macOS 10.15 Catalina on Unsupported Macs

[arqueox]

Not strictly necessary, Catalina can boot stock from 2010-2011 machines with only nvram set as "-no_compat_check".

Instead to get audio, wifi:

For audio AppleHDA.kext from HighSierra, Wifi IO80211Family.kext from HighSierra or Mojave.

For gpu framebuffer/acceleration you need all the @ASentientBot Catalina patches: CoreDisplay.framework, SkyLight.framework (PrivateFramework), IOSurface.kext and IOHIDFamily.kext

In addition @dosdude1 non-metal fixes: .3 Mojave OpenGL.framework and GPUSupport.framework (Privateframework)

Then: IOGraphicsFamily.kext, IONDRVSupport.kext, IOAccelerator2D.plugin, IOAcceleratorFamily2.kext

Then: your GPU HighSierra kext.

From @ASentientBot I only have coredisplay and skylight... He shared the others here too? I have missed that.
From @dosdude1 I can just use my Mojave patched files, right?
Thnx again

 

[jackluke]

From @ASentientBot I only have coredisplay and skylight... He shared the others here too? I have missed that.
From @dosdude1 I can just use my Mojave patched files, right?
Thnx again

Right, I guess you can use the Mojave patched files, except you need in addition the new Catalina @ASentientBot fixes by clicking: here

Or better for enhanced stable version: here2

 

[arqueox]

Right, I guess you can use the Mojave patched files, except you need in addition the new Catalina @ASentientBot fixes by clicking: here

Thnx man.

 

[pbyfield01]

I am honestly amazed at your determination and skill. This kind of announcement should never have happened. But here you are and you delivered on something thought impossible by many. Congratulations. Between this thread and the Mojave one, you have contributed the most individually and I must say, your contributions are amazing and extremely valuable. I am very fond of your great achievements and respect for everyone on this thread. In my opinion, you have helped the most in getting the vast majority of our devices working. Thank you a lot for your incredible research. You are a valuable asset to this community and we're lucky to have you.

Thanks to you, I was able to capture a screenshot I once thought was impossible. Nine days after the release of the first developer beta of macOS Catalina, the OS is working with no issues whatsoever on an almost nine year old computer. The humble MacBook7,1. Bravo.

View attachment 842488
[doublepost=1560359942][/doublepost]macOS Patcher 3 beta 1 will be released with full support for macOS Catalina and all versions before it dating back to Sierra. This beta will be released as soon as I can get my hands on and implement @dosdude1's installer patch. Big thanks to @ASentientBot for his amazing work on macOS Catalina graphics acceleration.

Note for macOS Patcher 3 and future versions: Starting with macOS Patcher 3, transutil will no longer be included with macOS Patcher. It will be available separately and will support all patchers for Mojave and Catalina. Another utility by the name of apfsutil be made available shortly for switching between APFS volumes for users of the APFS system patch. This utility will support macOS Patcher and support status for other patchers will be announced later. And finally, I will soon start to develop a new utility specifically for macOS Patcher, called, macOS Patcher Subsystem. This utility will also be available separately but for macOS Patcher only. macOS Patcher Subsystem (MPS), will have the ability to detect system updates, system patches that have been overwritten, and will offer updates to patches and to MPS itself. It will also allow the reinstallation of patches (including macOS Patcher Subsystem itself), without the need of the macOS installer drive.

These utilities will not be preinstalled as the aim of macOS Patcher is to give more freedom to the user by expanding their choice of operating systems. And including utilities that a user may not need or want is contradicting that. These utilities will all be open source as is macOS Patcher and will have their own GitHub page and download zips. Install scripts will be available for these utilities and they will be installed with the intent to be easily removable by the user. This can be done either manually or via an uninstall script that will also be there for download.

macOS Patcher 3 will not remove the current utilities by default, instead this will be done via an optional upgrade script that will be released along with macOS Patcher 3. I will also be releasing restore scripts individually for all past versions of macOS Patcher since macOS Patcher 1.0 to allow users to remove patcher files for their specific version of macOS Patcher. These restore scripts will also include the latest improvements in the visual design and code structure of my scripts. Users of the Users of macOS Patcher 1 are encouraged to download the restore script for their version of macOS Patcher, when it is released, and follow the instructions on the RMC website for restoring before they use a newer version of macOS Patcher.

I hope these changes will be beneficial to everyone and I'm excited to provide support for Catalina shortly and make my patcher and its utilities more open and to give more choice to the user about the software they install on their machine.

So where will this patcher tool be posted when its released in the beta stages? If you have a link that would be great!

 

[0403979]

So where will this patcher tool be posted when its released in the beta stages? If you have a link that would be great!

On the macOS Patcher GitHub page. There's a link for it in my bio/signature!

 

[StellarVixen]

Looks like so much work, even more than for the previous version.


I would just stay on Mojave.

 

[avz]

I am wondering why I am unable to see .DS_Store, BaseSystem.chunklist, and BaseSystem.dmg files when I mount InstallESD.dmg file? I am making sure that hidden files are shown of course.
Did anybody had any luck extracting these files from the InstallESD.dmg?

 

[jackluke]

I am wondering why I am unable to see .DS_Store, BaseSystem.chunklist, and BaseSystem.dmg files when I mount InstallESD.dmg file? I am making sure that hidden files are shown of course.
Did anybody had any luck extracting these files from the InstallESD.dmg?

They are outside the InstallESD.dmg , I mean they are here /Install macOS 10.15 Beta.app/Contents/SharedSupport/

but I guess you could download them separately, keep in mind that Catalina BaseSystem.dmg is about 500 MB.

The little advantage is that inside the Catalina BaseSystem.dmg you will find the "Install macOS 10.15 Beta.app" forked of the rest, but you can create a full installer from there adding manually a "SharedSupport" folder.

You could retrieve from sucatalog there should be URLs I guess, but don't know exactly how to.

 

[jbiser361]

That quote from the release notes actually has to do with better support (semantic highlighting) for the Metal Shading Language itself ( it is like a C++ compiler for metal code - pretty neat) It doesn't necessarily indicate the underlying metal gpu requirement (which was discovered above) Apple is being its usual opaque self...

Another interesting Release Note quote is the Simulator one:

"...When running on earlier versions of macOS or in an environment where Metal is not available, simulators continue to use software rendered OpenGL. If your Mac has multiple GPUs, use the File menu in Simulator to select which GPU to use. If the GPU in use becomes unavailable, any simulators using it automatically shut down. (18430676) "

If I read that correctly, key Xcode tools like the iOS and iPadOS simulators should run under OpenGL (software rendered). Why the nice minimap (a new Xcode 11 feature) now requires Metal is beyond me. If a sophisticated simulator can run under GL - the minimal should also. Maybe a legitimate bug we can file for a possible fix in a later beta...

This seems to be one of the few times Apple is actually explaining why the GL frameworks are still available and have been tweaked since the "official deprecation notices"...

so the simulators use openGL still, but the minimap uses metal. so it could be a bug

 

[pbyfield01]

On the macOS Patcher GitHub page. There's a link for it in my bio/signature!

Sweet thank you! Do you have any idea when it will be available and will you update the main post when it is?

 

[pkouame]

so the simulators use openGL still, but the minimap uses metal. so it could be a bug

At least they claim. Now getting Apple to fix anything is a whole other ball of wax...meanwhile I guess @ASentientBot has a fix for unsupported non-metal machines...

 

[jbiser361]

At least they claim. Now getting Apple to fix anything is a whole other ball of wax...meanwhile I guess @ASentientBot has a fix for unsupported non-metal machines...

awesome! i’m reeaalllyyy happy to hear that

 

[0403979]

Sweet thank you! Do you have any idea when it will be available and will you update the main post when it is?

I'm currently waiting on @dosdude1 for the installer patch. We'll see how long it is before that's finished. I will update the main post and probably post a little announcement. I look forward to you using macOS Patcher (and thx for the follow)!

 

[Starplayr]

I have good news on the time out issue.

It looks like I have ASentientBot's IOHID Stall fix working fine. On the Mac Pro 3,1 in conjunction with the LegacyUSBInjector, seems to work fine with NO other USB replacements from the Mojave patcher.

I'm also using the telemetry plugin from High Sierra. I don't know if it does anything but it does not cause any KPs. I have tested this once on Mojave and it did not work.

I was able to get it to boot up right away in Single-User-Mode. Sorry I miss read earlier and was using Safe-Mode which used to work for me early on. Single User mode does work around this issue.

After a reboot of my usual patches along with ASentientBot's fix, my system is booting normally. There still will be 1 or 2 chances that the system will have a time out and these is usually caused when the system detects a change or it's your first time booting up.

It may be helpful to boot your system in single user mode couple of times to see if any patches you may be done work without having to wait a long time from the boot delay.

I have seen the system not remove Kext's in a shell script even when told to be removed. This happened with the WiFi 802.11 Kext on my test system. Doing some investigation there. -PRf may be helpful. -P applies zeros to the file three times. Slower, but ensure's the old file is erased before removing.

I am going to test my patches on a couple other fresh installs. It's mainly to help myself and any other MP3,1 users. And I'm also interested in finding the least number of patches needed for a fully operational system on Cat. Which I think I have achieved this and will release a more finalized script for MP3,1 once I feel it's more bullet proof.

There are the kext's I am using as of now for Mac Pro 3,1:

AppleHDA.kext -> Mojave Patcher (Sound)

com.apple.telemetry.plugin -> High Sierra 10.13

corecapture.kext -> Mojave Patcher (WiFi, Broadcom)
CoreCaptureResponder.kext -> Mojave Patcher (WiFi, Broadcom)
IO80211Family.kext -> Mojave Patcher (WiFi, Broadcom)

IOHIDFamily.kext -> ASentientBot's HID Single User patch
LegacyUSBInjector.kext -> Mojave Patcher, Fixes USB detection on Magic Trackpad 2

In my latest script, I started apply an Erase to the previous kext's that my script is replacing to ensure it does not leave any remnants behind. Will publish it later today.

With this setup, you can use the Blue Arrow patch updater from Dosdude1's patch utility. Things like iSight / webcam work on the MP3,1 with the Logitech 1080p web cam. I will post my Cam info soon for others who want a decent web cam for the Mac Pro.

 

[PixelmonGalaxy]

Not strictly necessary, Catalina can boot stock from 2010-2011 machines with only nvram set as "-no_compat_check".

Instead to get audio, wifi:

For audio AppleHDA.kext from HighSierra, Wifi IO80211Family.kext from HighSierra or Mojave.

For gpu framebuffer/acceleration you need all the @ASentientBot Catalina patches: CoreDisplay.framework, SkyLight.framework (PrivateFramework), IOSurface.kext and IOHIDFamily.kext

In addition @dosdude1 non-metal fixes: .3 Mojave OpenGL.framework and GPUSupport.framework (Privateframework)

Then: IOGraphicsFamily.kext, IONDRVSupport.kext, IOAccelerator2D.plugin, IOAcceleratorFamily2.kext all from HighSierra

And last: your GPU kext from HighSierra.

I am missing IOHIDFamily.kext can I get a link (but yes a I am now booted with graphics detected just no acceleration yet and wifi works too )

 

[jbiser361]

Hey again! I've managed to get Xcode 11 beta running using a dumb hack. (It seems like I do a lot of dumb hacks. But hey, they often work!)
View attachment 842959

To be completely honest, I barely know how to use Xcode, so I can't test its functionality too well. But the app opens and the default Swift app template does build and run. (Edit: just confirmed that this is the case on both Mojave and Catalina.)

If anyone wants to test a bit more thoroughly, patched binaries are attached. Replace the following files:

Xcode-beta.app/Contents/SharedFrameworks/SourceEditor.framework/Versions/A/SourceEditor
Xcode-beta.app/Contents/MacOS/Xcode

I'll edit to add details in a sec. Just want to get this post made first.

Edit: Alright, how I did this is pretty simple/silly, but it works for the moment. Here's a snippet of the backtrace:

0   com.apple.dt.SourceEditor         0x000000012332f5cb specialized static MinimapMetalLinesLayer.defaultDevice() + 491
1   com.apple.dt.SourceEditor         0x000000012332d59c MinimapMetalLinesLayer.init() + 284
2   com.apple.dt.SourceEditor         0x000000012332dbff @objc MinimapMetalLinesLayer.init() + 15
3   com.apple.dt.SourceEditor         0x0000000122ff4abc MinimapLineContentLayer.init() + 92
4   com.apple.dt.SourceEditor         0x0000000122ff4ebf @objc MinimapLineContentLayer.init() + 15

Basically, I found the place in the function MinimapLineContentLayer.init() where it calls MinimapMetalLinesLayer.init() and I replaced that with the function for a different layer. This was sufficient to load the app, but actually editing code caused a crash trying to update the minimap. So I just NOP'ed that call.

The exact binary patches are as follows, in the SourceEditor executable:

0x00000000000dbaa0: call _$s12SourceEditor26MinimapLineHighlightsLayerCMa
0x000000000014f048: nop

It's necessary to re-sign that and the main Xcode binary (it spits out an error about Library Validation if you don't).

As usual, this is a quick-and-dirty hack, I'm sure that the experts will find a better solution soon.

Edit: Forgot to mention this, but this of course impacts the code minimap feature. I assume that the "MinimapMetalLinesLayer" is what shows the actual zoomed-out code, since that does not appear with my patch. However, selections/found words/etc are still shown.

Another Edit: Some screenshots of the partially-blank minimap (in the top right corner) doing its thing when I select/search/click parts of the code:
View attachment 842963 View attachment 842964 View attachment 842965 View attachment 842966
As you can see, it's functional, minus the actual image of the code, which is supposed to be rendered using Metal and disabled by my patch.

how do i install it to xcode lol,,,

 

[0134168]

Really, guys, this thread blows my mind. What a reunion of talents.

 

[dosdude1]

I'm currently waiting on @dosdude1 for the installer patch. We'll see how long it is before that's finished. I will update the main post and probably post a little announcement. I look forward to you using macOS Patcher (and thx for the follow)!

I'm very close to getting this done, the stupid codesigning and library validation it uses is a pain to get around with patched binaries. I've just about got a working solution though, and once done, work will start on my brand new, re-engineered Catalina Patcher. BTW just FYI, this patch is much different than my original installer patch for Sierra through Mojave, so you're going to need to change your patcher implementation a bit. I will explain in detail once I get it fully working.

 

[HiImWeird]

I have tried a few times to get GPU acceleration working using @ASentientBot patches and following what everyone says about which kexts to use but I also seem to get stuck in verbose text or if not using single user a full progress bar. The system hasn't kernal paniced but I have a bunch of messaged about apfs_spec_read_wrapper and tx_flush:966. I really don't understand where I've gone wrong.

Edit: After letting it sit it now kernal panics in single user instantly

 

[jbiser361]

I'm very close to getting this done, the stupid codesigning and library validation it uses is a pain to get around with patched binaries. I've just about got a working solution though, and once done, work will start on my brand new, re-engineered Catalina Patcher. BTW just FYI, this patch is much different than my original installer patch for Sierra through Mojave, so you're going to need to change your patcher implementation a bit. I will explain in detail once I get it fully working.

do u think you’ll be able to get it done this weekend?

 

[mocteo]

and @mocteo almost surely haven't replaced or installed them properly, anyway can you boot in single user mode holding CMD+S after power-on?

If so, then try this from single user mode Shell:

mount -uw /
cd /System/Library/PrelinkedKernels/
cp immutablekernel prelinkedkernel
reboot

That should allow reach again the OSX GUI Mode.

In few words you have to re-use the immutablekernel as a prelinkedkernel I guess apple put it there for this reason, to recover it.

However it's weird, I have interchanged IOAccelerator*.* from HighSierra to Mojave and got no kernel panic or bootloop in any machine. Currently I am using 10.13.6 ones for almost everything.

But wait a second, have you replaced also IOSurface.kext patched from @ASentientBot ?

This is another important Catalina fix needed for Video Framebuffer and OpenGL/non-metal acceleration.

I bet 99% that's why you are getting Catalina kernel panic or bootloop.

Hence try use the file attached.

Sorry for the late answer,
So, I tried the single user mode trick, doesn't do anything, I installed the IOSurface.kext (and the other one from the .zip as well), and now it's stuck at the end of the loading bar, will try to boot in verbose to see.
On the iMac side, i now have sound working (AppleHDA.kext from HS installer) and wifi (from Mojave partition), just needing the graphics acceleration and it's good to go.
I'm sorry, I'm not really experienced in things like this, I always used patchers and I never install kext, even if I use patched Macs everyday.
[doublepost=1560620237][/doublepost]Stuck at this, idk what it means, it may be useful for you ?

 

[avz]

They are outside the InstallESD.dmg , I mean they are here /Install macOS 10.15 Beta.app/Contents/SharedSupport/

but I guess you could download them separately, keep in mind that Catalina BaseSystem.dmg is about 500 MB.

The little advantage is that inside the Catalina BaseSystem.dmg you will find the "Install macOS 10.15 Beta.app" forked of the rest, but you can create a full installer from there adding manually a "SharedSupport" folder.

You could retrieve from sucatalog there should be URLs I guess, but don't know exactly how to.

Thanks! This should be about right.

 

[pkouame]

I'm very close to getting this done, the stupid codesigning and library validation it uses is a pain to get around with patched binaries. I've just about got a working solution though, and once done, work will start on my brand new, re-engineered Catalina Patcher. BTW just FYI, this patch is much different than my original installer patch for Sierra through Mojave, so you're going to need to change your patcher implementation a bit. I will explain in detail once I get it fully working.

Awesome as usual.

Curious what is different with code signing patched binaries for Catalina? Just thinking ahead for some possible Hybrid Light mode fixes...

 

[TimothyR734]

http://osxdaily.com/2019/06/06/make-macos-catalina-beta-usb-boot-install-drive/ this is how to make a bootable 10.15 Catalina usb installer
[doublepost=1560620780][/doublepost]

Sorry for the late answer,
So, I tried the single user mode trick, doesn't do anything, I installed the IOSurface.kext (and the other one from the .zip as well), and now it's stuck at the end of the loading bar, will try to boot in verbose to see.
On the iMac side, i now have sound working (AppleHDA.kext from HS installer) and wifi (from Mojave partition), just needing the graphics acceleration and it's good to go.
I'm sorry, I'm not really experienced in things like this, I always used patchers and I never install kext, even if I use patched Macs everyday.
[doublepost=1560620237][/doublepost]Stuck at this, idk what it means, it may be useful for you ?

if you ever have to replace or install a kext within macOS this will be handy

 

[jackluke]

I am missing IOHIDFamily.kext can I get a link (but yes a I am now booted with graphics detected just no acceleration yet and wifi works too )

IOHIDFamily.kext is only needed to fix the delay on Catalina booting, I guess Mac 2011 (Sandy Bridge) are not affected by this, how much it takes to boot your Catalina ? If less than a minute (on an SSD) then you don't need it.
[doublepost=1560621178][/doublepost]

I have tried a few times to get GPU acceleration working using @ASentientBot patches and following what everyone says about which kexts to use but I also seem to get stuck in verbose text or if not using single user a full progress bar. The system hasn't kernal paniced but I have a bunch of messaged about apfs_spec_read_wrapper and tx_flush:966. I really don't understand where I've gone wrong.

Edit: After letting it sit it now kernal panics in single user instantly

These many "apfs_spec_read_wrapper" are related to 32bit coding still present on old frameworks, but they're not severe and don't compromise the Catalina working.

For which other kext/framework you may need check: here

To avoid single user mode panic you need a valid prelinkedkernel, you can copy the immutablekernel (keep a copy of it) and rename it to prelinkedkernel, but you should do that from a Recovery Terminal or another macOS HighSierra or higher.