macOS 10.14 Mojave on Unsupported Macs Thread

[brian.tully]

Have you had a look at the contents of the EFI partition?

No, I wound up reformatting my drive back to HFS+ last night and restoring from Time Machine Backup overnight. So I'm back at square 1. But at least my cMP3,1 is bootable

I'm trying to see if I can peek into the EFI partition to see what it contains. I tried the instructions from @joevt but it looks like I need to figure out how to build/compile his custom bless command. The README doesn't say but I'm assuming with XCode. I've never had much luck compiling things with XCode as there are usually very specific config flags/options that need to be set in order for things to compile correctly.

 

[brian.tully]

"disable apfs booter" is visible in the menu bar when creating the mojave patcher usb.

Try recreating the installer again.
Then try installing mojave on another hard drive and see if that works.

Hmm now that I think about it, I believe someone else may have suggested this a month or so ago and was confusing Mojave Patcher with another installer (Catalina or Big Sur). In Mojave Patcher there is no "disable apfs booter" in the menu bar or any of its submenus.

So people must be using a supplemental approach, as it doesn't seem to work in Mojave Patcher alone.

 

[Rob1n]

Hmm now that I think about it, I believe someone else may have suggested this a month or so ago and was confusing Mojave Patcher with another installer (Catalina or Big Sur). In Mojave Patcher there is no "disable apfs booter" in the menu bar or any of its submenus.

View attachment 1727593

So people must be using a supplemental approach, as it doesn't seem to work in Mojave Patcher alone.

You can maybe look into the Driver#### method, see if that works:
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...upgrade-guide-questions.2194878/

Also, the rom patch has only a very small chance of bricking your system and I have heard a lot of succes stories in particular with the cMP 3,1. I did it with my own Mac Pro and everything works fine. Maybe check out this thread too while you are at it:

APFS ROM Patcher

Since @dosdude1 released the APFS ROM Patcher utility, has anyone used it to successfully enable APFS in their unsupported Mac's ROM? Has anyone been adventurous enough to try and fail? I've searched and searched and it is hard to find success and fail stories and I hope there could be a central...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[K two]

Hmm now that I think about it, I believe someone else may have suggested this a month or so ago and was confusing Mojave Patcher with another installer (Catalina or Big Sur). In Mojave Patcher there is no "disable apfs booter" in the menu bar or any of its submenus.

View attachment 1727593

So people must be using a supplemental approach, as it doesn't seem to work in Mojave Patcher alone.

You are correct, no such option exists in the v.1.3.7 patcher. My bad.

Quoting you here: "So people must be using a supplemental approach, as it doesn't seem to work in Mojave Patcher alone" - wrong. Hundreds, perhaps more, have made this install using only the v.1.3.7 Patcher, alone.

Went back over this thread and the only other instance much like your current flail was the Patcher USB was built from a backed-up main drive rather than the original. The Migration Assistant method as previously suggested here is more reliable and less tedious. FWIW

With all the help you are getting, you should be up and running in Mojave, soon. ?

 

[brian.tully]

You are correct, no such option exists in the v.1.3.7 patcher. My bad.

Quoting you here: "So people must be using a supplemental approach, as it doesn't seem to work in Mojave Patcher alone" - wrong. Hundreds, perhaps more, have made this install using only the v.1.3.7 Patcher, alone.

Went back over this thread and the only other instance much like your current flail was the Patcher USB was built from a backed-up main drive rather than the original.

Thanks. Can you clarify what you mean by "Patcher USB was built from a backed-up main drive rather than the original"? The Mojave Patcher USB was built using the Mojave installer downloaded from within Mojave Patcher. Nothing from my main drive is on the USB.

When I first installed Mojave back in July I was booted from the Mojave Patcher USB. My cMP3,1 at the time was on El Capitan. I installed Mojave over El Capitan. dosdude1's instructions don't say a clean install is required for the APFS patch to work, but maybe it is?

 

[L Caputo]

He's installed the APFS post-install patch - because he gets the scrolling text at boot. I don't believe he's patched the ROM. To me, @Syncretic has given him the best clues so far. He should mount the EFI partition and check the contents. Maybe he'll find something missing.

I know he has installed the APFS post install patch, he has mentioned it several times, that is why I asked him if he
had downloaded and installed the APFS ROM patch which is required if you want to boot from APFS formatted drives.

 

[L Caputo]

Thanks. Can you clarify what you mean by "Patcher USB was built from a backed-up main drive rather than the original"? The Mojave Patcher USB was built using the Mojave installer downloaded from within Mojave Patcher. Nothing from my main drive is on the USB.

When I first installed Mojave back in July I was booted from the Mojave Patcher USB. My cMP3,1 at the time was on El Capitan. I installed Mojave over El Capitan. dosdude1's instructions don't say a clean install is required for the APFS patch to work, but maybe it is?

Mac Pro 3.1 here running Lion, El Capitan, Sierra, High Sierra, Mojave and Catalina, APFS ROM patch installed no problems whatsoever ever.
Be brave little soldier.

 

[mrploppy]

I know he has installed the APFS post install patch, he has mentioned it several times, that is why I asked him if he
had downloaded and installed the APFS ROM patch which is required if you want to boot from APFS formatted drives.

I don't want to get into a pi$$ing contest, but that's not strictly true, is it. You can boot perfectly well from an APFS formatted drive without patching the ROM (as long as you're prepared to accept the scrolling text on boot). But you know that.

 

[brian.tully]

I don't want to get into a pi$$ing contest, but that's not strictly true, is it. You can boot perfectly well from an APFS formatted drive without patching the ROM (as long as you're prepared to accept the scrolling text on boot). But you know that.

My experience says no, you can't. Or at least I can't. But perhaps I am an edge case.

 

[mrploppy]

My experience says no, you can't. Or at least I can't. But perhaps I am an edge case.

Clearly something has gone wrong somewhere along the line with your installation. I don't know if this will give you reassurance, but I'm running Mojave on a 2008 MacBook Pro, with an SSD internal drive formatted as apfs, and booting using the post-install apfs patch. My MBP has an NVIDA chipset and @dosdude1 advises against trying to patch the ROMs on these machines (coz it invariably bricks them). Consequently, I get the scrolling text at boot, but otherwise it boots perfectly. I'm an old Unix guy, so that kind of thing doesn't bother me, plus I tend to only reboot the machine after a security update so don't even notice the scrolling text 99% of the time. My machine goes for weeks/months between reboots.

Trying to think what's different between my experience and yours. Apart from the different architecture, I first entered the "unsupported" world at Sierra, then shortly after installed High Sierra and finally Mojave. At no point did I use the Migration Assistant - I've always installed "over" the previous installation. My step to Mojave was slightly complicated because it was at that point I upgraded the internal drive to SSD and changed to apfs.

 

[brian.tully]

Clearly something has gone wrong somewhere along the line with your installation. I don't know if this will give you reassurance, but I'm running Mojave on a 2008 MacBook Pro, with an SSD internal drive formatted as apfs, and booting using the post-install apfs patch. My MBP has an NVIDA chipset and @dosdude1 advises against trying to patch the ROMs on these machines (coz it invariably bricks them). Consequently, I get the scrolling text at boot, but otherwise it boots perfectly. I'm an old Unix guy, so that kind of thing doesn't bother me, plus I tend to only reboot the machine after a security update so don't even notice the scrolling text 99% of the time. My machine goes for weeks/months between reboots.

Trying to think what's different between my experience and yours. Apart from the different architecture, I first entered the "unsupported" world at Sierra, then shortly after installed High Sierra and finally Mojave. At no point did I use the Migration Assistant - I've always installed "over" the previous installation. My step to Mojave was slightly complicated because it was at that point I upgraded the internal drive to SSD and changed to apfs.

Yeah I think it's because I never upgraded to High Sierra (as you say you did). High Sierra is when APFS was rolled out, so my guess is that the High Sierra installer has some sort of built in step that converts the boot drive to APFS -- a step the Mojave installer does not have. I tried going directly from El Capitan (last supported OS for cMP3,1) to Mojave (via Mojave Patcher) and there seems to be an intermediary (or manual) step missing from my process.

I followed dosdude1's instructions to a T, and even installed the extra package to install the latest BootROM as listed in the following paragraph:

Important Note: If you have a machine that supports High Sierra natively, you MUST ensure you have the latest version of the system's BootROM installed if you want to boot from an APFS volume. If you have NOT previously installed High Sierra, you can download and install this package to install the latest BootROM version. When installing, ensure your system is plugged in to power, or the update will not be installed.

But installing that firmware update package did nothing for me.

I think the missing chapter is how to convert your boot drive from HFS+ to APFS and where in the process do you do it. I've tried doing the HFS+ to APFS conversion manually, while booted from the Mojave Patcher USB and from within Disk Utilty's "Convert to APFS" menu item. But perhaps that is not the correct method. Or there are extra steps to take that are not documented or obvious.

 

[brian.tully]

Reading through the Catalina thread I came across something that might explain what I'm experiencing. Based on a comment from @jhowarth - https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-10-15-catalina-on-unsupported-macs.2183772/post-28033602

On unsupported Macs the automatic APFS conversion at installation is unavailable. The Disk Utility APFS conversion is incomplete in that it only converts a single volume and doesn't pull the recovery partition into the APFS container or create the preboot. If you install Catalina on a clean AFPS volume, it will add the additional APFS volumes for Preboot and Recovery to the existing AFPS container producing the expected partitioning. Note that the recovery partition isn't usable on an unsupported mac without some additional manual changes.

 

[mrploppy]

Reading through the Catalina thread I came across something that might explain what I'm experiencing. Based on a comment from @jhowarth - https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-10-15-catalina-on-unsupported-macs.2183772/post-28033602

FYI, the High Sierra installer doesn't force you to go to apfs. I ran HFS+ on Sierra, and High Sierra on a normal spinner drive. It wasn't until Mojave that I decided to go SSD/apfs. It probably won't be of interest to you, but I believe I documented, in this thread, the steps I took to go to Mojave on a new SSD - I can't remember now exactly, but it involved Carbon Copy Cloner.

I'd already wondered about the "Important Note" you quoted above, but I believe your MP3,1 DOESN'T support High Sierra natively, so you didn't have to do what it said. I think.

Must admit, I'm getting a bit lost now. Can you remind us where you're at now? Which OS? What format filesystem? What kind of drive (SSD or not - doesn't matter really I suppose, but good to know)?

 

[mrploppy]

I don't know when you joined this discussion, but if you look back to around Nov 3rd 2020 (jeez, can't remember how to link to specific posts!) @honeycombz was in a similar situation to you - MP3,1 wanting to upgrade to Mojave. It may be worth you having a look at that discussion-within-a-discussion to see what went on.

 

[brian.tully]

I don't know when you joined this discussion, but if you look back to around Nov 3rd 2020 (jeez, can't remember how to link to specific posts!) @honeycombz was in a similar situation to you - MP3,1 wanting to upgrade to Mojave. It may be worth you having a look at that discussion-within-a-discussion to see what went on.

Yeah, thanks. I actually read through all of that and @honeycombz did reply to me later in the thread at
Post in thread 'macOS 10.14 Mojave on Unsupported Macs Thread'
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...unsupported-macs-thread.2121473/post-29539087
However that didn’t resolve it for me. Perhaps it’s because my boot drive SSD is installed in the faster PCI slot and not in one of the drive bays.

Anyways, I think I’ve raised the white flag on this and I’ll stick with HFS+. I can’t imagine APFS is worth all this pain ?

 

[nospamboz]

...show up for download on the Apple Support Download page a week after release...

Looks like we HFS+ Mojave folks may have to wait another week, because they just released 2021-002, which adds the "sudo" vulnerability fix. I was wondering how they would handle that.

About the security content of macOS Big Sur 11.2.1, macOS Catalina 10.15.7 Supplemental Update, and macOS Mojave 10.14.6 Security Update 2021-002 - Apple Support

This document describes the security content of macOS Big Sur 11.2.1, macOS Catalina 10.15.7 Supplemental Update, and macOS Mojave 10.14.6 Security Update 2021-002.

support.apple.com

While Apple went with 2021-002 for Mojave, they released it as a "supplemental update" for Catalina, putting the Catalina 2021-001 DMG on the download page. Ah, Apple. Consistently inconsistent. ;P

 

[jowaju]

Yeah, thanks. I actually read through all of that and @honeycombz did reply to me later in the thread at
Post in thread 'macOS 10.14 Mojave on Unsupported Macs Thread'
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...unsupported-macs-thread.2121473/post-29539087
However that didn’t resolve it for me. Perhaps it’s because my boot drive SSD is installed in the faster PCI slot and not in one of the drive bays.

Anyways, I think I’ve raised the white flag on this and I’ll stick with HFS+. I can’t imagine APFS is worth all this pain ?

Try this : https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...unsupported-macs-thread.2121473/post-27959289

 

[brian.tully]

Try this : https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...unsupported-macs-thread.2121473/post-27959289

Thanks, friend! That looks a lot like a nice summary of things I have tried over the past few weeks, all pulled from different links like https://www.tecklyfe.com/boot-failures-after-converting-macos-ssd-to-apfs/ and

Sadly it didn't work for me, but it's quite possible I didn't do it in the correct order. Your write-up is clearly something I wish I'd seen a few weeks ago, and it's something I certainly have bookmarked should I ever get the courage and/or urge to waste more of my time in attempt to "go APFS".

In your post you have 2 attachments for High Sierra Preboot files. Can those be used even though I am running Mojave?

And lastly, did you notice any difference by switching from HFS+ to APFS? Was it worth it?

Thanks again!

 

[jowaju]

Thanks, friend! That looks a lot like a nice summary of things I have tried over the past few weeks, all pulled from different links like https://www.tecklyfe.com/boot-failures-after-converting-macos-ssd-to-apfs/ and

Sadly it didn't work for me, but it's quite possible I didn't do it in the correct order. Your write-up is clearly something I wish I'd seen a few weeks ago, and it's something I certainly have bookmarked should I ever get the courage and/or urge to waste more of my time in attempt to "go APFS".

In your post you have 2 attachments for High Sierra Preboot files. Can those be used even though I am running Mojave?

And lastly, did you notice any difference by switching from HFS+ to APFS? Was it worth it?

Thanks again!

Yes the files from High Sierra work just fine in Mojave. There is a slight difference in speed going to APFS, especially if you are already on a SSD drive, the main plus is getting updates without any trickery. That said I have thousands of Mojave Macs running on HFS+ and they work just fine. Sometimes it's easier to let a sleeping dog lie, as the saying goes.

 

[K two]

Thanks. Can you clarify what you mean by "Patcher USB was built from a backed-up main drive rather than the original"? The Mojave Patcher USB was built using the Mojave installer downloaded from within Mojave Patcher. Nothing from my main drive is on the USB.

When I first installed Mojave back in July I was booted from the Mojave Patcher USB. My cMP3,1 at the time was on El Capitan. I installed Mojave over El Capitan. dosdude1's instructions don't say a clean install is required for the APFS patch to work, but maybe it is?

When originally building the USB patcher, did you run the macOS Mojave Patcher from the .DMG or from a ƒ on the main drive? And was the main drive a retrieved back-up of a previous install?

 

[brian.tully]

When originally building the USB patcher, did you run the macOS Mojave Patcher from the .DMG or from a ƒ on the main drive? And was the main drive a retrieved back-up of a previous install?

I believe I tried it both ways. Is there a preferred method? dosdude1's instructions don't specify either way. Whether the Mojave Patcher build tool is run from the DMG or copied over into /Applications and run there shouldn't make a difference, should it?

I'm not sure what you mean by "was the main drive a retrieved back-up of a previous install". My main drive at the time was running El Capitan. It's now running Mojave via the Mojave patcher install. There was no retrieved backup other than the fact that I had to restore from a Time Machine backup after erasing my borked APFS drive and reformatting it back to HFS+.

 

[K two]

I believe I tried it both ways. Is there a preferred method? dosdude1's instructions don't specify either way. Whether the Mojave Patcher build tool is run from the DMG or copied over into /Applications and run there shouldn't make a difference, should it?

I'm not sure what you mean by "was the main drive a retrieved back-up of a previous install". My main drive at the time was running El Capitan. It's now running Mojave via the Mojave patcher install. There was no retrieved backup other than the fact that I had to restore from a Time Machine backup after erasing my borked APFS drive and reformatting it back to HFS+.

A Time Machine back-up is a retrieved back-up.

Maybe staying on HFS+ is right for you? Updates will be tedious. The reason I swiched to APFS in Mojave but starting with a new 1TB SSD formatted and partitioned with Disk Utility. Two APFS partitions Mojave and Catalina, the remaining partitions are HFS+. All partitions boot and run, perfectly.

There's more - USB patchers made while running from a retrieved back-up macOS end up with strange EFI issues, not only Time Machine but CCC, as well. What has been found to work faster and more reliably than TM or CCC is making a full Restore with Disk Utility as the back-up (which will not boot if APFS but will boot if HFS+). From that Restore back-up, the Migration Assistant works error-free and much faster than TM when migrating apps, files and settings onto a clean install. TM, CCC and Disk Utility all seem to have their own issues transcribing macOS low-level code accurately or at all.

Migration Assistant will need to be added to Full Disk Access and Accessibility in the Security/Privacy CP to get it to run smoothly.

 

[nospamboz]

Looks like we HFS+ Mojave folks may have to wait another week...

Well, what do you know? Both -001 and -002 showed up this morning on the Download page. (*) 002 was only slightly larger than 001, my guess is for the new "sudo", so I only used 002. Patched installer worked fine, sudo updated, system runs as well as before. (**)

(*) What I think happened...

Apple release tech: (yesterday) There are two updates. What do I do?
Apple release manager: Let's facetime the release devs tomorrow and ask what to do.

Apple release tech: (today) The release devs avatar is a wide-eyed kitten.
Apple release manager: Release them both.

(**) On my mid-2009 MacBook5,2, it takes Mojave _fifteen minutes_ to settle down after a boot and be usable. MRT, touristd, trustd, etc. And I don't even log in to iCloud. High Sierra took only a few minutes to settle on boot. I miss the old Apple.

 

[alphascorp]

Hi all,

Successfully updated MBP5,3 (HFS+) with SecUpd2021-002Mojave (18G8022).

After, installing this update, needed reboot on USB Key and re-patch with Dosdude1's Patcher with force cache rebuild.

Like the other times, I replaced appleGVA.framework, softwareupdate.framework, HIToolbox, Siri.app and SiriUI.framework (for Siri waveform)

 

[junoreactor]

While installing the mojave patcher on a MacBookPro8,1,
I can get as far as "Installing... about 33 minutes remaining" - then the computer shuts down and I just get the circle with slash symbol.

Resetting NVRAM + Online recovery + Some terminal command seemed to let me boot - but then brightness keys didn't work, nor screensaver, and the apple logo stayed lit when closed.

Any ideas, fellows?

---
edit: re-created the bootable flash-drive and ran post-install - all seems to be okay