macOS 10.14 Mojave on Unsupported Macs Thread

[avz]

No they have not. I see the same pattern as AVZ, dosdude will respond to one question but leave the previous one or the following one unanswered, seemingly at random. I myself have asked several very specific questions about his 2011 MacBook Pro Firmware patcher tool (that he mentions himself in this thread) and have yet to receive any sort of response, either positive or negative. Again, not trying to be rude or pushy, just pointing it out.

It seems that you did not even read very carefully what I wrote as your reference of myself makes no sense whatsoever. It seems that some people are just born to write but not to read unfortunately. This is a big issue.

Again, you make no sense, there is no "2011 MacBook Pro Firmware patcher". There is re-programming of the gMux chip that controls graphic switching on a 2011 MacBook Pro.

 

[jowaju]

It seems that you did not even read very carefully what I wrote as your reference of myself makes no sense whatsoever. It seems that some people are just born to write but not to read unfortunately. This is a big issue.

Again, you make no sense, there is no "2011 MacBook Pro Firmware patcher". There is re-programming of the gMux chip that controls graphic switching on a 2011 MacBook Pro.

You being rude and condescending to multiple people isn't really helping your case. You are simply rewording what I wrote. I watched the video, read the description, etc. It most certainly IS a firmware update (it even says so in his video). I didn't bother to go back through the last 20 pages and find the exact wording he used, but that's beside the point.

Weird how even YOU managed to find my post with my question, yet where is the answer? You apparently are the only one smart enough to read properly, so I'll leave it in your ever so capable hands. Where did he answer my question about the gMux reprogramming? I'll wait.....

I also can read just fine, thank you, and lots of people with very valid points that have NOT been addressed in the thread are not being responded to, while some certainly are. The problem here is certainly more you and the people who think as you do than those of us who aren't being responded to.

 

[adeuxx]

You can select your startup disk by going to System Preferences/Startup Disk.

I set up a new partition and installed Mojave, it's now bootable which is great.
One small (large?) issue though, is that after running the post install patches, then booting up and installing the 3 more that were available I can no longer use my MBP's trackpad or keyboard. It started looking for Bluetooth keyboards at the login screen and I've had to plug in a USB mouse and keyboard for now.

 

[pkouame]

I don't have a 2018 T2-based Mac to use for testing at this point, but I am looking into the issue. It's probably something simple, but for now, if a user enables external drive booting support on the system, it can create the installer successfully.

Thanks dude! I tried on a 2017 MacBook Pro (so no T2) and everything went swimmingly. Had a slight hitch when the Mac went to sleep and (I guess slept the drives mid-way too) But otherwise fine...

This T2 business is a real nightmare. And now Apple is thinking of "notarizing" non App Store Apps in 10.15 - they've gone nuts...

Appreciate all your passionate work as usual. Later.
[doublepost=1554763248][/doublepost]

Updated and just needed to (remove telemetry.plugin for C2D) replace IOUSBFamily and IOUSBHostFamily kext to boot in GUI mode, all the kext and frameworks are .5 beta2 . Still no OpenGL acceleration but at least boot with minimum effort.

I forgot to replace AppleHDA as you can noticed from top menu bar.

From News app there is no more the tab "News+".

edit:
However really impressed how much is faster in booting and using w/o Acceleration from a C2D this new .5 beta2, even Safari more reactive.

redit:
FYI almost all the updated binaries (in kext and frameworks) have the apple "touch" compiled date April 6th.

Very cool! Curious what's your cpu profile (in Activity Monitor) . Without gpu acceleration you have no vibrancy/transparency effect ... then again it feels zippier right? Some would prefer this flat look if it translates into better overall performance. I guess News figures out that your configuration can't support News+ and disables it. Interesting.

 

[avz]

I set up a new partition and installed Mojave, it's now bootable which is great.
One small (large?) issue though, is that after running the post install patches, then booting up and installing the 3 more that were available I can no longer use my MBP's trackpad or keyboard. It started looking for Bluetooth keyboards at the login screen and I've had to plug in a USB mouse and keyboard for now.

I would be very careful with regards to the extra patches I install, as they might not work for your particular model. I don't know how to remove them unfortunately. Maybe start over and use only the patches that are pre-selected for your particular model in a post install tool.
[doublepost=1554763596][/doublepost]

You being rude and condescending to multiple people isn't really helping your case. You are simply rewording what I wrote. I watched the video, read the description, etc. It most certainly IS a firmware update (it even says so in his video). I didn't bother to go back through the last 20 pages and find the exact wording he used, but that's beside the point.

Weird how even YOU managed to find my post with my question, yet where is the answer? You apparently are the only one smart enough to read properly, so I'll leave it in your ever so capable hands. Where did he answer my question about the gMux reprogramming? I'll wait.....

I also can read just fine, thank you, and lots of people with very valid points that have NOT been addressed in the thread are not being responded to, while some certainly are. The problem here is certainly more you and the people who think as you do than those of us who aren't being responded to.

I still do not see a very specific question or a point from you. I did not look for your post, I replied to you because you quoted my post.

 

[Pinarek]

Updated and just needed to (remove telemetry.plugin for C2D) replace IOUSBFamily and IOUSBHostFamily kext to boot in GUI mode, all the kext and frameworks are .5 beta2 . Still no OpenGL acceleration but at least boot with minimum effort.

I forgot to replace AppleHDA as you can noticed from top menu bar.

From News app there is no more the tab "News+".

edit:
However really impressed how much is faster in booting and using w/o Acceleration from a C2D this new .5 beta2, even Safari more reactive.

redit:
FYI almost all the updated binaries (in kext and frameworks) have the apple "touch" compiled date April 6th.

@jackluke after what they have suggested here that happen without the dosdude1 patchtool or how? And the result is still, no graphics acceleration. It's not worth it.

 

[adeuxx]

I would be very careful with regards to the extra patches I install, as they might not work for your particular model. I don't know how to remove them unfortunately. Maybe start over and use only the patches that are pre-selected for your particular model in a post install tool.
[doublepost=1554763596][/doublepost]

Sorry for being unclear. I only installed the recommended patches. After rebooting to Mojave and signing in I was greeted with 3 available updates in the patcher app. One was for Siri, another for Night Shift and the last for iSight. Rebooting temporarily fixes the issue until I need to reboot again and the trackpad and keyboard don’t work until I reboot a second time.

 

[FarmerBob]

Another 14.5b2 (18F108f) is out. Going to try what I did when I updated to 14.5.

Will let you know . . .

UPDATED without incident using the latest Patcher and installing the Beta through the Software Update in the System Prefs. Upon first reboot, boot to the Patcher Flash Drive, ran Patches, Forced Cache Rebuild, Reboot. Came up and finished the install, proceeded to boot to Desktop, no messages from the Patcher saying any patches need to be dealt with.

All good with the install. I know nothing of how it's running yet. Good Luck.

 

[avz]

Sorry for being unclear. I only installed the recommended patches. After rebooting to Mojave and signing in I was greeted with 3 available updates in the patcher app. One was for Siri, another for Night Shift and the last for iSight. Rebooting temporarily fixes the issue until I need to reboot again and the trackpad and keyboard don’t work until I reboot a second time.

Yes, I think I remember something similar happening to me way back with a High Sierra patcher when upon reboot I was greeted with no keyboard and system was looking for a bluetooth keyboard. If I remember correctly a simple reboot fixed it for me.

 

[bbfc]

Another 14.5b2 (18F108f) is out. Going to try what I did when I updated to 14.5.

Will let you know . . .

UPDATED without incident using the latest Patcher and installing the Beta through the Software Update in the System Prefs. Upon first reboot, boot to the Patcher Flash Drive, ran Patches, Forced Cache Rebuild, Reboot. Came up and finished the install, proceeded to boot to Desktop, no messages from the Patcher saying any patches need to be dealt with.

All good with the install. I know nothing of how it's running yet. Good Luck.

You have graphics acceleration?

 

[jackluke]

Thanks dude! I tried on a 2017 MacBook Pro (so no T2) and everything went swimmingly. Had a slight hitch when the Mac went to sleep and (I guess slept the drives mid-way too) But otherwise fine...

This T2 business is a real nightmare. And now Apple is thinking of "notarizing" non App Store Apps in 10.15 - they've gone nuts...

Appreciate all your passionate work as usual. Later.
[doublepost=1554763248][/doublepost]
Very cool! Curious what's your cpu profile (in Activity Monitor) . Without gpu acceleration you have no vibrancy/transparency effect ... then again it feels zippier right? Some would prefer this flat look if it translates into better overall performance. I guess News figures out that your configuration can't support News+ and disables it. Interesting.

It feels zippier but w/o Framebuffer, however cpu w/o Acceleration suffers a bit, in idle 15%-25% using, and its temperature is increased too.

This time to bring back Framebuffer I needed to replace the GPUWrangler.framework , AppleGraphicsDevicePolicy.kext , IOGraphicsFamily and IONDRSupport from .4 , while the rest stock from .5 beta2.
[doublepost=1554796977][/doublepost]

You have graphics acceleration?

Of course not. I did tested too.
[doublepost=1554797115][/doublepost]

@jackluke after what they have suggested here that happen without the dosdude1 patchtool or how? And the result is still, no graphics acceleration. It's not worth it.

To me even 10.14.4 with full acceleration doesn't worth it , for a simply reason, Flurry screensaver crashes, it's a stupid thing but a clear signal that others side effects are behind the corner.

.5 beta2 is just for testing purpose, but I believe a fix to GL accel could be possible through analysis of IOGraphicsFamily, IONDRVSupport, AppleGraphicsControl kext and a new NDRVShim kext.

 

[Larsvonhier]

Have updated my MB4,1 manually (using pacifist) to 10.14.5b2
(The OTA did not crash, but just boot into the beta1 all the time, even without re-applying patches).

It seems to work this way - but now this message pops up on every boot.

Perhaps pacifist does not correct the receipts / there might be a discrepancy now between EFI boot volume and the installation or what might be the cause - and more helpful: What could I do to get rid of this and do a "full system patch"?

A degraded performance is not noticeable, though, everything is snappy as before...

 

[holgerzwo]

Hi all,
I want to downgrade from Mojave to HighSierra.
Is this possible without a clean install?
If not, which is the best option currently? 10.14.5beta?

Thanks for your Help!
BR Holger

 

[Larsvonhier]

Hi all,
I want to downgrade from Mojave to HighSierra.
Is this possible without a clean install?
If not, which is the best option currently? 10.14.5beta?

Thanks for your Help!
BR Holger

I´d go for 10.14.4 with a clean install (you might save your user data or keep your current harddrive and use the migration assistant later to port over your data/programs/settings).
Some ppl. here have found that for them 10.14.3 is more stable - which I cannot confirm on my machines (10.14.4 being rock solid).
10.14.5 is only for experimental usage for now due to lack of OpenGL acceleration - if you do not have Metal capable GPU anyways...

 

[holgerzwo]

Hm, I cannot remember that there were any problems with HighSierra, thus I plan to downgrade.
Mojave doesn't work well for me since the beginning.
Seems not so easy to downgrade without much of extra work.

BR
Holger

___________
My machine:
MB5,1 with 5GB RAM

 

[0403979]

Have updated my MB4,1 manually (using pacifist) to 10.14.5b2
(The OTA did not crash, but just boot into the beta1 all the time, even without re-applying patches).

It seems to work this way - but now this message pops up on every boot.
View attachment 831248
Perhaps pacifist does not correct the receipts / there might be a discrepancy now between EFI boot volume and the installation or what might be the cause - and more helpful: What could I do to get rid of this and do a "full system patch"?

A degraded performance is not noticeable, though, everything is snappy as before...

This is a feature within my patcher to remind the user to patch their macOS installation after an update. To remove this you can either patch macOS or disable it on a per device basis by running sudo sudutil and then select to disable it. If that doesn’t work then I’ll walk you through removing it entirely.

 

[ridgedale]

I wondered if there are any standard guidelines for updating an existing Mojave installation on an unsupported Mac that I could be directed to.
The original installation (multiple boot - MtnLion/HighSierra/Mojave) installed and patched Mojave 10.14.2 on a GUID formatted SATA drive of a Late 2011 13" MacBook Pro went smoothly but trying to update to 10.14.3 via System Preferences > Software Update fails - with Your Mac is up to date - macOS Mojave 10.14.2.
Is there any way to install/patch a downloaded 10.14.3 Combo Updater or is the only solution to format the 10.14.2 partition and completely reinstall the system again?
I also gather from reading the later posts in this thread that it is currently inadvisable to update to 10.14.4 as it stands.
Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

 

[TianjinMBP]

Yes, it's all good anyway... I can only speak for myself: Mojave on my mbp 5,3 Mid-2009 runs better than HS, especially with the better APFS support. Hands down.

I agree with you. I have a MBP 5,5 Mid-2009 and it does run a lot better with Mojave .3 or .4. I was a dumba$$ and left it to autoupdate the OS and one morning found it in a reboot loop and fan blazing. I found that when I booted to the dosdude's USB and ran the install, it would fail every time on "Extracting Core.pkg".
I wondered if something from a previous failed install left something behind and was crashing it. I tried renaming /Volumes/Macintosh HD/.OSInstallSandbox directory and trying again.

Boom! It installed successfully.

I guess when the installer starts, it doesn't check for a failed previous and if .OSInstallSandbox directory exists, it just uses it instead of checking for leftover residue. Anyway, If someone is getting install failures check that out.

Also, for those of you like me and only have one Mac, I used my wife's Windows box to install VMware and put a VM of Mojave on it, so if I ever need a new Dosdude USB, I can make it there. It works like a charm too.

 

[jackluke]

Have updated my MB4,1 manually (using pacifist) to 10.14.5b2
(The OTA did not crash, but just boot into the beta1 all the time, even without re-applying patches).

It seems to work this way - but now this message pops up on every boot.
View attachment 831248
Perhaps pacifist does not correct the receipts / there might be a discrepancy now between EFI boot volume and the installation or what might be the cause - and more helpful: What could I do to get rid of this and do a "full system patch"?

A degraded performance is not noticeable, though, everything is snappy as before...

Probably .5 beta2 has converted your .5 beta1 in APFS, however you can still boot using the dosdude1's apfs software patch, you'll get 15-30 seconds of lines before boot, but it works.

Ah no, reading better, you extracted manually on the target drive, so maybe some symlinks haven't been created properly.

I remember once I did an upgrade through Terminal Recovery, assumed you have the update.pkg I did something like this:

pkgutil --expand-full /Volumes/path/update.pkg/Payload/ /Volumes/MojaveLabel/

Or maybe something like:

installer -pkg /Volumes/Path/update.pkg -target /Volumes/MojaveLabel/

don't remember exactly but it worked, re-creating the correct symlinks.

 

[Larsvonhier]

Probably .5 beta2 has converted your .5 beta1 in APFS, however you can still boot using the dosdude1's apfs software patch, you'll get 15-30 seconds of lines before boot, but it works.

Ah no, reading better, you extracted manually on the target drive, so maybe some symlinks haven't been created properly.

I remember once I did an upgrade through Terminal Recovery, assumed you have the update.pkg I did something like this:

pkgutil --expand-full /Volumes/path/update.pkg/Payload/ /Volumes/MojaveLabel/

Or maybe something like:

installer -pkg /Volumes/Path/update.pkg -target /Volumes/MojaveLabel/

don't remember exactly but it worked, re-creating the correct symlinks.

I´ll try to see if I can remove the message now that I know that its not system-related but from @0403979 ´s installer. I had APFS running already with the software patch (MB4,1 not being in @dosdude1 ´s list of patchable machine ROMs ;-//).

The good thing is, the replacement kexts for the MB4,1 still work, v.1.1 and newer kexts v1.2 also, see spreadsheet-zip for info.

 

[avz]

I wondered if there are any standard guidelines for updating an existing Mojave installation on an unsupported Mac that I could be directed to.
The original installation (multiple boot - MtnLion/HighSierra/Mojave) installed and patched Mojave 10.14.2 on a GUID formatted SATA drive of a Late 2011 13" MacBook Pro went smoothly but trying to update to 10.14.3 via System Preferences > Software Update fails - with Your Mac is up to date - macOS Mojave 10.14.2.
Is there any way to install/patch a downloaded 10.14.3 Combo Updater or is the only solution to format the 10.14.2 partition and completely reinstall the system again?
I also gather from reading the later posts in this thread that it is currently inadvisable to update to 10.14.4 as it stands.
Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Mojave updates require APFS. It looks like you have HFS+ formatted drive.

 

[Larsvonhier]

This is a feature within my patcher to remind the user to patch their macOS installation after an update. To remove this you can either patch macOS or disable it on a per device basis by running sudo sudutil and then select to disable it. If that doesn’t work then I’ll walk you through removing it entirely.

Thanks, Julian! Nice to know "who's on board" after running your installer ;-)
Two suggestions, though: Do you actively use the system settings icon or is that done by the routines you call? Having a distinct icon of your own would help to identify what's going on...
After running sudutil with option 4 (check status) the terminal does not respond* any more after exiting your tool and has to be restarted. And the options are absolutely not self-evident** in what they do, i.e. do I have to clear, enable or disable when status tells me "unconfigured"? That could definitely use some brush-up in "user experience"...

* ah, only echo is off and not turned back on for keyboard inputs
** after running through the options, the output afterwards gives the info one would like to know before selecting an option

 

[dosdude1]

I´ll try to see if I can remove the message now that I know that its not system-related but from @0403979 ´s installer. I had APFS running already with the software patch (MB4,1 not being in @dosdude1 ´s list of patchable machine ROMs ;-//).

The good thing is, the replacement kexts for the MB4,1 still work, v.1.1 and newer kexts v1.2 also, see spreadsheet-zip for info.

Just add the entry for the MB4,1 in the plist located in the Resources directory inside the application bundle. The APFS ROM patch itself should work just fine on the MB4,1.

 

[Michael Filipan]

Does someone if they will ever be able to fix these screen anomalies? Especially in light mode.

 

[avz]

Does someone if they will ever be able to fix these screen anomalies? Especially in light mode.

You might find this helpful:

https://github.com/SpiraMira/HybridMode-Public