macOS 10.15 Catalina on Unsupported Macs

[psu7276]

Hi all. It's been awhile since I've been in this thread. I've been successful in updating to Catalina (and periodic updates) using dosdude's app. Is there any way to tell if I actually have the most recent version? I presently have 10.15.7 (19H2)
Thanks.

 

[avz]

Hi all. It's been awhile since I've been in this thread. I've been successful in updating to Catalina (and periodic updates) using dosdude's app. Is there any way to tell if I actually have the most recent version? I presently have 10.15.7 (19H2)
Thanks.

Hi. If you look at the first page of this thread you will find the answer to your question. The most recent I believe is 19H1922.

 

[psu7276]

Hi. If you look at the first page of this thread you will find the answer to your question. The most recent I believe is 19H1922.

View attachment 2031256

Thank you.

 

[wildboy13]

Done

 

[tsjk]

Yes, works here as well:

$ silnite
{
    EFIV = "135.0.0.0.0";
    FileVault = 0;
    GateUpdate = "2020-04-11 13:08:23 +0000";
    GateVer = 181;
    GatekeeperDEV = "8.0";
    GatekeeperV = 181;
    KEXTV = "15.6.1";
    MRTUpdate = "2022-05-25 17:30:52 +0000";
    MRTV = "1.62";
    MRTVer = "1.93";
    MacModel = "Macmini5,3";
    SIPstatus = "System Integrity Protection status: disabled.\n";
    TCCV = "150.19";
    XPremV = 65;
    XPro = 1;
    XProtectV = 2161;
    XpremUpdate = "2022-07-19 09:03:14 +0000";
    XpremVer = 65;
    XproUpdate = "2022-07-01 13:58:37 +0000";
    XproVer = 2161;
    macOS = "Version 10.15.7 (Build 19H2026)";
}

 

[Macbook_catalina]

Thanks a lot to all of you.

 

[tsjk]

Guessing we can't keep doing this forever... :/
Is there some info on EOL for Catalina?

 

[jackoverfull]

Catalina is pretty much EOL already, or at least it will be in a few months. This only means we shouldn’t expect much in terms of further updates, the OS will still keep running perfectly pretty much indefinitely.

 

[bigpoppa]

Not exactly:

The iMac11,3 and iMac12,x and MacBook8,2+3 with these HD6xxx GPU are the perfect choice because only OCLP offers the legacy video patch.

Pre APFS systems might be another choice because OCLP does not need the APFS patch applied...it is up to the user and his abilities to live on a rarely inhabited island called Catalina.

Has anyone successfully gotten this to work on a mid 2011 27" iMac? Mine comes with that pesky Radeon 6770M video card. I'm comtemplating upgrading to a SSD but would prefer to use Catalina. Currently it works fine with dosdude1's High Sierra installer. I see that OCLP is involved. Easy enough, but could use guidance on the settings.

 

[Macbook_catalina]

Can anyone please send the info about Handoff for Catalina on a MacBook 5,1?

I got a Tp-Link Bluetooth adapter UB400 and could get it working using the Apple Bluetooth Explorer. Logitech mouse and keyboard (MX3 anywhere and MX3 keys Mini) are working.

Now, I have trouble for getting handoff functioning. Thanks.

 

[Alpha Centauri]

Would appreciate some help with selecting a boot drive on this 5,3 MBP (mid 2009).

My plan was simple. Move current Catalina patched (10.15.7) 850 Evo SSD 1 TB (80%full) main drive to DVD bay and use new 870 Evo SSD 2 TB in main drive bay. Have both bootable and effectively have a clone backup with Super Duper.

Here's what I did:

1. Install 870 in DVD bay, ran SD to clone from 850.
2. Format 870 to APFS.
3. Swap drives, having 870 as main drive, 850 as backup in DVD bay.
4. After some heavy Finder indexing things settled to normal CPU activity.
5. Option key on start up to boot into new drive.

About this Mac shows old 850 running from SATA DVD bay. New 870 mounts no problem but just cannot boot from it. System prefs>Startup Disk shows 870 selected. Restarting retains 850 unfortunately still as boot disc.

Option key on startup only shows EFI Boot volume as only disc. Selecting it runs patch and returns me to the old SSD.

On a supported system Apple confirms that discs are bootable from the DVD SATA port.

So going forward, does this mean the cloned 870 does not contain the EFI for the patch? I disconnected the 850 in the DVD bay, tried to start from this but off course just got a ? that no drive was found. Option key start in this scenario left me with a white screen, eventually again with the ? symbol.

Edit: APFS Boot Selector in System Prefs only shows the one drive, my old 850 SSD. How to point the new one to also appear there perhaps?


Any way to make the original plan work?

 

[joevt]

Would appreciate some help with selecting a boot drive on this 5,3 MBP (mid 2009).

My plan was simple. Move current Catalina patched (10.15.7) 850 Evo SSD 1 TB (80%full) main drive to DVD bay and use new 870 Evo SSD 2 TB in main drive bay. Have both bootable and effectively have a clone backup with Super Duper.

Here's what I did:

1. Install 870 in DVD bay, ran SD to clone from 850.
2. Format 870 to APFS.
3. Swap drives, having 870 as main drive, 850 as backup in DVD bay.
4. After some heavy Finder indexing things settled to normal CPU activity.
5. Option key on start up to boot into new drive.

About this Mac shows old 850 running from SATA DVD bay. New 870 mounts no problem but just cannot boot from it. System prefs>Startup Disk shows 870 selected. Restarting retains 850 unfortunately still as boot disc.

Option key on startup only shows EFI Boot volume as only disc. Selecting it runs patch and returns me to the old SSD.

On a supported system Apple confirms that discs are bootable from the DVD SATA port.

So going forward, does this mean the cloned 870 does not contain the EFI for the patch? I disconnected the 850 in the DVD bay, tried to start from this but off course just got a ? that no drive was found. Option key start in this scenario left me with a white screen, eventually again with the ? symbol.

Edit: APFS Boot Selector in System Prefs only shows the one drive, my old 850 SSD. How to point the new one to also appear there perhaps?


Any way to make the original plan work?

Are you using dosdude patch for Catalina?
Did you copy the dosdude EFI partition that's used for booting Catalina to the new EFI partition? And update the UUID of the volume in the startup.nsh script to point to the new location?

Use diskutil apfs list to get a list of UUIDs.

Usually, instead of EFI, I move the dosdude files to a separate small (200MB) HFS+ partition, then bless the ShellX64.efi (renamed from BootX64.efi) file for that partition. The BBEdit worksheet has the commands I use to maintain that Catalina Boot partition.

This way I can have multiple dosdude partitions on the same disk (Mojave Boot, Catalina Boot)

 

[Alpha Centauri]

Are you using dosdude patch for Catalina?
Did you copy the dosdude EFI partition that's used for booting Catalina to the new EFI partition? And update the UUID of the volume in the startup.nsh script to point to the new location?

Use diskutil apfs list to get a list of UUIDs.

Usually, instead of EFI, I move the dosdude files to a separate small (200MB) HFS+ partition, then bless the ShellX64.efi (renamed from BootX64.efi) file for that partition. The BBEdit worksheet has the commands I use to maintain that Catalina Boot partition.

This way I can have multiple dosdude partitions on the same disk (Mojave Boot, Catalina Boot)

@joevt thanks for the quick reply.

You seem quite knowledgeable but unfortunately I'm not. The step-by-step Vid by dosdude made going from ElCapitan to patched Cat easy enough.

I was hoping SuperDuper includes the EFI in the clone but had my doubts. Cloning with SD, there's very limited choices but I selected "all files". How can I check if the EFI made it across? Did not point files in the start up script, as I don't know how. Your suggestions of moving dosdude file for mutiple partions seems great but tbh it could be beyond my knowledgebase. I'd be quite happy to just being able to select the new drive as a boot volume. No other drives will get the patch going forward and hope to upgrade to a supported OS in 1/2 year.

Would you mind advising me with a "dummies" step-by-step" for adding the EFI and pointing it to the right location? Either here or DM. Below some screenshots listing UUID currently. Both containers for the two drives there, data appears intact and are mountable. The 870 just not bootable. The "untitled" 2TB disc further of some screenshots is the new one that I still have to name.

Thank you in advance

Edit: Did notice the new clone is 9GB smaller than the original.

 

[joevt]

@joevt thanks for the quick reply.

You seem quite knowledgeable but unfortunately I'm not. The step-by-step Vid by dosdude made going from ElCapitan to patched Cat easy enough.

I was hoping SuperDuper includes the EFI in the clone but had my doubts. Cloning with SD, there's very limited choices but I selected "all files". How can I check if the EFI made it across? Did not point files in the start up script, as I don't know how. Your suggestions of moving dosdude file for mutiple partions seems great but tbh it could be beyond my knowledgebase. I'd be quite happy to just being able to select the new drive as a boot volume. No other drives will get the patch going forward and hope to upgrade to a supported OS in 1/2 year.

Would you mind advising me with a "dummies" step-by-step" for adding the EFI and pointing it to the right location? Either here or DM. Below some screenshots listing UUID currently. Both containers for the two drives there, data appears intact and are mountable. The 870 just not bootable. The "untitled" 2TB disc further of some screenshots is the new one that I still have to name.

Thank you in advance

Edit: Did notice the new clone is 9GB smaller than the original.

disk0 is the new 2 TB disk.
disk1 is the old 1TB disk.

Find where the EFI partitions are at

diskutil list

Probably the EFI partitions are disk0s1 and disk1s1

Mount the EFI partitions

sudo diskutil mount disk0s1
sudo diskutil mount disk1s1

List the mount points of the EFI partitions

mount | grep EFI

Probably disk0 is mounted at "/Volumes/EFI" and disk1 is mounted at "/Volumes/EFI 1"

View the contents of each EFI partition in the Finder

open /Volumes/EFI*

Probably the window on top is the old EFI partition from the 1 TB disk and contains the dosdude stuff.
Probably the window under the top window is the new EFI partition from the 2 TB disk and doesn't contain the dosdude stuff.
Post screen shot of each.

Then rename the mounted EFI partitions using the Finder so that the name of the volume describes what disk each belongs to. Perhaps name the EFI on the 1TB disk "EFI850" and the EFI volume on the 2TB disk "EFI870"
Changing the name of the EFI volume makes it easier to tell what disk each EFI partition belongs to. Don't change the name of the EFI folder that exists in each EFI volume.

Use the Finder to change the name of the Untitled disk. Maybe you need to boot the Untitled disk to change the name. In that case, you can rename it later when you make it bootable.

Copy the dosdude stuff from the EFI volume that contains the dosdude stuff to the EFI volume that doesn't contain the dosdude stuff.
Like in my screenshot, The dosdude stuff includes apfs.efi, startup.nsh, and bootx64.efi. Make sure the layout of the files in the new EFI volume matches.

View the startup.nsh file on the new EFI volume in a text editor such as BBEdit.app. Look at the UUIDs that it includes. Find those UUIDs in the output of diskutil apfs list. Note what volume role the UUID belongs to. Take the UUID from the same volume role from the new disk.

old disk is disk1->disk3.
new disk is disk0->disk2.

I think the first UUID is used for booting installers. It should point to the data role of disk3. Change it to the uuid for the data role of disk2.
I think the second UUID is used for normal booting. It should point to the preboot role of disk3. Change it to the uuid for the preboot role of disk2.

The UUIDs are those identifiers that look like this: 95D70B0C-973F-402F-99BC-7E37C3D2B572
I'm not going to type your UUIDs because you included them as screenshots. Text files are better since they allow copy and paste.
If my guesses are wrong about the contents of the EFI partition or the startup.nsh script then provide more info or a copy of the EFI (zipped and attach to your next thread post).

 

[Alpha Centauri]

@joevt very detailed, excellent instructions. I'm going very slow not to make a mistake. Locations and naming of EFIs has been spot on.

EFIs are mounted. The 850 EFI appeared in the Finder Sidebar, renamed it as per your suggestion. The 2TB EFI opens in Finder, empty off course, but not in the Finder Sidebar for me to rename to EFI870. Can I instead rename the mounted disk from the Desktop?

So after somehow renaming I will take the top root folder "EFI" inside EFI850Disk and copy contents over to the other EFI.

Here some screenshots of my progress, believe I'm doing ok thus far:

 

[joevt]

EFIs are mounted. The 850 EFI appeared in the Finder Sidebar, renamed it as per your suggestion. The 2TB EFI opens in Finder, empty off course, but not in the Finder Sidebar for me to rename to EFI870. Can I instead rename the mounted disk from the Desktop?

Yes, Desktop should work.
From the root of any disk, you should be able to press Command-Up Arrow to get to a Finder window with a list of volumes.

You can type Command-Shift-G and enter /Volumes to go to where most mount points are located.

So after somehow renaming I will take the top root folder "EFI" inside EFI850Disk and copy contents over to the other EFI.

Maybe. As long as the EFI folder doesn't contain non-dosdude stuff. Otherwise I would manually copy only the dosdude stuff to an EFI folder in the new EFI volume. In your case, don't copy the APPLE folder. Well, it probably doesn't hurt to include the APPLE folder, but I don't think it's needed. If macOS thinks it's needed, then it will put a new one there.

Here some screenshots of my progress, believe I'm doing ok thus far:

Yup rename the new EFI to EFI870. Other good names might be EFI1TB or EFI2TB. Whatever you want to make them unique such that when they get mounted you know what disk it belongs to and the volume name matches the mount point name
(otherwise you get mount point names like EFI, EFI 1, EFI 2, etc. if you have many EFI volumes mounted at the same time).

You could also put an empty folder in each volume that describes the disk it belongs to. This might be useful in environments that don't show the volume name, like maybe the UEFI Shell when you're trying to find a file system.

Then you'll want to examine and modify the startup.nsh script in the new EFI volume.

 

[Alpha Centauri]

@joevt greetings, things went ok and then....

Started with an error 43 trying to copy the EFI boot. Reset Pram, emptied bin and got past it.

Actually managed to boot into SSD870 via SystPrefs>StartupDisk. Option Key on start showed 2 EFI Boot Drives w/out differentiation, so went with Startup Disk. Interestingly enough in SystPrefs>APFS Boot Selector it was only the one disc present that was booted to. Somewhat thought both be present there.

Waited for indexing to cease after booting into SSD870. Noticed even after high temps, fans, memory pressure in yellow (only ever been in green) with no Apps at all running. Some swapping in the 100s MB, but even Activity Monitor showed nothing noteworthy in the background. It didn't settle down at all. Opened Browser and was unusable, pages hardly loading. So something was very very wrong.

Booted back to SSD850 (again indexing) but things settled down quick, no swap, no memory pressure. Running cool, zero swaps with FF tabs open, other programs open.

Then I "thought" about, if perhaps not having the Apple Folder in the EFI870 was causing it. Started to add, delete, the folder content of the EFIs. I've ended with a mess and only booting into the SSD850 is possible. Removed again the Apple folder from EFI870, it didn't repopulate itself previously.

But even the working EFI850, trying to point to correct volume is misbehaving. Opening in BBEdit the header shows /Volumes/EFI870/EFI/BOOT/startup.nsh. But that's in the 850EFI:



Temporarily an error in BBEdit as perhaps the UUID was identical for both EFI's?



The other major thing, and I cannot understand this at all, that disk3 is now SSD870 and disk2 is SSD850. My post #15,538 shows a screenshot of it. Now it looks like this:


I am attaching 2 rtf files from Terminal of the current APFS Volumes, also the EFI location from Terminal. Could you possible have a look and advise what could have gone so wrong and where I should start to try fix it.

Thank You

 

[joevt]

Actually managed to boot into SSD870 via SystPrefs>StartupDisk.

Does MacBookPro5,3 have apfs support in ROM? If not then using Startup Disk shouldn't work. If it does, then you don't need the dosdude APFS patch in EFI.

Option Key on start showed 2 EFI Boot Drives w/out differentiation, so went with Startup Disk.

Differentiate "EFI Boot" on old Macs but giving each one a different volume icon. Use Finder -> Get Info on each EFI partition, click the icon and paste a new icon. Make your own icon or copy an icon from some other file or app.
You can use the bless command to create a disk label, but the label doesn't appear on older Macs for EFI volumes. I don't know if your Mac is too old to show the label.
sudo bless --folder /Volumes/EFI870/EFI --label EFI870
sudo bless --folder /Volumes/EFI850/EFI --label EFI850

That's one reason I use separate HFS+ volume "Catalina Boot" - so the disk label appears in Startup Manager (when you hold Option key at boot).

Waited for indexing to cease. Noticed immediately high temps, fans, memory pressure in yellow (only ever been in green) with no Apps at all running. Some swapping in the 100s MB, but even Activity Monitor showed nothing noteworthy in the background. It didn't settle down at all. Opened Browser and was unusable, pages hardly loading. So something was very very wrong.

Booted back to SSD850 (again indexing) but things settled down quick, no swap, no memory pressure. Running cool, zero swaps with FF tabs open, other programs open.

Then I "thought" about, if perhaps not having the Apple Folder in the EFI870 was causing it. Started to add, delete, the folder content of the EFIs. I've ended with a mess and only booting into the SSD850 is possible. Removed again the Apple folder from EFI870, it didn't repopulate itself previously.

Not sure why the SSD870 would be behaving badly if it boots ok. Maybe check Console.app.

But even the working EFI850, trying to point to correct volume is misbehaving. Opening in BBEdit the header shows /Volumes/EFI870/EFI/BOOT/startup.nsh. But that's in the 850EFI:

Temporarily an error in BBEdit as perhaps the UUID was identical for both EFI's?

Probably not. You can check UUIDs use diskutil info -all

In BBEdit.app, you can copy the contents of the startup.nsh file to a new window and try saving that to the EFI volume as a new file. If that works, then you can use the finder to remove the old startup.nsh and rename the new one.

The other major thing, and I cannot understand this at all, that disk3 is now SSD870 and disk2 is SSD850. My post #15,538 shows a screenshot of it. Now it looks like this:

This is not a problem. Disk numbers can change after every reboot depending on what gets booted or what other disks are connected or what order the disks are detected. You need to recheck everything after each boot.

I am attaching 2 rtf files from Terminal of the current APFS Volumes, also the EFI location from Terminal. Could you possible have a look and advise what could have gone so wrong and where I should start to try fix it.

You have startup.nsh pointing at the System role volume of the 870. I believe that's correct. What startup.nsh does is check every disk and looks for a path
83DFED56-8CAB-4238-8DC7-8296986CB7A8/System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi which should only exist on the Preboot volume.
Mount the Preboot volume and check.

In later versions of macOS, the UUID that gets used in the Preboot volume belongs to the UUID of the Data role.

 

[bgb27]

I seem to be unable to boot into Apple Diagnostic Mode using either of the commands? Should I be brought to that environment before the black screen/code for APFS?

 

[jackoverfull]

same here, but doing it via network worked.

 

[bgb27]

same here, but doing it via network worked.

hmmm, that doesn't work for me unfortunately. i am able to access the boot options menu though

 

[Omega Mac]

I hit a strange and weird behaviour, even though using Catalina for almost 2 years no major issues, all on an unsupported 2012 mac mini.

It's not seeing the latest new photos to import, suddenly it see 1000's of old photos for import, hit the import button and it does nothing but go back to the main album.

Any ideas?

 

[suharik85]

Hi all!
My iMac 8.1 network interfaces stopped working. Latest security patches installed. Everything worked great before.
Physically, there is a connection to Wi-Fi, Ethernet cable and FW800. There is no internet connection. There is no shared network access.
I boot from an external drive and everything works.
What is the problem?

 

[QueenEv1l]

Ok this is driving me crazy:

I had a perfect running catalina 10.15.7(19H2) system.
Then i had some repair done (liquid dmg) and after that i reinstalled catalina (dos dude) again and now every ### time i have wifi for about 5 minutes and then it drops - wifi symbol goes empty and cant get it to work again.
50% of the time when i delete wifi preferences and restart it comes back … but just for 5 minutes.

Have reinstalled OS now x- times /ran post-patches …. Going insane here.

 

[makra]

Ok this is driving me crazy:

I had a perfect running catalina 10.15.7(19H2) system.
Then i had some repair done (liquid dmg) and after that i reinstalled catalina (dos dude) again and now every ### time i have wifi for about 5 minutes and then it drops - wifi symbol goes empty and cant get it to work again.
50% of the time when i delete wifi preferences and restart it comes back … but just for 5 minutes.

Have reinstalled OS now x- times /ran post-patches …. Going insane here.

I had that problem two years ago. As far as I remember this problem has been discussed here. First thing I would do: Update Catalina! See first post how to do that.