I got the drive converted, but it says 10.15 Beta can not be installed on this computer. I also have a newer iMac I will try installing 10.15 Beta on some other day
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macOS 10.15 Catalina on Unsupported Macs
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That's the only method that works. The patched installer (if you can make one. in my case with a macOS Patcher internal beta), doesn't handle the data volume correctly.
Definitely an option and potential strategy. We should consider it.
Right now I’m playing with AppKit to understand how and if it goes bonkers without those two float headroom values it gets from Cat CoreDisplay. We really can’t go forward without a deeper understanding of how the new frameworks work. I’ll post if I discover something new. Retro patching frameworks on Mojave served us well, but I’m afraid Cat may need a lot more work...
I’m using dd to create a block level clone of my Catalina install. It involves having both disks unmounted with
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk#
So to do this I used the Terminal in a USB Installer.
Use:
diskutil list to find the right disks
Double check. Then patiently run:
dd if=/dev/disk# of=/dev/disk# bs=1m
if is in, of is out. Do not get the in file and out file mixed up or you will completely erase your install.
You can backup and restore to disk image as well. And you should be able to restore from disk utility’s GUI. Jury still out on this one.
I may write a GUI front end for this and it could be added to a patch tool. Showing progress would be the only challenge.
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk#
So to do this I used the Terminal in a USB Installer.
Use:
diskutil list to find the right disks
Double check. Then patiently run:
dd if=/dev/disk# of=/dev/disk# bs=1m
if is in, of is out. Do not get the in file and out file mixed up or you will completely erase your install.
You can backup and restore to disk image as well. And you should be able to restore from disk utility’s GUI. Jury still out on this one.
I may write a GUI front end for this and it could be added to a patch tool. Showing progress would be the only challenge.
Just want to say good work, men. You guys are restless.
It's pretty amazing to watch you guys do this all in real-time.
It's pretty amazing to watch you guys do this all in real-time.
Disk Utility has a hidden tool bar option for this. For me it is usually greyed out.
There is a CLI converter as well in the MacOS installer.
I’m on my iPhone so I can’t list its path.
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I’ve seen this a few times.
There is a template for the data volume on the main volume, so there must be a script, package or app that creates it.
did dd create a bootable APFS image? Like from external Catalina APFS stick to internal APFS GUID partition...
I got ripped for mentioning this but 2011 does have thunderbolt, so there is a eGPU which can use the same video cards at the Mac Pros. There is a setup process and I personally haven’t down it yet. I may investigated it for my 2011 iMac which spends most of its time sitting dormant. I use it as the Thunderbolt Display more for work than anything else.
The reason why I am mentoring this is to point out a possibility and to be open minded. If I wasn’t ope to other possibilities, I would not have Catalina running on my MP3,1 parch free. It just too some out of the box thinking and took what tools I had readily available.
eGPU is a bit of a stretch but it’s a possibility.
Another route might be QEMU or Anka Buld VM. Least you would have Catalina in a box that you can play Around with at near bare metal speeds. Anka is working on metal support within a year btw. Might be a possibility until a better option is available.
These VM solutions (on unsupported) are non-accelerated right? I can't see how they could be...
I'm currently cloning on Internal to Internal. Both are 1TB SSDs, but it's going over every sector and currently don't have progress working. And my machine honors sleeping which is not helping.
I may have to drop back and punt and do the install Catalina on a smaller disk to see how it does.
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Correct. I think Parallels has some video Accel. Not metal and it doesn't use Apple's Hypervisor.framework as far as I can tell because Parallels on a Mac VM is a dog.
QEMU and Anka Build should be comparable and are closer to a bare metal install except for video. It's video like using VNC or is using VNC. Anka says they will have Metal in a year. Anka is very fast and can use USB devices for development. I don't have Anka Mac VM running on my 2008 yet, but it works really well on my 2016 MBP. Anka, while not free, is very impressive.
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Yes, at least for macOSXs as far I know VMs are graphic non-accelerated, but they use their "support tools" to enable additional extensions, for example basic video kext to fit resolution and I guess with at least a kind of framebuffer loaded, but of course even on a Metal Mac, no transparency on macOS VMs.
Do you think that in future betas or even final release that there will be chance to get acceleration working. As much as I could buy a cheap second hand compatible Mac, it would still be a dig financially.
I would wait with that for now. I think it's possible but not highly likely that we will get acceleration working.
My message to dosdude1:
Please don't feel hurted by 0403979, he is just a quickshooter and a good guy.
But you are the root about all this and the chief. But we need all of you!
"Do you copy?"
Please don't feel hurted by 0403979, he is just a quickshooter and a good guy.
But you are the root about all this and the chief. But we need all of you!
"Do you copy?"
Yup. Just wanted to clear that up for anyone following this and confused (understandable with all the directions being discussed here
). These VM solutions don't solve native video acceleration on our unsupported machines...
Just done a weird experiment, still no acceleration but, replacing in Catalina /S/L/Frameworks/ only OpenCL.framework and OpenGL.framework from HighSierra 10.13.6 (17G7024) does allow to boot reaching the loginUI and the desktop and system works (tried Safari, System Preferences and other core apps don't crash).
Using them I get only some warnings on some lines "apfs_spec_read_wrapper -offset " during verbose boot but probably cause it's the 32 bit coding still present in those frameworks that is being parsed by Catalina_xnu_kernel.
But they worked.
I mean Catalina kernel seems not so allergic to those HighSierra frameworks (another one also accepted was GPUWrangler).
But adding CoreDisplay.framework does not reach more the loginUI.
edit:
I confirm, definitely downgrading OpenCL and OpenGL together Catalina works fine, and this is a good sign for an eventual non-metal fix.
Also using both from Mojave 10.14.3 does work.
Using them I get only some warnings on some lines "apfs_spec_read_wrapper -offset " during verbose boot but probably cause it's the 32 bit coding still present in those frameworks that is being parsed by Catalina_xnu_kernel.
But they worked.
I mean Catalina kernel seems not so allergic to those HighSierra frameworks (another one also accepted was GPUWrangler).
But adding CoreDisplay.framework does not reach more the loginUI.
edit:
I confirm, definitely downgrading OpenCL and OpenGL together Catalina works fine, and this is a good sign for an eventual non-metal fix.
Also using both from Mojave 10.14.3 does work.
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Oh yes a dd on a TB disk will take a while... I don't have the patience. Maybe try on smaller volumes - plain Catalina doesn't really take up much room, a small 50GB target partition is plenty.
I've been trying to re-create from scratch using rsync. My internal target now looks identical to the Cat stick but won't boot . Followed all the guidelines that used to work on Mojave (vsdbutil to enable ownership - added and synced a new Preboot volume with proper UUID - updatePreboot - bless. etc...). To no avail. I wonder if anyone else has had success cloning a bootable Cat stick to internal SSD APFS partition.
Alright, so for those who were wondering, myself and @parrotgeek1 have been working on this acceleration issue on our own, and have come to the conclusion that it is not going to be possible to achieve graphics acceleration on non-Metal video cards in Catalina. This is for various reasons, but the main one is the SkyLight and CoreDisplay dependencies. In Catalina, SkyLight and CoreDisplay have been changed greatly, and are interdependent on each other. Meaning, if you replace one from an older version of macOS, you must replace the other, otherwise you'll be left with a ton of unresolved symbols. The problem with doing this, though, Catalina's AppKit relies on all the new functions present in the Catalina CoreDisplay framework. You cannot use a copy of AppKit from an older macOS version, without causing a ton more unresolved symbols.
TLDR, based on this analysis, non-Metal GPU acceleration is not, and will not be possible on 10.15 Catalina. With that said, I will not be releasing the "usual" patcher for 10.15. I do not believe the general public should be using a copy of macOS without full graphics acceleration (I sure as heck know I wouldn't want to), and I'm not going to release a patch that results in extremely poor system performance for the end user (not to mention I would get thousands of complaints per day about it if I did).
I will, however, more than likely make somewhat of a "cut down" patch, designed for use only on Mac Pro systems and some iMacs that have had their video cards upgraded.
I'm as disappointed as you all are about this discovery, and deeply apologize I won't be able to provide a patcher because of it.
TLDR, based on this analysis, non-Metal GPU acceleration is not, and will not be possible on 10.15 Catalina. With that said, I will not be releasing the "usual" patcher for 10.15. I do not believe the general public should be using a copy of macOS without full graphics acceleration (I sure as heck know I wouldn't want to), and I'm not going to release a patch that results in extremely poor system performance for the end user (not to mention I would get thousands of complaints per day about it if I did).
I will, however, more than likely make somewhat of a "cut down" patch, designed for use only on Mac Pro systems and some iMacs that have had their video cards upgraded.
I'm as disappointed as you all are about this discovery, and deeply apologize I won't be able to provide a patcher because of it.
No apologies needed, ever. It's been a good run, and you made it possible for many of us. Thank you for your efforts.
I got 10.15 installed on my external hard drive, since I had to install from my iMac and it looks like catalinia won’t work on a mid 2011 MacBook air
It works, without acceleration but it works, just boot from single user mode (holding CMD+S after power-on) and type:
mount -uw /
nvram boot-args="-no_compat_check -x -v"
reboot
If do that from a USB Installer or a Recovery Environment would be much more better.
Since I've had the impression that Catalina single user mode doesn't store the nvram values.
Then you need some kext replacement and you can avoid to boot in that forced safe mode way.
But the most important and useful kext IOUSB* on your machine will work OOB.
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Do I put the volume name so it knows what volume it is doing it for?
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Or will it out single use mode when I shut it and boot my Mojave?
No, nvram values are applied to the entire machine, but that just doesn't break nothing, only thing forces safe mode to the entire machine, do this way instead, booting from Mojave Terminal type:
sudo nvram boot-args="-no_compat_check"
then reboot and targeting the Catalina Volume holding CMD+V press Enter key, and see if you can reach the desktop.
What you get: Prohibitory symbol , kernel panic (instajtly-reboot) or apple logo with full loading bar (stalling on verbose lines) ?
I guess I understood why doesn't worked, since you are using a prelinkedkernel generated from your iMac (probably Metal supported too).
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