macOS 10.15 Catalina on Unsupported Macs

[jackluke]

You don't have to physically move the NVME or drive from the MacPro5,1 to perform an macOS update.

You can easily do this:

(I) boot to a different drive (or a linux live CD if you do not have a second drive) on the MacPro5,1

(II) on the MacPro5,1's command line, do: dd if=/dev/myharddisk | ssh name@mygentoolinuxserver 'dd of=file.raw'

(III) launch a QEMU macOS instance using that file.raw as hard drive in linux, with a Metal graphics card passthrough to the instance. Then, perform the macOS update within the instance.

(IV) then in the linux host's command line, do "dd if=file.raw | ssh name@mymacpro51 'dd of=/dev/myharddisk && reboot'.

This can all be done on a remote linux server. No need to move any physical thing actually.

Of course, linux distros are more friendly with Mac since they share many Terminal Shell binaries, but also using Windows I was able to create working clones of HFS or APFS Volumes, not only with installing "dd" through windows prompt, but also with some third party partition software.

Windows is becoming more linux friendly too, not by chance I remind that Microsoft acquired Github last year.
[doublepost=1560066351][/doublepost]

Keeping El Capitan is starting to become useless as it can’t read APFS volumes and you can’t split disks with APFS and HFS which is useful to shorten a disk down for archiving and restoring.

In El Cap a partitioned disk is one big disk. Hybrid disks: with APFS and HFS are treated in Unix as two separate disks which os handy.

If I don't get wrong, booting from a 2010 or later Mac machine with latest HighSierra installation (essentially with APFS firmware enabled), you can boot from an El Capitan USB Installer (10.11.6 BaseSystem.dmg) and it will be able from its (Recovery) DiskUtilty to read the APFS file system, but not write, I guess read-only is suffice to take an image of it.

The same applies to Sierra of course, with advantage that from 10.12.6 (they introduced a beta apfs kext) you can do that also from the normal booting Sierra, and APFS disk will be shown also in Finder. But mounted as read-only, not write, writing directly into APFS Container is only possible from HighSierra.

 

[iMac-Oldschool]

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.

 

[jackluke]

Felix Schwarz:

Wow! macOS #Catalina adds new frameworks to allow drivers to run IN USER SPACE & manage them via “SystemExtensions”!

More on macOS Catalina #DriverKit drivers:

- packaged alongside the app like modern app extensions.
- removed from the system when the host app is
- (possibly) can be dynamically loaded & unloaded them as needed using OSSystemExtensionRequests

In #SOTU, Apple just announced that "in a future #macOS release", KEXTs targeting driver categories covered by #DriverKit will no longer work and encouraged developers to adopt #DriverKit now.

wow

I have the impression that on future next major release 10.16 also 2012 (Metal) Mac will be dropped from support, but I hope no.

 

[TimothyR734]

We might have to learn as much about the driver kit api see if that can be helpful for our older Macs

 

[jackluke]

Premise: still no graphic acceleration

I have to enforce my theory about using OpenCL+OpenGL downgrade on macOS 10.15 Catalina on Unsupported Macs

Since I just confirmed what I thought, these lines you will encounter (only during verbose booting) if downgrade together the OpenCL+OpenGL on Catalina: apfs_spec_read_wrapper -offset

are simply due too the 32+64 bit FAT binaries, so it's the 32 bit coding parsed from Catalina kernel that returns those answers: apfs_spec_read_wrapper -offset

Instead taking OpenCL+OpenGL from a Mojave BaseSystem.dmg (they are "mach 64 bit only"), I don't get any of those warning messages from verbose booting, but a kernel panic right after stage2 apple logo, but as many know the kext/frameworks from a BaseSystem.dmg are incomplete and smaller in size since they are fitted and suited only for a Recovery Environment.

Hence I confirm again that downgrading OpenCL+OpenGL frameworks (those taken from a full installation HS 10.13.6 or Mojave 10.14.3) on Catalina still maintain system bootable and work with no issues.

So again I'd would focus on that, since as we have seen for Mojave the legacy non-metal-opengl video cards are more friendly with legacy OpenGL.framework than Catalina one.

@ASentientBot give it a try.
We need to find a way to let digest the CoreDisplay to those 2 frameworks. Or maybe Skylight or Appkit. I'd start from CoreDisplay however.

 

[iMac-Oldschool]

There's really no need for you to apologise for the obstacles that Apple places in our way when trying to keep old, but still serviceable, hardware running. I've really enjoyed the last couple of years of being able to upgrade the OS to keep the apps compatible with later hardware. Your efforts have contributed substantially to my understanding of macOS.

My iMac8,1 has been upgraded with an SSD and 6GB of memory to provide quite adequate performance for office tasks. Files created or modified by version 6.0 of Numbers cannot be opened in the version supported by El Capitan. There are complex work-arounds, but this is a real obstacle to efficient working. The various patchers have provided seamless solutions.

Is there a possibility of being able to upgrade video card on the iMac8,1 to provide metal support? It is difficult to find a clear technical answer to this questions. Most web sites appear to restrict their comments to "not worth the expense" or "will not provide good gaming performance."

Thanks again for your help. I won't be surprised if you manage to pull yet another rabbit out of the hat and get Catalina working on the older hardware.

 

[Jonathan50]

cMP3,1 managed to reach the welcome/choose_language screen, however the usb keyboard and usb mouse (both connected) were not recognized or responsive so had to shut down. any ideas?

 

[thatsmeonlyme]

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.

Hi, I am using a MP 5.1 with metal graphics R9 280x. If you think you got this patch working I would like to test it with you.
greats Gerhard

 

[jackluke]

@saudor you are totally right about Catalina and "legacy safari extensions", I usually kept my favourites old extension.safariextz and sideloaded them through the Safari's Develop top-menu and then allowed in Safari's Preferences, while this worked till Mojave from Catalina they now have completely deleted the Show Extension Builder from the Safari Develop menu.

This is an old-school way and worked till Mojave 10.14.5 : https://developer.apple.com/library...ngExtensionBuilder/UsingExtensionBuilder.html

FYI Catalina Safari version is 13.0 .

 

[FlorisVN]

There's really no need for you to apologise for the obstacles that Apple places in our way when trying to keep old, but still serviceable, hardware running. I've really enjoyed the last couple of years of being able to upgrade the OS to keep the apps compatible with later hardware. Your efforts have contributed substantially to my understanding of macOS.

My iMac8,1 has been upgraded with an SSD and 6GB of memory to provide quite adequate performance for office tasks. Files created or modified by version 6.0 of Numbers cannot be opened in the version supported by El Capitan. There are complex work-arounds, but this is a real obstacle to efficient working. The various patchers have provided seamless solutions.

Is there a possibility of being able to upgrade video card on the iMac8,1 to provide metal support? It is difficult to find a clear technical answer to this questions. Most web sites appear to restrict their comments to "not worth the expense" or "will not provide good gaming performance."

Thanks again for your help. I won't be surprised if you manage to pull yet another rabbit out of the hat and get Catalina working on the older hardware.

About iMac8,1 and upgrading the GPU I'm not sure if it's possible.
I think it also uses an MXM-B card, but compatability could be a question.
imac's from 2009,2010 and 2011 are fine compatible with lot of Dell/Alienware metal Nvidia cards.
but they use a MXM 3.0 slot.

I think this older iMac8,1 uses MXM 1 or 2.0 slot, not sure of course.
But make a thread, here on MR and test it your self.
Nvidia Dell Quadro K2000M is a cheap card, so you can always try it..

 

[Vyzantion]

@dosdude1
Yep, there some people who shall still use Catalina without acceleration and still find it useful. I have used Mojave without it and the software I needed worked fine. And I have really benefited from the upgrade from High Sierra in many ways. You and the rest of the community did a great jobs. Please do not give up now. As long as the kernel supports the CPU, there is still hope. Perhaps an open source fork or re-write of some components, based on High Sierra/Mojave ones shall do the deed, if some or most really want acceleration.
@0403979 I really like your determination. Maintaining a patch would be really useful for many people like me who shall benefit into their work on an upgraded macOS, although this OS does not support graphics acceleration. Catalina can probably be a pretty good workstation for music production, for example, or for macOS server, perhaps even for some software development on Xcode.

 

[jackluke]

@dosdude1
Yep, there some people who shall still use Catalina without acceleration and still find it useful. I have used Mojave without it and the software I needed worked fine. And I have really benefited from the upgrade from High Sierra in many ways. You and the rest of the community did a great jobs. Please do not give up now. As long as the kernel supports the CPU, there is still hope. Perhaps an open source fork or re-write of some components, based on High Sierra/Mojave ones shall do the deed, if some or most really want acceleration.
@0403979 I really like your determination. Maintaining a patch would be really useful for many people like me who shall benefit into their work on an upgraded macOS, although this OS does not support graphics acceleration. Catalina can probably be a pretty good workstation for music production, for example, or for macOS server, perhaps even for some software development on Xcode.

I confirm, Xcode.app does work also without graphic acceleration, and is even possible to launch the iOS Simulator, it will be very slow, but it works.

Xcode11beta.xip (Installer package) is 7 GB, Xcode11beta.app after installed takes 20 GB.

So I'd say to those who intend to install it, consider that you should have at least 30 gb available space on disk.

 

[0403979]

@dosdude1
Yep, there some people who shall still use Catalina without acceleration and still find it useful. I have used Mojave without it and the software I needed worked fine. And I have really benefited from the upgrade from High Sierra in many ways. You and the rest of the community did a great jobs. Please do not give up now. As long as the kernel supports the CPU, there is still hope. Perhaps an open source fork or re-write of some components, based on High Sierra/Mojave ones shall do the deed, if some or most really want acceleration.
@0403979 I really like your determination. Maintaining a patch would be really useful for many people like me who shall benefit into their work on an upgraded macOS, although this OS does not support graphics acceleration. Catalina can probably be a pretty good workstation for music production, for example, or for macOS server, perhaps even for some software development on Xcode.

It would also be useful for the Mac Pro users who can then use a Metal GPU and get acceleration and for the MacBook4,1 users who are used to having no acceleration since 10.9 and thus have nothing to lose.

 

[jackluke]

It would also be useful for the Mac Pro users who can then use a Metal GPU and get acceleration and for the MacBook4,1 users who are used to having no acceleration since 10.9 and thus have nothing to lose.

Have you managed to boot Catalina on MB4,1 ?

I guess it should work as for Mojave just using very legacy *USB* kext.

 

[FlorisVN]

It would also be useful for the Mac Pro users who can then use a Metal GPU and get acceleration and for the MacBook4,1 users who are used to having no acceleration since 10.9 and thus have nothing to lose.

indeed MacPro, Xserve's and iMac's with upgraded GPU's are I think the best devices for Catalina..

 

[jackluke]

I was poking around using my external Catalina from another macOS to retrieve and put some apps, and noticed that:

Third party apps are stored here : /Volumes/APFS Data/Device/Applications/
macOS core apps are stored here: /Volumes/APFS Catalina System Label/System/Applications/

Again, I think the tricky APFS Volume to handle to create a Catalina USB Installer for unsupported Mac, is the "APFS System" rather than "APFS Data".

 

[0403979]

Have you managed to boot Catalina on MB4,1 ?

I guess it should work as for Mojave just using very legacy *USB* kext.

I have managed to boot it. In fact, all I needed to do to get bare functionality (booting and USB), was to replace 6 kexts and remove the PlatformSupport and telemetry files.

 

[jackluke]

Alright, so for those who were wondering, myself and @parrotgeek1
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.

If you'll develop a Catalina Patcher for Mac Pro and iMacs with video cards upgraded, then almost surely your patcher will fit also, without acceleration, for the other ex-Mojave unsupported machines, since on MacPro3,1 (and I guess MP5,1) you still have to put yours legacyUSB, legacyBT/Wifi, legacyAudio and legacyPlatform "Post-Install patches", and few of them are also required on iMacs earlier than 2012.

So your Catalina Patcher will be still usable for other unsupported Mac, except for the fact that OpenGL+GPUSupport+CoreDisplay send in crash Catalina WindowServer.

While without replacing them no crash, and from my recent non-clever experiment, replacing only OpenGL+OpenCL also no crash on Catalina.

 

[Larsvonhier]

It would also be useful for the Mac Pro users who can then use a Metal GPU and get acceleration and for the MacBook4,1 users who are used to having no acceleration since 10.9 and thus have nothing to lose.

And lets not forget, on most unsupported systems there is the possibility to actually use eGPUs. I proved that a while ago with utilising the miniPCIe slot where normally the Airport cards are plugged in (i.e. in a MBP4,1, the MB4,1, C2D iMacs). In addition, the ExpressCard slot on 15" and 17" MacBook Pro (4,1 and up) also works for eGPUs.
Makes the systems kind of immobile, but for ppl attaching screens already, this would make only a small difference...

 

[jackluke]

@Larsvonhier your SiriUI .3 Mojave downgrade patch doesn't work more on Catalina, Siri appears for few seconds then auto-closes.

I've tried to downgrade around all the others Siri* privateframeworks but nothing.

How did exactly debugged it ?

Because apparently I can't notice a real Siri.app crash on Catalina.

 

[0403979]

@Larsvonhier your SiriUI .3 Mojave downgrade patch doesn't work more on Catalina, Siri appears for few seconds then auto-closes.

I've tried to downgrade around all the others Siri* privateframeworks but nothing.

How did exactly debugged it ?

Because apparently I can't notice a real Siri.app crash on Catalina.

Maybe Siri requires acceleration?

 

[jackluke]

Maybe Siri requires acceleration?

Very possible, I always notice that when opening Siri.app from DualGPU MBP it automatically switches from Integrated (low-end GPU) to Discrete (high-end GPU), seems Siri uses some Core Graphics frameworks.

 

[0403979]

Very possible, I always notice that when opening Siri from DualGPU MBP it automatically switched from Integrated to Discrete GPU, seems Siri uses some Core Graphics frameworks.

I guess that's a loss then too. Do you actually use Siri on the Mac?

 

[jackluke]

I guess that's a loss then too. Do you actually use Siri on the Mac?

Very rarely.
[doublepost=1560083439][/doublepost]Here are others of my usual non-clever tests to attempt bring back non-metal acceleration on Catalina, these are frameworks taken from a Mojave 10.14.3 installation booting from verbose mode :

Note: booting from verbose mode (CMD+V) at certain point you will reach the apple logo with an empty loading bar, it's typically called the "stage2 apple logo"

1) Replacing OpenGL+OpenCL + GPUSupport : also worked on Catalina, reach and pass the stage2 apple logo, system usable with no crashes

2) Replacing OpenGL+OpenCL + GPUSupport + Appkit : does reach stage2 apple logo, but then loop on an ACM:: functionIdontremember
(I've searched inside the SLE and it should be the AppleCredentialManager.kext)

3) Replacing OpenGL+OpenCL + GPUSupport + CoreDisplay : does reach stage2 apple logo, but then loop on IOConsoleUsers with a only pid crashes "PerfPowerService" followed by crash loginwindow

4) This is the interesting part:
Replacing OpenGL+OpenCL + GPUSupport + CoreDisplay + SkyLight : does reach stage2 apple logo, does fill half loading bar, then goes blank LCD screen, but the keyboard caps-lock is responsive, and apparently the Catalina in background is working since I detected it through router.

 

[Minh_Ton]

Replacing OpenGL+OpenCL + GPUSupport + CoreDisplay + SkyLight : does reach stage2 apple logo, does fill half loading bar, then goes blank LCD screen, but the keyboard caps-lock is responsive, and apparently the Catalina in background is working since I detected it through router.

I tried this and as you said, Catalina is working in the background with a blank screen and interestingly, when I connect my MB through the mini display port, the external screen just flashes and I can see (somehow) the Catalina wallpaper (?)