macOS 10.15 Catalina on Unsupported Macs

[GDMSR]

When I try to create a new Catalina USB Boot Installers (using dosdude1 patcher), I keep getting an error that says "Error Saving BaseSystem Image - An error ocurred while attempting to save the BaseSystem image. Ensure that there is at least 10GB of free space on your startup Disk, then try again".

Any idea why??

In my case I needed to uninstall Sophos AV and reboot - it was interfering with the process.

 

[ASentientBot]

10.15.4 DP1 is out! I'm studying right now so I can't test it, but please tell me if acceleration works!

 

[hvds]

10.15.4 DP1 is out! I'm studying right now so I can't test it, but please tell me if acceleration works!

MBP5,2.
Tried to update the internal SSD OTA (à la Pinarek/jackluke) from 10.15.3 to 10.15.4 DP1.
OTA proceeds OK through all stages and the boot into the newly updated system fails as expected (bootloop): post-install patches needed.

(I can't seem to apply the post-install patches with my bootable USB installer (10.15.3/patcher 1.3.0) so don't get 10.15.4 DP1 to boot for now.
Hold on - re-making the bootable installer now, and will try again.)

EDIT: Applied post-install patches of patcher 1.3.0, with cache rebuild. Booting proceeds up to a certain point. See attached photo taken with boot-args="-no_compat_check -v" at the time when boot doesn't proceed.

 

[Pinarek]

verry interesst @hvds... i wait bevor i install. please write continue...

 

[haralds]

I am trying to download the 10.15.4 beta by modifying the catalog location of DosDude's app like this:
<dict>
<key>CatalogURL</key>
<string>https://swscan.apple.com/content/ca...ion-snowleopard-leopard.merged-1.sucatalog.gz</string>
</dict>
It is downloding the release and not the beta.

Has anybody managed to get their hands on a full installer? How?

 

[avz]

I am trying to download the 10.15.4 beta by modifying the catalog location of DosDude's app like this:
<dict>
<key>CatalogURL</key>
<string>https://swscan.apple.com/content/ca...ion-snowleopard-leopard.merged-1.sucatalog.gz</string>
</dict>
It is downloding the release and not the beta.

Has anybody managed to get their hands on a full installer? How?

Point beta's are not available as full installers. Duh?!

 

[haralds]

Point beta's are not available as full installers. Duh?!

I remember getting them in the past, but might be in error.

 

[jackluke]

The next update will be 10.15.4 dev beta 1 this is the one that worries me a bit as last year macOS 10.14.4 was a rough one but I will use the swupatc and the catalinswufix patch to install

Seems that apple has changed/updated their CoreDisplay "non-metal" frameworks (Skylight?), so maybe new @ASentientBot patches could be required.

Anyway I recall that can re-install (as downgrade) from the full 10.15.3 patcher over your current system without losing personal data and user settings.

Also the 10.15.4 could be bootable without applying the Video patches (stock Catalina Metal frameworks), or try this from a recovery (or usb installer) terminal:
nvram boot-args="-no_compat_check -x -v"

 

[hvds]

Seems that apple has changed/updated their CoreDisplay "non-metal" frameworks (Skylight?), so maybe new @ASentientBot patches could be required.

Anyway I recall that you can re-install (as downgrade) from the full 10.15.3 over your current system without losing personal data and user settings.

Also the 10.15.4 could be bootable without applying the Video patches, or try this from a recovery terminal: nvram boot-args="-no_compat_check -x"

Thanks jackluke.
And no problem - my 10.15.4 testing ssd is a clone of my working ssd which has 10.15.3. The testing disk was on sata only for the ota steps, as required on my mbp5,2. Now it is on usb again and the working one on sata.
Looking forward to further testing... tomorrow

 

[DerrickO]

I've got an old 2011 MacBook Air 13" with 1.7 GHz dual core i5, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD (the slow Toshiba one), Intel HD Graphics w/ 384 MB of video RAM. It also has a broken LCD screen that is completely unusable, but the video out still works via the Thunderbolt port using an HDMI dongle.

Last night, I dusted off the old machine with macOS Sierra and connected to my 4k LG monitor via HDMI @ 1080p. I then ran thru the steps to use the macOS Catalina Patcher and I'm happy to report that after about 2 hours of work, I have the machine up and running on Catalina 10.15.3 on my first try! Using the patcher, I opted to download Catalina from Apple and then created the installer using a 32GB USB flash drive. (I did have to run the AFPS firmware patch first while it was still running Sierra since I wasn't running High Sierra to begin with.)

While I got a little nervous towards the end of the Catalina install due to the fact that the fan was going top speed for damn near 2 hours, the fan eventually calmed back down after the install was complete a little while later.

Overall, I'm blown away at just how easy this was to do and also how good this solution appears to work given how old the hardware is and and the fact that it has been somewhat abused given the broken LCD screen.

After getting home this evening, I've continued to play with it by watching YouTube videos, surfing the web using Safari, and configuring email. I'll be installing MS Office later this week and if it continues to perform well, I'll be taking it over to my Mom's house to use with an old 30" Apple Cinema Display as her computer to pay bills, do email, and surf the Internet.

From a performance standpoint, apps load fast, dock appears and hides just fine, scrolling on webpages and in email is perfectly acceptable, 4 finger swiping between spaces is just fine, email in the preview pane renders quick, 4 finger swipe up and choosing a different space is quick.

While I've only been using the machine with Catalina since late last night and this evening after I got home from work, I haven't had the machine crash, lock up, or give me the beachball of death. I've shutdown and rebooted a number of times and it gets to the logon screen fast.

While this may sound like I'm nitpicking, below are the only issues I've found so far running Catalina on this "unsupported" MacBook Air from 2011:

1. The avatar picture in System Preferences will occasionally disappear and then reappear upon opening System Preferences later (no pattern that I've seen).

2. The Airplay icon on the Menu Bar will sometimes "blend in" with the menubar background and is hidden. You can still click on the icon, but then my living room Apple TV doesn't appear as a valid target. I did notice in YouTube that from its controls, you can also choose to cast to Apple TV and it does list my living room Apple TV as a target.

3. MBA fan will kick on during long YouTube videos, but will calm back down after it ends. I installed Fanny and noticed that when the MBA is idling, the temp stays around 114F. Watching a video or two will cause the temp to creep up to 150F, but you really can't hear the fan at 150F, but the fan definitely kicks on around 160F+.

4. The "Drift" screen saver will not load at all. If you click "Preview" it just goes to a black screen.

Unless I'm totally missing something and haven't run into the "dealbreaker" yet that makes running Catalina unfeasible on this MBA, this patch from dosdude is F&*$ING amazing! I can't believe Apple didn't grandfather this class of MBAs from 2011 to run Catalina.

As soon as I get some more free time, I'm going to pull out my old 2009 iMac 27" with i7 and 1TB HDD and see how that thing runs the macOS Catalina patcher! If it is anywhere as good as its been with the 2011 MBA, I'm going to max out the RAM to 32GB and replace the stock mechanical 7200RPM drive with either a SSHD or a SSD.

More to come when I get the iMac going!

Thanks DOSDUDE!

 

[Techozoom]

Hi, thanks Dosdude1, i have installed MacOS Catalina on a Mac Mini 2011 and MacBookPro 2011. I have also an MacBook Pro 2007 (3,1( with an 8600M GT and Core 2 Duo, is it someway possible to install Catalina on it, or is it just to old?

 

[totaltoney]

macbook pro 2009, have installed a couple of the past cata releases with no issue.
just created a 10.15.3 bootable USB from my 10.15.2 and got error towards end "macOS could not be installed on your computer"
Tried a few times same thing... Wiped the drive and tried to do a clean install but same.

SIP is disabled

edit: went to try for like the 7th time, but when wiping the drive this time I gave it a diff name instead of "ssd" which i kept trying. WTF??

 

[ASentientBot]

10.15.4 DP1 is now working on non-Metal systems with an update to my framework wrappers!

It was actually semi-usable prior to the update, but with some missing functionality and extreme slowness caused by services constantly crashing, as well as an inability to rebuild the dyld shared cache because of missing symbols. This is now fixed and the beta seems to run normally.

The one issue I notice is that Displays prefpane is totally borked. I'll see if there is a fix for this, but it doesn't impact the functionality so I'm not too worried about it.

I hope you are all doing well. New binaries and source code are attached... please report any issues as usual... happy updating

@0403979 @dosdude1
[automerge]1580966618[/automerge]

Hi, thanks Dosdude1, i have installed MacOS Catalina on a Mac Mini 2011 and MacBookPro 2011. I have also an MacBook Pro 2007 (3,1( with an 8600M GT and Core 2 Duo, is it someway possible to install Catalina on it, or is it just to old?

I was about to say that machine should work, but the T7500 is an issue -- it's a Merom based CPU and lacks SSE4.1, which was introduced with Penryn. I think there were efforts a couple years ago (in Hackintosh sites) to create a custom kernel that emulates these instructions, but in my knowledge there was never much success. You'll probably be stuck on El Capitan unfortunately.

 

[hvds]

Thanks jackluke.
And no problem - my 10.15.4 testing ssd is a clone of my working ssd which has 10.15.3. The testing disk was on sata only for the ota steps, as required on my mbp5,2. Now it is on usb again and the working one on sata.
Looking forward to further testing... tomorrow

Hi, does someone have experience with Express Card 34 as external SATA interface to older MBPs? With Catalina.
Mine is an MBP5,2 17“ mid 2009.
Would make life easier when updating OTA, which doesn‘t work with USB on such old models. And doesn‘t cost much apparently. I looked at the LaCie one so far.
Thanks!

 

[mwakious]

I don’t know if its my imagination but after installing version 10.15.3 i think things are going faster and screen is brighter...🤔 lol
After the update at first boot the updater poped up saying that some files are replaced to asking to reinstall the patches, i did so but after reboot nothing was changed, launched the updater manually and reinstalled all patches, before reboot i replaced trackpad patch and video then rebooted,everythings works well again.
I saw trackpad icon in system preferences changed place🤔
if anyone is interested,movavi video editor is working like a charm, imovie needs previous version

 

[jackluke]

I have OTA updated from 10.15.3 beta 3 (19D75a) to 10.15.4 beta 1, using swupatch, the Pinarek method and my script catalinaswufix3.command still worked correctly, I mean applying all the known post-patches for machine model, except the Video patch, infact I have re-used the stock Catalina 10.15.3 : CoreDisplay and OpenGL (frameworks) + SkyLight and GPUSupport (privateframeworks) and system booted correctly to the GUI mode (pictures attached) without graphic acceleration of course.

@ASentientBot I've tried your recent wrappers but from verbose mode I get these weird errors:

AMFI: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/SkyLight.framework/Versions/A/SkyLight is ad hoc signed
int_validateCodeDirectoryHashInDaemon(LazyPath *, struct cs_blob *, unsigned int * , int, bool, bool, char *, bool *) no registered daemon port
AMFI code signature validation failed

Got the same lines for SkyLightOriginal, CoreDisplayOriginal and CoreDisplay unix exec

Currently can't get acceleration to work under 10.15.4 due to an AMFI issues, but I have SIP disabled, tried also to update_dyld_shared_cache , but same result.

However with all-in post-patches and re-replacing the 4 non-metal frameworks with their stock Catalina ones allowed me to boot again to GUI Mode with at least framebuffer video.

 

[RayBanton]

Hi everyone,

I got a question: I am not able to boot into the recovery mode of my catalina partion anymore since I installed catalina with the patcher. I press cmd + R while booting and end up with the error message: Recovery Image verification fail...
Is this a common issue?
What I actually like to do is, to re-enable SIP and get back to full security since the patcher installation disables SIP and leaves the machine unsecure. Any ideas or recommendations?

Thanks and regards

 

[Techozoom]

@ASentientBot Oh ok, i didnt know that this cpu doesnt even support sse 4.1. Thats difficult. But thank you for your answer . When i find a solution then i will post it.

 

[ASentientBot]

I have OTA updated from 10.15.3 beta 3 (19D75a) to 10.15.4 beta 1, using swupatch, the Pinarek method and my script catalinaswufix3.command still worked correctly, I mean applying all the known post-patches for machine model, except the Video patch, infact I have re-used the stock Catalina 10.15.3 : CoreDisplay and OpenGL (frameworks) + SkyLight and GPUSupport (privateframeworks) and system booted correctly to the GUI mode (pictures attached) without graphic acceleration of course.

@ASentientBot I've tried your recent wrappers but from verbose mode I get these weird errors:

AMFI: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/SkyLight.framework/Versions/A/SkyLight is ad hoc signed
int_validateCodeDirectoryHashInDaemon(LazyPath *, struct cs_blob *, unsigned int * , int, bool, bool, char *, bool *) no registered daemon port
AMFI code signature validation failed

Got the same lines for SkyLightOriginal, CoreDisplayOriginal and CoreDisplay unix exec

Currently can't get acceleration to work under 10.15.4 due to an AMFI issues, but I have SIP disabled, tried also to update_dyld_shared_cache , but same result.

However with all-in post-patches and re-replacing the 4 non-metal frameworks with their stock Catalina ones allowed me to boot again to GUI Mode with at least framebuffer video.

That is bizarre... I don't experience this on my system at all. Nothing has changed in the way that I build/sign the executables for quite a while. Is anyone else getting this issue too?

 

[jackluke]

That is bizarre... I don't experience this on my system at all. Nothing has changed in the way that I build/sign the executables for quite a while. Is anyone else getting this issue too?

Just tried to set: sudo nvram boot-args='-no_compat_check -v amfi_get_out_of_my_way=0x1'

and now I don't get more those AMFI issue, but later WindowServer pid crashes and as you know doesn't allow me to land the loginwindow.

But maybe is only related to my Catalina installation.

 

[ASentientBot]

Just tried to set: sudo nvram boot-args='-no_compat_check -v amfi_get_out_of_my_way=0x1'

and now I don't get more those AMFI issue, but later WindowServer pid crashes and as you know doesn't allow me to land the loginwindow.

But maybe is only related to my Catalina installation.

Are you able to get a crash report for WindowServer?

 

[jackluke]

Are you able to get a crash report for WindowServer?

You mean from /private/var/log/system.log or with a listener ?

But is something related to security frameworks, probably something mismatched on my Catalina installation, but the weird fact is that using the stock 4 Metal frameworks the system boot up correctly, without accel.

 

[haralds]

I am trying to download the 10.15.4 beta by modifying the catalog location of DosDude's app like this:
<dict>
<key>CatalogURL</key>
<string>https://swscan.apple.com/content/ca...ion-snowleopard-leopard.merged-1.sucatalog.gz</string>
</dict>
It is downloding the release and not the beta.

Has anybody managed to get their hands on a full installer? How?

Got it working the old fashioned way:
- Carbon Copy System disk to removable
- Attach to a MacBook Pro and updater to 10.15.4 DP1
- Move back
- Boot and CarbonCopy back after checkout
This is on a Mac Pro 5,1 with updated video and BLE/WiFi

BTW, since NVRAM is used for AppleID it is good to use a second account for logging in on the other system. Nothing fatal, but a bunch of nags. Some Activate apps also deactivate on a system with a different UUID.

My main motivation is folder sharing, since I have separated my personal system from the one I use for work. I do not like to use DropBox. It's a pig.

 

[jackluke]

@ASentientBot could you attach a zipped of these your current folders ?

SkyLight.framework/Versions/A/Resources/
CoreDisplay.framework/Versions/A/Resources/

Probably I mismatched in replacing/merging/moving those 10.15.4 beta 1 folder (should be compiled on February 3rd 2020 by apple, while I am using a previous version that's why probably WindowServer crashes)

 

[0403979]

Rastafabi's Catalina loader

READ THIS ENTIRE POST AND THE INCLUDED README FIRST!

It took me a while, but finally I managed to create a "Catalina loader", which enables you to install macOS 10.15 Catalina on unsupported Macs with compatible hardware. It's meant for Mac Pro 4,1 & 5,1 and iMac 2010/2011 systems, which have a Metal compatible GPU. A upgraded WiFi/Bluetooth card might be necessary to have OOB support. I have not yet looked into audio, though on my Mac Pro 4,1 it works OOB. The download includes an installation guide with additional details.
It is not meant for systems without a Metal GPU or with Core2 Duo (based) CPUs.

The loader is based on rEFInd and OpenCore, which spoofs the Mac to be a compatible model.
View attachment 842732

Download the Catalina loader.zip

————————————

Some might be reminded of my old Mavericks download enabler.

————————————

Dual CPU Mac Pros also require to be running non x55xx CPUs to omit audio stuttering. Thanks @tsialex

————————————

Questions:

The Catalina Loader is confirmed to work with the first macOS Catalina developer beta installer (DP1).
No other installers have been tested and thus are not supported at the moment as those can potentially damage your hardware.

Yes. If your GPU is not metal compatible it will install and boot. However it’s usually not worth it.

Just about any should work. Find an old 512mb drive and you are good to go. Of course larger drives will work, too. BTW: You may also use SD-Cards, if your Mac can boot from those.

You can't. Just install it manually afterwards. There is now way to add anything, as this basically just enables you to run the legit unmodified Catalina installer.

@Starplayr apparently wrote a little script for the Mac Pro 3,1. It should work for other Macs, too.

It seems to install and boot on 2010 & 2011 MacBooks. However you will not have any graphics acceleration natively.

I am very sorry. However there is nothing I can do. You have been warned (README) and proceeded at your own risk.

————————————

Updates:

1. Fixed large file size (60mb), due to an oversight one may part.
2. Removed experimental flag causing issues.

Out of interest, if you've used this tool, DM me with your thoughts, version, and device. I'm interested to see how spoofing a supported Mac model performs and effects firmware updates (which if installed onto the wrong device, would probably kill said device)