformSupport.plist into PlatformSupportbackup

Don't close Finder yet, once you renamed those 3 files, press CMD+N, then from this new Finder Window press CMD+SHIFT+G (or use "Go to Folder"): /System/Library/PrelinkedKernels/

while inside this path copy the file prelinkedkernel into the previous Finder Window, exactly were you renamed those 3 files, lastly rename this fresh copied file from prelinkedkernel to immutablekernel

Now you have a working APFS Recovery Volume.

edit:
On APFS scheme the "APFS Recovery Volume" is always on the 3rd (hidden) partition.

Premise: The APFS Recovery is totally different from the HFS Recovery HD, if you have restored the USB Mojave Patcher into your internal partitioned drive, the APFS Recovery simply won't work, because it requires an untouched APFS Container/Scheme structure, so if you have many partitions or many physical disks, don't waste time using the following method.

Before starting this "APFS Recovery fix part2" you should have applied first APFS Recovery fix part1

To those who failed in booting APFS Recovery (due to their wrong gpt/EFI entries) may try these steps (harmless for their main system), boot in Mojave normal mode and launch Terminal:

diskutil list
[locate your "APFS Volume Recovery" typically on disk1s3 otherwise on diskXs3]

diskutil mount diskXs3

diskutil apfs changeVolumeRole diskXs3 R

the next important step to adjust correctly your CMD+R Recovery position is:
diskutil apfs updatePreboot diskXs1
(I've tested and it's safe but use with caution)

then type: open /Volumes/Recovery
landing on Finder double click on the random-numbers-letters folder aka "gpt Volume-UUID".

Now using TextEdit or any other plain-text editor launch com.apple.boot.plist

Inside it, in this place add the orange part close and save:

<string>root-dmg=file:///Your-random-numbers-letters/BaseSystem.dmg -no_compat_check -v</string>

Now, reboot and hold CMD+R after power-on chime, if you still can't reach APFS Recovery, post here the verbose screen to helping diagnosticate.

Has anyone gotten APFS Recovery to work using both this posts? If so then I'll try it myself and maybe add it to my patcher tool.

 

[L Caputo]

Could you show me how to edit the "Distribution" file after show package content?

View attachment 818382

First thing to do is get About This Mac up on your screen, Control-click on Version 10.14.x to reveal the build number of
your macOS. Open the Distribution file in Text Edit.
The next bit is a slight change, and thanks to AsentientBot for suggesting it. Scroll down to

function InstallationCheck(prefix) {

now enter the text return true; so it now looks like this.

function InstallationCheck(prefix) {return true;

by entering return true; there is now no need to enter your BoardID and remove your Mac from the nonsupported models list.

Scroll further down the page till you see this,

var buildNumbersArray = '18A389,18A391,18A2063,18B75,18B2084,18B2103,18B2107,18B3094,18D42'.split(',');

now enter the build number into the array, for me, I added 18C54, so the array now looks like this,

var buildNumbersArray = '18A389,18A391,18A2063,18B75,18B2084,18B2103,18B2107,18B3094,18C54,18D42'.split(',');

now save the changes
Go back to Terminal and now flatten the folder you expanded earlier using pkgutil --flatten
give the resulting package a unique name, I called mine macOS10.14.3ComboModified.pkg.
This should now install on a Mac formatted as APFS.

If you are trying to install the update to an HFS+ disk then there is another alteration you can make.
Again in the Distribution file scroll down to

function VolumeCheck(prefix) {

again enter return true; after the bracket, so it looks like this,

function VolumeCheck(prefix) {return true;

save changes etc.
One thing to note is if your Mac like mine has different OS's on it on other drives this method will tell you that all drives are able to install the update, DO NOT INSTALL ON ANY DISK/ PARTITION, ONLY INSTALL TO A DISK/ PARTITION THAT HAS MOJAVE ON IT. Select your disk wisely, and double check.

 

[jackluke]

Has anyone gotten APFS Recovery to work using both this posts? If so then I'll try it myself and maybe add it to my patcher tool.

The fact is that the APFS Recovery partition fix is not applicable in a script (otherwise dosdude1 would have done it already), the reason is that many people could have more physical drives or logical partitions with different purposes (several macOS versions installation for example HighSierra and Mojave both of them in APFS or one HFS and another in APFS a kind of hybrid, Bootcamp NTFS, linux and so on).

And in the end I agree with most, substantially APFS Recovery is unuseful, we have usb installer sticks to recover any file system.

 

[0403979]

The fact is that the APFS Recovery partition fix is not applicable in a script (otherwise dosdude1 would have done it already), the reason is that many people could have more physical drives or logical partitions with different purposes (several macOS versions installation for example HighSierra and Mojave both of them in APFS or one HFS and another in APFS a kind of hybrid, Bootcamp NTFS, linux and so on).

And in the end I agree with most, substantially APFS Recovery is unuseful, we have usb installer sticks to recover any file system.

I can put this in a script. I will test it and get back to you.

 

[SincMan]

Hi, I am trying to apply the apfs rom-patcher and I keep getting a message : "DirectHW.kext could not be loaded . The operation cannot proceed" . I know that it's something I am doing wrong as I have tried three machines ( all 2009 pros ). I turn off the machine, wait, hold down the power button until it blinks rapidly the goes off and the machine boots with the chime as normal .



I have the same situation when trying to use the ROM patcher on my early 2008 15" MBP. I'm running Mojave from patcher on an SSD already covered to apfs. SIP is off.

Were you able to get yours to work? Any help from anyone would be appreciated to install the APFS patcher QUOTE]

 

[jbarley]

Is there any way to get a Startup using "cmd+R" to work in Mohave APFS on my MacPro3,1?
When I try all I get is the dreaded circle-slash no-go sign.

Edit:
Trying a workaround to this issue.
Created a small partition on my boot drive and then used CCC to clone my dosdude USB patchtool to this partition.
Now when I startup while pressing the "Alt" key I have the option of booting from the patchtool.
Pretty much gives me everything the Recovery boot did and boots a lot faster then just using the USB thumb-drive.

 

[L Caputo]

Macwinman has posted on Apple Releases MacOS Mojave 10.14.3

#97
Apple has re-released the combo updater with an updated distribution list of compatible builds -- now includes 18C54 so it will run on 10.14.2.

var buildNumbersArray = '18A384a,18A389,18A391,18A2063,18B45d,18B50c,18B57c,18B67a,18B73a,18B75,18B2084,18B2103,18B2107,18B3094,18C31g,18C38b,18C48a,18C52a,18C54,18D21c,18D32a,18D38a,18D39a,18D42,18D43'.split(',');

 

[Yojx21]

If the -no_compat_check boot parameter does not work, try to boot your MB 4,1 from a volume that you installed/patched onto a known-working unsupported Mac. I did it this way.
Welcome, btw, to the current frontier of Mojave on old machines with your MB 4,1! ;-)

That's what i finally done. Now let's try to make the USB work
Thanks you

 

[jackluke]

Is there any way to get a Startup using "cmd+R" to work in Mohave APFS on my MacPro3,1?
When I try all I get is the dreaded circle-slash no-go sign.

Edit:
Trying a workaround to this issue.
Created a small partition on my boot drive and then used CCC to clone my dosdude USB patchtool to this partition.
Now when I startup while pressing the "Alt" key I have the option of booting from the patchtool.
Pretty much gives me everything the Recovery boot did and boots a lot faster then just using the USB thumb-drive.

Yes your workaround to clone the USB Installer is good, but if for your personal challenge you want to make CMD+R available you should try these my old tips: Quick fix APFS Recovery

just consider instead of disk2s3 your current disk where your APFS Recovery is located for example disk1s3 or everywhere APFS Recovery resides
and instead of this "0608AF9E-CDC3-4D01-8520-ED1DD50C8D22" use your current unique Recovery UUID different from any machine, it's the name of the folder inside your /Volumes/Recovery/

 

[0403979]

The fact is that the APFS Recovery partition fix is not applicable in a script (otherwise dosdude1 would have done it already), the reason is that many people could have more physical drives or logical partitions with different purposes (several macOS versions installation for example HighSierra and Mojave both of them in APFS or one HFS and another in APFS a kind of hybrid, Bootcamp NTFS, linux and so on).

And in the end I agree with most, substantially APFS Recovery is unuseful, we have usb installer sticks to recover any file system.

I tried using all of your steps but still get a prohibitory symbol.

 

[jackluke]

I tried using all of your steps but still get a prohibitory symbol.

Unluckily as I wrote before, each one use custom disks partitioning and the APFS Recovery mount point could vary, so that's why it's hard to write an universal script for it.
Boot normally Mojave, launch Terminal and type:

diskutil list
diskutil apfs list

Report here your current disks/partitions scheme, and I'll try to help you to pass the CMD+R prohibitory symbol.

 

[chemprofjoe]

This thread is extremely long. but I tried to look through it first. I successfully installed a patched Mojave 10.14.2 on my iMac9,1. Now, after updating to 10.14.3, my computer starts the boot process, but right at the very end it just restarts.
I cleared the caches, reset the SMC and NVRAM but it still endlessly cycles boot and reboot.

So, I apologize if the answer is already on this thready, but any suggestions on how to fix this would be appreciated. I know how to get back to 10.14.2, but I would prefer to get this working.

Thanks in advance

 

[jackluke]

This thread is extremely long. but I tried to look through it first. I successfully installed a patched Mojave 10.14.2 on my iMac9,1. Now, after updating to 10.14.3, my computer starts the boot process, but right at the very end it just restarts.
I cleared the caches, reset the SMC and NVRAM but it still endlessly cycles boot and reboot.

So, I apologize if the answer is already on this thready, but any suggestions on how to fix this would be appreciated. I know how to get back to 10.14.2, but I would prefer to get this working.

Thanks in advance

Holding alt-option key after the power-on you should boot again from the dosdude1's Mojave USB Installer, then select the "Post-Install" and re-apply patches for your iMac9,1 and most important select "force cache rebuild".

 

[Sedulous]

This thread is extremely long. but I tried to look through it first. I successfully installed a patched Mojave 10.14.2 on my iMac9,1. Now, after updating to 10.14.3, my computer starts the boot process, but right at the very end it just restarts.
I cleared the caches, reset the SMC and NVRAM but it still endlessly cycles boot and reboot.

So, I apologize if the answer is already on this thready, but any suggestions on how to fix this would be appreciated. I know how to get back to 10.14.2, but I would prefer to get this working.

Thanks in advance

Boot to patched USB installer, re-run post install patcher.

 

[chemprofjoe]

Holding alt-option key after the power-on you should boot again from the dosdude1's Mojave USB Installer, then select the "Post-Install" and re-apply patches for your iMac9,1 and most important select "force cache rebuild".

Well, I had tried re-applying the patch. I did it once without rebuilding the cache and then with rebuilding the cache. Neither worked - the Mac would reboot after reaching the end of boot-up (as seen by the indicator bar under the Apple). But, after resetting both NVRAM and SMC did not seem to work, I thought I would try reapplying the patch and forced a cache rebuild. And, now it works! Seems to be fine so I'll keep my fingers crossed that all of the functionality is there.
Thanks to those who replied.

 

[DaniloGeekDude]

Failed to upgrade to the 10.14.4 Beta 1 on my unsupported MBs (MBPro5,3 and MBAir4,2).

After several attempts over the weekend, with suggestions from @carld, @jackluke and @Badruzeus, all efforts unfortunately failed. I will try again when 2nd beta comes in.

At least I have the beta 1 installed on a supported Mac (MacMini late 2012). I will continue my testing on this machine.

Thanks again all and specially to the 3 I mentioned above for their suggestions.

Regards.

 

[alphascorp]

Hello everyone,
Having no answer to my questions, I just reread 447 pages and I just saw Dosdude post #11156 regarding backlight control for the CCFL-based display systems. I make the fix as soon as possible.

Hello everyone,
I applied the backlight patch of post #11156 on my iMac 8.1 in order to regain the use of the F1/F2 button but now I have a bootloop without a chime, even after restarting on a USB key and reapplied 2 times "macOS Post Install" and selected force cache rebuild before rebooting. I saw that I had a folder "Bklt_Backup" before installing the patch so I think the patch is already applied by "macOS Post Install" but the backlight does not work yet. I guess the patch works on 10.14.2 but not on 10.14.3.
I just put back my old disk under 10.13.6 and there, the backlight control works very well with the F1/F2 keys.
I reinstall 10.14.3 without formatting we'll see...

 

[jackluke]

Failed to upgrade to the 10.14.4 Beta 1 on my unsupported MBs (MBPro5,3 and MBAir4,2).

After several attempts over the weekend, with suggestions from @carld, @jackluke and @Badruzeus, all efforts unfortunately failed. I will try again when 2nd beta comes in.

At least I have the beta 1 installed on a supported Mac (MacMini late 2012). I will continue my testing on this machine.

Thanks again all and specially to the 3 I mentioned above for their suggestions.

Regards.

No worries, it seems till now no one succeeded in booting 10.14.4 beta on unsupported macs, so it will be field of study until a full installer release will come.

edit:
apart carld that succeeded in 10.14.4 beta, but I think the late 2011's mac series are all almost natively supported platforms in my humble opinion, that's why they encounter less issues during upgrades and require less patches, probably to boot they only require -no_compat_check, they work even with the original Mojave telemetry plugin, and sometimes BT/Wifi and USB kext are natively detected too.

 

[Jack Ryan]

10.14.4 Beta Install Failed on un-supported MBs

Tried to upgrade/install from 10.14.3 Final to 10.14.4 Beta on both my MBP5,3 and MBAir4,2.

Unfortunately, both failed (boot does not complete).

Anyone on this thread able to successfully upgrade? If so, can you please share your experience with the steps required, etc. ?

Thanks.

The same for me on my Late 2009 iMac. I had to restore from Time Machine backup. Now I'm on 10.14.2 again

 

[ford.tonthat]

I successfully convert my SSD to APFS but when I choose the startup disk from "Startup Disk Preference Pane", It showed an error "Running bless to place boot files". Have done anything wrong?

 

[Larsvonhier]

Hello everyone,
I applied the backlight patch of post #11156 on my iMac 8.1 in order to regain the use of the F1/F2 button but now I have a bootloop without a chime, even after restarting on a USB key and reapplied 2 times "macOS Post Install" and selected force cache rebuild before rebooting. I saw that I had a folder "Bklt_Backup" before installing the patch so I think the patch is already applied by "macOS Post Install" but the backlight does not work yet. I guess the patch works on 10.14.2 but not on 10.14.3.
I just put back my old disk under 10.13.6 and there, the backlight control works very well with the F1/F2 keys.
I reinstall 10.14.3 without formatting we'll see...

Are you sure that iMac8,1 has CCFL backlight? I‘d guess it‘s LED and you applied a completely wrong patch...

 

[alphascorp]

Hello everyone,
I applied the backlight patch of post #11156 on my iMac 8,1 in order to regain the use of the F1/F2 button but now I have a bootloop without a chime, even after restarting on a USB key and reapplied 2 times "macOS Post Install" and selected force cache rebuild before rebooting. I saw that I had a folder "Bklt_Backup" before installing the patch so I think the patch is already applied by "macOS Post Install" but the backlight does not work yet. I guess the patch works on 10.14.2 but not on 10.14.3.
I just put back my old disk under 10.13.6 and there, the backlight control works very well with the F1/F2 keys.
I reinstall 10.14.3 without formatting we'll see...

Are you sure that iMac8,1 has CCFL backlight? I‘d guess it‘s LED and you applied a completely wrong patch...

Thank you Larsvonhier,
Now I have reinstalled 10.14.3 and my iMac 8,1 starts properly after applying the "macOS Post Install" and selected force cache rebuild before rebooting. but still no backlight control with F1/F2 (only the display works with F1/F2 but does not control the backlight). I really wonder if the backlight patch should not be applied. But it automatically applies with "macOS Post Install". How to make it not apply?

Under High Sierra the backlighting controlled by F1/F2 works fine and I also have the folder "Bklt_Backup" and "CoreBrightness-Backup" so I guess the patch was also applied under High Sierra.



I confirm, under High Sierra backlight control was patched for the iMac 8,1 (I find that the information of the "macOS Post Install" High Sierra to indicate what each patch does is great but unfortunately it is not is no longer the case with "macOS Post Install" from Mojave ...)

 

[Yojx21]

If the -no_compat_check boot parameter does not work, try to boot your MB 4,1 from a volume that you installed/patched onto a known-working unsupported Mac. I did it this way.
Welcome, btw, to the current frontier of Mojave on old machines with your MB 4,1! ;-)

So, i have done some test yesterday:
I first set up Mojave on an external SSD from my MBP6,2 and patched it like a MacBook5,2.
After that i have set the screen sharing, file sharing and network params.
I have been able to boot Mojave on my MacBook4,1 and to use it through screen sharing.
I then managed to get the GMA X3100 to be recognized so i have downloaded some kext and installed them with kext helper B7. After a reboot the computer still booting properly, but i can't connect anymore to screen sharing. Even with VNC Client i have a black screen a bitrate of 0KB/s. I can still control the mouse but it is very laggy !

Do you have the same problem ?

 

[Eagle36]

I have mojave on 2008 MacBook at 10.14.2 and when I check for updates now that 10.14.3 is out it says my system is up to date at 10.14.2... Anyone else have this issue? And ideas why it does not see the update and how to get the update without reinstall?

 

[alphascorp]

I have mojave on 2008 MacBook at 10.14.2 and when I check for updates now that 10.14.3 is out it says my system is up to date at 10.14.2... Anyone else have this issue? And ideas why it does not see the update and how to get the update without reinstall?

Hi,
If your disk is not formatted in APFS it's normal!
In order to download you have to go to AppStore here is the link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/macos-mojave/id1398502828?mt=12
This gives the full version to be able to create a USB installation key with Dosdude Patcher 1.2.3 (thanks to him).
Or go to the Apple website to download the update:
http://updates-http.cdn-apple.com/2...88-11E8-B555-8E91F34A5CAA/macOSUpd10.14.3.dmg
Do not forget to restart "macOS Post Install" from your USB flash drive and select "force cache rebuild" before rebooting.