macOS 10.15 Catalina on Unsupported Macs

[jhowarth]

It didn't work for me. Still cannot boot into Catalina. @webg3, would you recommend a different external one (instead of a separate partition? ). Other experts here, do you have any suggestions? Thanks.

I recall that installing the patched installer onto an external usb drive never worked for me. Maybe it has to be a non-ejectable drive (ie SATA).

 

[webg3]

It didn't work for me. Still cannot boot into Catalina. @webg3, would you recommend a different external one (instead of a separate partition? ). Other experts here, do you have any suggestions? Thanks.

different external

 

[Nedstah]

Latest patcher on a 2009 Mac mini3,1 2.0 ghz with three partitions. It now runs Sierra, Mojave and Catalina Beta. Ya'll are an inspiration to creativity!

 

[DuncanGarp]

I recall that installing the patched installer onto an external usb drive never worked for me. Maybe it has to be a non-ejectable drive (ie SATA).

Well the thing is, the external usb drive boots up on my macbook air but not on my macbook pro. Both are unsupported but the MBP requires APFS patch, which I think is the issue. Thanks for the response.
[doublepost=1563422461][/doublepost]

different external

I will try that as soon as I get hold of one. Thanks again.

 

[TimothyR734]

This is one thing I notice from Photo's on Mojave and Catalina the options is missing but when you click option on Mojave it unchecked the photo's box so that is broken

 

[echophilon]

Thank you! Yes, it works now. The third attempt was successful. Like in many fairy tales.

Unfortunately wifi was gone again after a reboot. System report shows that the card was not recognised. Strange.

 

[a.freemason]

Hello from Poland ........

I have a problem during the installation I can't understand what happens......
on MacBook Pro 13"(mid2009).......

in short, just to say ......

I create on a HDD a partition in HSF to boot with the patch of dosdude1 1.0b11 and a second partition for the s.o "Catalina Beta 4" also this partition in HSF ....... no problem ......

Start the Patch and proceed with the installation, and at 4min. from the term it stops and I am forced to cancel the procedure .......

I still proceed with the "Post install Patchers" getting an error ...... normal the procedure has not been completed ........

Restart the mac "ALT" button to view the HDDs and surprise an external HDD called "EFI Boot" appears in APSF ..Boh !!

Starting "EFI Boot" and magically part of the installation which is completed correctly, at the end restart the "Post Install Patchers" and oplà the Catalina s.o is installed .......

The same thing happened to someone or something like that .......
some idea or explanation ...
maybe I'm wrong something in the procedure .....

Thanks for your suggestions.....

 

[karesake]

Photos app is Crashing after start directly.

 

[jhowarth]

Well the thing is, the external usb drive boots up on my macbook air but not on my macbook pro. Both are unsupported but the MBP requires APFS patch, which I think is the issue. Thanks for the response.
[doublepost=1563422461][/doublepost]

I will try that as soon as I get hold of one. Thanks again.

You do realize that that 1.0b11 Catalina Patcher still requires a HFS volume as the destination for the patched installer? Dosdude1 hasn't rewrote that code to support booting the patched installer from APFS (which is only required for the actual target volume of the patched installer itself).

 

[genimac]

Just installed on MacMini Server mid 2010.
During install I needed to restart, it was at less than a minute to finish, but never ends. After restart it finished the install. Then again it got stuck after creating the user and start session. Again a restart solved it. As installed Screen sharing and Remote connections are on.
All hardware is recognized, Photos and Maps crash.
I attach the full System report generated just after install.

 

[jackluke]

Hello from Poland ........

I have a problem during the installation I can't understand what happens......
on MacBook Pro 13"(mid2009).......

in short, just to say ......

I create on a HDD a partition in HSF to boot with the patch of dosdude1 1.0b11 and a second partition for the s.o "Catalina Beta 4" also this partition in HSF ....... no problem ......

Start the Patch and proceed with the installation, and at 4min. from the term it stops and I am forced to cancel the procedure .......

I still proceed with the "Post install Patchers" getting an error ...... normal the procedure has not been completed ........

Restart the mac "ALT" button to view the HDDs and surprise an external HDD called "EFI Boot" appears in APSF ..Boh !!

Starting "EFI Boot" and magically part of the installation which is completed correctly, at the end restart the "Post Install Patchers" and oplà the Catalina s.o is installed .......

The same thing happened to someone or something like that .......
some idea or explanation ...
maybe I'm wrong something in the procedure .....

Thanks for your suggestions.....

View attachment 848790

The "macOS installer" is made by two stages:

stage1 installer: takes on average 10 minutes to complete and will create a temporary folder "macOS Install Data" in your chosen "target HFS partition" (not sure why apple re-copy all the installer content on the internal hdd, probably to make installing process faster from internal disk), after the stage1 installer completes you can also unplug your "macOS USB Installer", at next auto-reboot the stage2 will continue also without it (I often do so)

stage2 installer: takes on average 35 minutes to complete and it will auto-convert the "target HFS partition" in APFS , then un-package all the "macOS Install Data" content over the internal hdd (or external hdd) overwriting the system files

Using OTA "Software Update" there is no stage1 installer, but only stage2 .

I'd say that the last 5 minutes of the stage2 installer are about cleaning/rebuilding caches, that's why (probably) even if someone force a power-off at that point, at next reboot caches will be refreshed and system will work.

 

[Boogey1]

Photos app is Crashing after start directly.

Photos seams to crash on fully supported machines. I think Apple is still trying to implement the improved photo app for Catalina.

 

[ASentientBot]

Photos seams to crash on fully supported machines. I think Apple is still trying to implement the improved photo app for Catalina.

The crash is because it uses Metal to render the grid of photo thumbnails. I cannot find any way around that, short of disabling the thumbnails altogether and scrolling through the photos one-by-one, which is not really practical.

 

[Althiometer]

Can we get Software Update patch in next patcher plz? It really helps to get recent updates quick.
[doublepost=1563466488][/doublepost]

The crash is because it uses Metal to render the grid of photo thumbnails. I cannot find any way around that, short of disabling the thumbnails altogether and scrolling through the photos one-by-one, which is not really practical.

How do you do that?
It’s better than nothing.

 

[TimothyR734]

deleted

 

[DuncanGarp]

You do realize that that 1.0b11 Catalina Patcher still requires a HFS volume as the destination for the patched installer? Dosdude1 hasn't rewrote that code to support booting the patched installer from APFS (which is only required for the actual target volume of the patched installer itself).

I know that. dosdude1's 1.0b11 catalina patcher is on a HFS+ partition, and used it to install on an SSD partition APFS formatted. That SSD boots up on my macbook air, but NOT on my macbook pro which needs the APFS patch, which is not required on the macbook air.

 

[TimothyR734]

I found a way to access the photo's in the photo app maybe some of you know this go to your pictures folder right click on photos library -show package content your pictures are in the originals folder I put a copy in the iCloud but to see the pictures they will open up in the preview app

 

[jhowarth]

Photos seams to crash on fully supported machines. I think Apple is still trying to implement the improved photo app for Catalina.

No issues on a MacPro 3,1 with GTX 680. Photos is rock solid.

 

[jhowarth]

DosDude1:
First all thanks for all the work.
2. is there a listing of what exactly is patched including kexts and when they are patched in the process?
3. it would be great to have an option to only enable the install on unsupported systems but disable all other patches (they way it used to be.)
My Mac Pro has an updated Wifi/BLE card, but I have to disable SIP to use it after the patch. I used to be able to run with just the boot-args and SIP enabled. For some reason Apple has been disabling TRIMFORCE on my system with SIP disabled.

Just confirmed. Trim Force needs SIP to work. Catalina needs SIP disabled to enable Trim without error, then you need to enable SIP for trim to actually show up!

From https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...nsupported-macs.2183772/page-75#post-27483383

• TRIM enable for SSD with the commands : sudo mount -uw /; sudo trimforce enable

Does that solve your failures with SIP disabled? If so, that probably should be added to the first post in this thread for other users as that is unlikely to change.

 

[nekton1]

No issues on a MacPro 3,1 with GTX 680. Photos is rock solid.

Same here

 

[DuncanGarp]

Well the thing is, the external usb drive boots up on my macbook air but not on my macbook pro. Both are unsupported but the MBP requires APFS patch, which I think is the issue. Thanks for the response.
[doublepost=1563422461][/doublepost]

I will try that as soon as I get hold of one. Thanks again.

Well, I did try another boot drive to install Catalina using @dosdude1's 1.0b11 Catalina patcher. It did work albeit very slow since the boot drive is now USB, with my previous attempts to install on a SSD.



Steps followed:

1. Booted into @dosdude1's Catalina Patcher 1.0b11 (which is formatted HFS by the way)
2. Reinstall OS from the patcher utilities selection into a freshly created USB partition formated APFS.
3. Took a while but finished installation.
4. Booted to said USB/APFS attached to my MacbookPro5,3.
5. Upon boot and setup for the "new" Mac with Catalina, got prompt to reinstall NightShift.
6. Rebooted and everything looks fine.

Additional Observation:

• After initial install, did not go into the Catalina patcher to execute patch updates.
• After step 6 above, I viewed the Patch Updater and it did not list the APFS patch as being installed as I know this macbookpro5,3 requires it. @dosdude1 is this right?
• Graphics acceleration accomplished, thank again to @ASentientBot. Question, will your other fixes, such as "auto mount" need to be applied?

Thanks again everyone and most especially to @dosdude1 and @ASentientBot !!!

 

[jhowarth]

Well, I did try another boot drive to install Catalina using @dosdude1's 1.0b11 Catalina patcher. It did work albeit very slow since the boot drive is now USB, with my previous attempts to install on a SSD.

View attachment 848924

Steps followed:

1. Booted into @dosdude1's Catalina Patcher 1.0b11 (which is formatted HFS by the way)
2. Reinstall OS from the patcher utilities selection into a freshly created USB partition formated APFS.
3. Took a while but finished installation.
4. Booted to said USB/APFS attached to my MacbookPro5,3.
5. Upon boot and setup for the "new" Mac with Catalina, got prompt to reinstall NightShift.
6. Rebooted and everything looks fine.

Additional Observation:

• After initial install, did not go into the Catalina patcher to execute patch updates.
• After step 6 above, I viewed the Patch Updater and it did not list the APFS patch as being installed as I know this macbookpro5,3 requires it. @dosdude1 is this right?
• Graphics acceleration accomplished, thank again to @ASentientBot. Question, will your other fixes, such as "auto mount" need to be applied?

Thanks again everyone and most especially to @dosdude1 and @ASentientBot !!!

If you watched your machine reboot into Catalina after the installation, you should have seen a momentary flash of the verbose text boot screen. Also, if you mount the EFI partition with...

sudo diskutil mount disk#s1

where # is the number of the physical device containing the Catalina apfs partition, you will see an apfs.efi file at the top level of that volume when the APFS Boot Patch is installed.

 

[TimothyR734]

Got some of the dashboard widgets to run on the desktop weather widget is still not working

 

[haralds]

From https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...nsupported-macs.2183772/page-75#post-27483383

• TRIM enable for SSD with the commands : sudo mount -uw /; sudo trimforce enable

Does that solve your failures with SIP disabled? If so, that probably should be added to the first post in this thread for other users as that is unlikely to change.

I presume this is from Recovery? I have not tried that on Catalina, Mojave does not have trimforce on Recovery.
The problem with SIP enabled is that TRIMFORCE modified files on the Read-only partition and that errors.
Not working with SIP disabled after enabling has been a feature since about 10.14.4 or .5 that I noticed.

 

[dosdude1]

I presume this is from Recovery? I have not tried that on Catalina, Mojave does not have trimforce on Recovery.
The problem with SIP enabled is that TRIMFORCE modified files on the Read-only partition and that errors.
Not working with SIP disabled after enabling has been a feature since about 10.14.4 or .5 that I noticed.

No, you cannot do this from recovery. All you have to do is run "sudo mount -uw /" before running "sudo trimforce enable", and it will work.