macOS 11 Big Sur on Unsupported Macs Thread

[GSXB]

My micropatcher doesn't really work yet for Macs before 2011 (aside from 2010 Mac Pros and possibly flashed 2009 Mac Pros). Basically, right now you have to install on a 2011 or newer Mac, use the --all command line argument with patch-kexts.sh, then move the drive over to the pre-2011 Mac. "Move the drive over" could mean transplanting the drive, or it could mean moving an external USB hard drive or solid state drive over.

Also, if you have not upgraded your iMac to a Metal GPU, Big Sur is going to be slow. A few posts before yours, ASentientBot said "For now, do not use Big Sur on a Mac without a Metal GPU." I don't know if I agree with that 100%, but I keep forgetting that I was using a 450MHz PowerMac G4 regularly until 2009 and was using an 867MHz 12" PowerBook G4 on a regular basis as recently as 2016 so I'm probably more OK with slow performance than most people. Even then, while I find my MacBookPro8,1 to be fast enough under Big Sur that I'm tempted to switch to it as my daily driver, I find that my MacBook6,1 under Big Sur is just unbearably slow.

Having said that, if you really really want to try and you don't care if your Mac's performance gets absolutely grenaded, this post might have the best instructions for now.



Unfortunately it doesn't help at all. Whatever's going wrong is either (a) before those two lines are printed at the top of the screen or (b) somewhere near the beginning of the startup that follows.

Here's a total stab in the dark: Does booting off the patched USB stick then running /Volumes/Image\ Volume/zap-snapshots.sh /Volumes/Name\ of\ Big\ Sur\ disk, then booting off the Big Sur disk again, allow the installation to proceed?

I’ll give that a go see if it works
Here’s some verbose photos hope they help
I’m out of ideas

 

[jackluke]

I just updated the "BigSur BaseSystem fix" for any stock createinstallmedia USB BigSur Installer , now this script should work from any macOS (doesn't require more an already BigSur installed), first requirement is that from a macOS Recovery terminal set csrutil disable

then get an "Install macOS Big Sur Beta.app" (currently beta4 12,3 gb) making a stock apple USB BigSur installer with this method:

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Big\ Sur\ Beta.app/Contents/Resources/ createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/YourUSBLabel

then apply the "BigSur BaseSystem legacy usb fix" , after unplug and plug again your USB drive and apply the "BigSur BaseSystem legacy usb fix2" .

After made you can boot from a non-APFS or legacy USB Mac the USB BigSur Installer from apple startup manager, and to upgrade or install it, open an Utilities terminal and type:

/V*/I*/H*

(that is abbreviation for /Volumes/Image\ Volume/Hax3.sh )

(example picture attached) then close, and open the "Install macOS" (little circle BigSur icon) directly from the Utilities recovery environment and it should install or upgrade on eligible volumes.

Currently you can only install on internal SATA disk with a non-APFS or legacy USB Mac (while recent USB Mac can install also on external USB disk), but the advantage is that you can update a previous BigSur Installation and also having an USB BigSur Installer (working on legacy USB Mac) you can use the ASentientBot fix apfs_systemsnapshot and diskutil apfs deleteSnapshot to fix "sudo mount -uw /" (or instead the weird method to skip the stage3 installer).

For non-APFS or legacy USB Mac to boot BigSur desktop after installation you could use this: USBOpenCoreAPFSloader3b.app.zip or this updated: USBOpenCoreAPFSloader4.app.zip

making it with the option "Near an USB device without erasing" and selecting the USB BigSur Installer label as target.

edit:
From my earlier tests you can use a previous /BaseSystem/BaseSystem.dmg even to boot a recent BigSur "Install macOS.app", so I'd advise to keep a copy of the patched BaseSystem.dmg (size 840 MB) that you can reuse.

Because apple with BigSur uses "two BaseSystem.dmg" (three considering the APFS Recovery), the second one is unpackaged from SharedSupport.dmg during the stage1 installer and copied here /Volumes/YourBigSurLabel Data/macOS Install Data/ to start the stage2 installer (that's why non-APFS or legacy USB Mac can only install it on internal SATA disk).

edit2:
new BaseSystem Legacy USB fix for beta 9 updated here: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...unsupported-macs-thread.2242172/post-28973673

 

[thatsmeonlyme]

First of all thx to parrot geek who made it possible to very easy install BS on my cMP 5.1 . I was just playing around with the machine and made the following experience: Bootcamp assistant formerly not working on this machine under Mojave and also Catalina is working again. Under 10.14 and 10.15 there was the message : bootcamp is not supported on this machine. Has anyone made the same experience too?

 

[Barry K. Nathan]

I’ll give that a go see if it works
Here’s some verbose photos hope they help
I’m out of ideas

Hmm... Retyping from the photos:

com.apple.recoveryosd: Task [/System/Installation/CDIS/mountrecursive][(
)] -- failed to mount enclosing file systems, error code: -1 reason: * Failed to mount imgsrc device, no device info
com.apple.recoveryosd: Failed to invoke mount_recursive with exit status: 255
com.apple.recoveryosd: Establishing an Aqua Session...

"Establishing an Aqua Session..." is normal. I'll have to pay really close attention the next time I'm doing a Big Sur install in order to know if the lines preceding that are normal.

So, basically, this is the only thing in the photos that pops out to me as a possible problem. It's possible there's something else that I've missed, of course, and with all the gratuitous error messages that show up in verbose boot output, it's even possible that these messages might somehow be normal. However, my gut reaction right now is that if there's anything abnormal in any of the photos you've posted, it's here.

This alone probably isn't enough for anyone to find a solution, but I figured I'd post this anyway in case I'm wrong and this is enough of a clue for someone else (or for myself a few days or a few weeks down the road).

 

[sabhuku]

Tq. For step by step turorial.
Me to..Succes to install bs b3..but batery notice service..when i try comand option p r...os blank..
Back again to catalina

Updating Big Sur Volume on late 2013 iMac

Just hit a snag when trying to update my iMac late 2013 from beta 2 to beta 3. Previously I'd done a clean install from Catalina so didn't see this problem. Catalina doesn't see my Big Sur volume it says it has unsupported disk features. So when running the Big Sur Beta installer on Catalina it doesn't see my Big Sur volume. Big Sur is on an external USB 3 SSD drive. I'm gonna have to make a usb thumb drive installer and patch it with https://github.com/barrykn/big-sur-micropatcher

Spoiler alert: it worked ?

Using Big Sur micro patcher

Step 1: Obtain a copy of the macOS Big Sur Developer Preview and use createinstallmedia as usual to create a bootable USB stick with the installer and recovery environment, as you would on a supported Mac. This patcher is easier to use if the installer USB stick is not renamed after createinstallmedia is used, but it can still work if the USB stick has been renamed (see next step).

Use the 'createinstallmedia' command in Terminal

1. Connect the USB flash drive or other volume that you're using for the bootable installer. Make sure that it has at least 12GB of available storage.
2. Open Terminal, which is in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.
3. Type or paste one of the following commands in Terminal. These assume that the installer is still in your Applications folder, and MyVolume is the name of the USB flash drive or other volume you're using. If it has a different name, replace MyVolume in these commands with the name of your volume.

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Big\ Sur\ Beta.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume

To see the names of your volumes in terminal type:

ls /Volumes

My thumb drive volume name is Kingston

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Big\ Sur\ Beta.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Kingston

Ready to start.

To continue we need to erase the volume at /Volumes/Kingston.

If you wish to continue type (Y) then press return: y

Erasing disk: 0%... 10%... 20%... 30%... 100%

Copying to disk: 0%... 10%... 20%... 30%... 40%... 50%... 60%... 70%... 80%... 90%... 100%

Making disk bootable...

Copying boot files...

Install media now available at "/Volumes/Install macOS Big Sur Beta"

Step 2: Download this micropatcher, then run micropatcher.sh to patch the USB stick. (If you are viewing this on GitHub, and you probably are, then click "Clone" then "Download ZIP".) If the USB stick has been renamed or micropatcher.sh is otherwise unable to find the USB stick, then try specifying the pathname of the USB stick to micropatcher.sh. The easiest way to do that is to open a Terminal window, drag and drop micropatcher.sh into the Terminal window, go back to Finder, choose Computer from the Go menu, drag and drop the USB stick into the Terminal window, then press Return.

~/Downloads/big-sur-micropatcher-main/micropatcher.sh /Volumes/Install\ macOS\ Big\ Sur\ Beta

Step 3: Boot from the USB stick. Hold the option key on boot. Select install macOS Big Sur beta.

View attachment 940107

Step 4: Open Terminal (in the Utilities menu), type cmd and equals key to make the text larger if required then run

/Volumes/Image\ Volume/set-vars.sh

This script will change boot-args and csrutil settings as needed, and also set things up so the Installer will run properly. Don't forget that tab completion is your friend! You can type /V<tab>/I<tab>/se<tab> at the command prompt -- that's much less typing! (Run /Volumes/Image\ Volume/set-vars.sh -v instead if you want verbose boot, which can be very useful for troubleshooting.)

View attachment 940113

Step 5: Quit Terminal then start the Installer as you would on a supported Mac.

View attachment 940110

View attachment 940111

View attachment 940108

Let the installer finish and that’s all for a late 2013 iMac. Took about 40mins.

View attachment 940117

All done.

Followed the same method and successfully installed macOS Big Sur Beta 3 on my MBA 13" mid-2012 with out a hitch after dedicating the entire 250GB to the OS

 

[sabhuku]

Followed the same method and successfully installed macOS Big Sur Beta 3 on my MBA 13" mid-2012 without a hitch after dedicating the entire 250GB to the OS

 

[MacHacJac]

Wow, that's strange (and yes I would expect an 850 EVO to be extremely reliable).

Were you using FileVault on either High Sierra or Big Sur? (I have seen multiple weird FileVault bugs in Big Sur. Toward the end of this week I should be able to test FileVault on a Big Sur supported Mac to see if the bugs happen on that Mac as well.)

Nope. No fire vault. No firewall. Maybe just an isolated bug. Funniest thing was that when I went to disk utility in internet recovery, it showed only one partition, rather than multiple.

 

[MacHacJac]

Nope. No fire vault. No firewall. Maybe just an isolated bug. Funniest thing was that when I went to disk utility in internet recovery, it showed only one partition, rather than multiple.

Just out of curiosity, I checked to see if my 2011 MBP supported Windows 10 through bootcamp while in big sur. It only supports windows 8 and older ?.
(Sorry for getting off-topic)

 

[Barry K. Nathan]

Just out of curiosity, I checked to see if my 2011 MBP supported Windows 10 through bootcamp while in big sur. It only supports windows 8 and older ?

Getting a little off-topic, but it's possible to run Windows 10 under Bootcamp on a 2011 MBP. If I remember correctly: You have to install (and activate!) Windows 7 (or 8.1 I guess) first, then install the sound driver from Boot Camp (I think Boot Camp 6.1's sound driver works but I don't remember for certain), but don't install the rest of Boot Camp yet, then upgrade to Windows 10, then install Boot Camp 6.1. (I think it needs to be version 6.1.6136 -- whatever the current version is for the 2012 MacBook Pros anyway. You can't just run setup directly. To bypass the compatibility check you have to start an Administrator command prompt, then cd to BootCamp\Drivers\Apple then run msiexec BootCamp.msi. Something like that anyway.) Oh, I nearly forgot to mention, you have to choose to keep everything during the upgrade to Windows 10, so that the sound driver doesn't get uninstalled.

If you install Windows 10 first and the sound driver later, best case is that sound quality is bad and volume is really low even at 100%, and worst case is that Windows 10 can't even detect the sound chip. Which one of these scenarios you get depends on details related to hard drive partitioning. I'm not kidding. At least upgrading from 7 to 10 instead of doing a fresh 10 install guarantees that the partitioning is such that the sound chip will get detected, but you must install the sound driver under 7 in order for it to fully work properly under 10.

(I think something similar about upgrading from 7 to 10 works for the Late 2009/Mid 2010 white MacBooks, but there are extra details I don't remember right now. Like, I don't remember if you can just install Boot Camp 6.1 under Windows 10 the same way you can on the 2011's or if there's some extra complication.)

 

[rumormiller]

My micropatcher doesn't really work yet for Macs before 2011 (aside from 2010 Mac Pros and possibly flashed 2009 Mac Pros). Basically, right now you have to install on a 2011 or newer Mac, use the --all command line argument with patch-kexts.sh, then move the drive over to the pre-2011 Mac. "Move the drive over" could mean transplanting the drive, or it could mean moving an external USB hard drive or solid state drive over.

Hey Barry didn't realise you created the micropatcher. Big thanks ?

 

[indiawallah]

Just out of curiosity, I checked to see if my 2011 MBP supported Windows 10 through bootcamp while in big sur. It only supports windows 8 and older ?.
(Sorry for getting off-topic)

Not sure if this would be any use to MacStory3 but I am on a MacBook Pro mid 2009 with the latest version of Windows 10 on an SSD drive inside the CD/DVD drive dual booting with the latest Catalina Beta / Big Sur Beta on the internal/main drive. It was quite fiddly to install Windows 10 using this method #10,844 as I did so without BootCamp but it worked and now I mostly use it over Catalina!

 

[Alex-Microsmeta]

Not sure if this would be any use to MacStory3 but I am on a MacBook Pro mid 2009 with the latest version of Windows 10 on an SSD drive inside the CD/DVD drive dual booting with the latest Catalina Beta / Big Sur Beta on the internal/main drive. It was quite fiddly to install Windows 10 using this method #10,844 as I did so without BootCamp but it worked and now I mostly use it over Catalina!

I have Windows 10 v.2004 May Update perfectly running on Mac mini 2010 without bootcamp, using WinToUSB PC app

 

[naylom11]

Before I post the issue I'm currently having, I just want to give a big shoutout to everyone putting in the time and effort to get these patchers up and running! Big Sur is running well on my mid-2012 MBP.

Okay, so now the problem. I have installed Big Sur on an external drive to make testing and troubleshooting a little easier. However, after getting Big Sur up and running, when I boot back into Catalina, there is some odd behavior. i.e. App Crashes, and Most of the Menu bar icons seem to be gone. The solution has been entering recovery and reinstalling Catalina. This fixes the problem. But as soon as I boot back into Big Bur, which requires "sudo nvram boot-args="-no_compat_check"", and use the OS. My Catalina install goes right back to misbehaving. If anyone could point me in the right direction on this it would be greatly appreciated! I would like to be able to switch between OS's, since Catalina is still my main OS, but this issue is causing it be very inconvenient.

This may be trivial, and already answered long before I've even brought it up, but bear with me. I'm learning about this process... albeit slowly.

 

[TimothyR734]

Before I post the issue I'm currently having, I just want to give a big shoutout to everyone putting in the time and effort to get these patchers up and running! Big Sur is running well on my mid-2012 MBP.

Okay, so now the problem. I have installed Big Sur on an external drive to make testing and troubleshooting a little easier. However, after getting Big Sur up and running, when I boot back into Catalina, there is some odd behavior. i.e. App Crashes, and Most of the Menu bar icons seem to be gone. The solution has been entering recovery and reinstalling Catalina. This fixes the problem. But as soon as I boot back into Big Bur, which requires "sudo nvram boot-args="-no_compat_check"", and use the OS. My Catalina install goes right back to misbehaving. If anyone could point me in the right direction on this it would be greatly appreciated! I would like to be able to switch between OS's, since Catalina is still my main OS, but this issue is causing it be very inconvenient.

This may be trivial, and already answered long before I've even brought it up, but bear with me. I'm learning about this process... albeit slowly.

I was having issues with Catalina as well with BS on an external ssd I decide to put the ssd back in my MacBook after running into issues with Big Sur. Getting kicked to the login screen, and freezes but what I found you can run Big Sur with just SIP disabled and doesn't effect Catalina actually I think Catalina runs better with it disabled even it is a supported iMac

 

[Alex-Microsmeta]

When @jackluke will post the incoming beta 4 link, I'll focus on Macmini 2010, skipping installer stage 3 to avoid error 66.

 

[naylom11]

I was having issues with Catalina as well with BS on an external ssd I decide to put the ssd back in my MacBook after running into issues with Big Sur. Getting kicked to the login screen, and freezes but what I found you can run Big Sur with just SIP disabled and doesn't effect Catalina actually I think Catalina runs better with it disabled even it is a supported iMac

It's good to know I'm not the only one, but I'm not sure if it has to do with SIP. In fact, I've kept SIP disabled on my machine for months with no problems at all. I think it has something to do with permissions or a change in the way BS handles authentication. (I'm still a novice, so that sounds right, but I could be completely off). Maybe it is because its an external drive? ?‍♂️ Maybe I'll try partitioning my internal OS drive, and installing it there. I just don't want to end up back in the same spot having to reinstall Catalina

 

[eikic1]

First of all thx to parrot geek who made it possible to very easy install BS on my cMP 5.1 . I was just playing around with the machine and made the following experience: Bootcamp assistant formerly not working on this machine under Mojave and also Catalina is working again. Under 10.14 and 10.15 there was the message : bootcamp is not supported on this machine. Has anyone made the same experience too?

how to disable SIP
my macpro with radeon vii and black screen
help

 

[thatsmeonlyme]

how to disable SIP
my macpro with radeon vii and black screen
help

boot into your installer. then go to utilities open a terminal window. write "csrutil disable" without quotes. press Enter and reboot. SIP should then be disabled.

 

[thatsmeonlyme]

how to disable SIP
my macpro with radeon vii and black screen
help

boot into your installer. then go to then go to utilities open a terminal window. write "csrutil disable" without quotes. press Enter and reboot. SIP should then be disabled.

 

[Alex-Microsmeta]

I installed Big Sur 3rd beta on a macbook6,1 using OpenCore 0.6.0 latest commit, with custom USB legacy kext, board-id spoofing to iMac 14.4, telemetrap.kext and an non patched Big Sur installer. It was easy. here are absolutely no problems with completely disabling SIP, boot arguments, or USB ports during installation with this approach. During installation, after the first reboot, I booted into Catalina and set the "DoNotSeal = True" parameter in UpdateOption.plist.

After installation, I downloaded the required kexts from here ( thanks to @Barry K. Nathan for his patcher), And I slightly changed his script to install these kexts to adapt it only to MacBook 6.1.

View attachment 939873
(patched AppleGraphicsPowerManagment and IOPlatformPluginFamily kexts - for speedstep and pm if iMac14,4 spoofing is used. )

I didn’t need a universal solution, and I added automatic deletion of previous snapshots before installation, in order to repeat the installation without increasing snapshot number. I named this slightly revamped script "pushK" to avoid typing too many letters.
View attachment 939871 View attachment 939875


USB, WiFi, LAN, Tesla acceleration, sound, camera work. Dragging and dropping windows is really laggy, and video playback is also worse than in Catalina. But there is no need to reduce transparency at all. No crashes.

I have a question for jackluke. I saw he somehow solved the problem of disappearing icons in the dock in a light theme, and also my text disappears in the Safari browser. When I type it myself. Is this somehow possible to solve?

Are you sure that Tesla acceleration works? I don't see trasparencies on dock and menu bar... My Mac mini 2010 graphic board Nvidia Geforce 320M is similar (newer) to your Geforce 9400M and we have both a Core 2 Duo... I still not have acceleration.

 

[eikic1]

boot into your installer. then go to utilities open a terminal window. write "csrutil disable" without quotes. press Enter and reboot. SIP should then be disabled.

Thanks bro

 

[Barry K. Nathan]

Are you sure Testa acceleration works? I don't see trasparencies on dock and menu bar...

No, it's not accelerated. Tesla framebuffer works, but there's no acceleration.

By the way, once developer beta 4 comes out, most people may want to wait a day or so, to see if the public beta also comes out.

 

[Barry K. Nathan]

I have just released v0.0.18 of my patcher. Quoting from the release notes:

• patch-kexts.sh works from within a running Big Sur installation, finally! Rebooting from the patched installer USB should no longer be necessary (but will still work and has still been tested more thoroughly). For now, unpatch-kexts.sh still requires booting from the installer USB.
• micropatcher.sh is now a little more robust; under some circumstances, if it runs into permissions problems, it will restart the patching process with sudo.
• Many updates to the README. In particular, compatibility information is more up-to-date.

The big change is that patch-kexts.sh no longer requires rebooting into the installer USB. Furthermore, if you run it under your macOS Big Sur installation instead of the installer USB, you do not need to specify the volume name on the command line -- it will automatically default to the volume that you booted from.

@pfandung @guerrabadboy with this version of the patcher you should now be able to run /Volumes/Install\ macOS\ Big\ Sur\ Beta/patch-kexts.sh and you should get working WiFi, without having to boot from the patched installer USB. (@TimothyR734 in the near future, after you install beta 4 or the public beta, you might also want to give this a try and see if it sidesteps the problems you had in the past.)

Alongside the improved patch-kexts.sh, I had also wanted to release remount-sysvol.sh and rebuild-kc.sh, for mounting the underlying volume as read-write to a temporary mount point and for easily rebuilding the kernel/kext collections -- this would allow people to easily add/remove/replace kexts themselves. However, that has been taking longer than I expected and I didn't want to hold up the rest of this release, so it's postponed until the next release (probably later this week, but it could slip to next week).

GitHub - barrykn/big-sur-micropatcher: A primitive USB patcher for installing macOS Big Sur on unsupported Macs

A primitive USB patcher for installing macOS Big Sur on unsupported Macs - barrykn/big-sur-micropatcher

github.com

 

[Fran Frin]

Not sure if this would be any use to MacStory3 but I am on a MacBook Pro mid 2009 with the latest version of Windows 10 on an SSD drive inside the CD/DVD drive dual booting with the latest Catalina Beta / Big Sur Beta on the internal/main drive. It was quite fiddly to install Windows 10 using this method #10,844 as I did so without BootCamp but it worked and now I mostly use it over Catalina!

How instal bigsur beta in MacBook pro mid 2009??

 

[eikic1]

how to active update OTA?
I'm using beta 1 to my macpro5,1 but I can't update to Beta 3