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macOS 11 Big Sur on Unsupported Macs Thread

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The first post of this thread is a WikiPost and can be edited by anyone with the appropiate permissions. Your edits will be public.
Mac_tech said:
I'm seeing the latest installer being added as of November 12, 2020. This being the public release link.

It's recommended to have a backup before installing new system software on your main device. Overwriting stable releases using unsupported software can cause irreparable hardware damage or irrecoverable data loss and should be used at one's own risk.

Here is a rough table, work in progress: (if anything needs to be changed, please let me know)
Micropatcher by @Barry K. Nathan
A primitive USB patcher for installing macOS Big Sur on unsupported Macs		Compatibility list
Patched Sur by Ben Sova
Patched Sur is a UI patcher for macOS Big Sur, designed to make it easy to run macOS 11 on unsupported Macs. This patcher hopes to allow any user of any knowledge to patch their Mac, while still giving you freedom on how you want to use your Mac.		Compatibility list
Big Mac by StarPlayrX
Big Mac 🍔 🍟 . Patch tool designed for Mac Pro 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012. Models 3,1 4,1 and 5,1.		if you have a Mac Pro, consider this. For 2008 Mac Pros (MacPro3,1) in particular, this is clearly a better option at least for now).
OpenCore
This is refered to as a "boot loader" – this is a complex piece of software that we use to prepare our systems for macOS – specifically by injecting new data for macOS such as SMBIOS, ACPI tables and kexts.		Supported hardware
USBOpenCoreAPFSloader by @jacklukeThis patcher allows booting of the Big Sur (Beta) installer on a wider range of older systems without graphics acceleration.
Click to expand...
This should be in the 1st post, well done.
 
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Xavier said:
I was also experiencing the screen burn in/artifacting on my late 2013 with the same GPU. I haven't noticed it since upgrading to Big Sur, but I'm keeping my eyes on it.
Click to expand...
OMG there's actually someone else! I guess Metal had some sort of issue with this GPU and they finally (maybe) fixed it.. It was really painful having this massive, lovely display but it consistently looking messed up. Even if it's just fixed that one issue it was very worth upgrading for me.. Has me curious about other issues I've had in the past.

Haha looking at Patched Sur's entry re: my iMac: "Note that there have been some reports of very poor performance with Fusion Drives on this model when running Big Sur, which may be why Apple does not support Big Sur on this model." This is the only time I've ever been grateful that the HDD side of my fusion drive died years ago. I boot from an external SSD and use the internal 128GB drive as a scratch disk/temp storage, so don't have to deal with that!
 
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jackluke said:
That ARV (Authenticated Root Volume) message:
Can't use last-sealed-snapshot or create-snapshot on non ARV volume
is really weird seems that the stock snapshot created by installation (that means stage3 installer completed properly) is locked, but meanwhile try this:

"BigSurfixes disable snapshot", "BigSurfixes delete snapshot" and try rebooting (even with ARV error) BigSur .

If this still produced that "ARV error" without desktop booting, then boot Mojave or Catalina and send the output of this: diskutil info /Volumes/YourBigSurLabel | grep Sealed

(you should type that diskutil info /Volumes/YourBigSurLabel also from "BigSur recovery environment", if you get Seal "Broken" that installation of BigSur is sealed and hasn't completed properly)

If none worked, then I suggest to boot the "BaseSystem fix Installer" through OpenCoreAPFSloader4b, and then apply "BigSurfixes opencore preboot" and try booting through opencore the "Big Sur" disk .
Click to expand...
Disabling and deleting the snapshot worked, I had no snapshot and the reboot was still bootlooping (see pic 1).
The diskutil info returned: Sealed:No.
So I tried opencore reboot fix. The system restarted very quickly. You can see the CMD+S output in pic 2.
The odd thing is that rebooting thru OpenCoreAPFSloader4b the MacOS Installer is still present.
 

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mixel said:
OMG there's actually someone else! I guess Metal had some sort of issue with this GPU and they finally (maybe) fixed it.. It was really painful having this massive, lovely display but it consistently looking messed up. Even if it's just fixed that one issue it was very worth upgrading for me.. Has me curious about other issues I've had in the past.

Haha looking at Patched Sur's entry re: my iMac: "Note that there have been some reports of very poor performance with Fusion Drives on this model when running Big Sur, which may be why Apple does not support Big Sur on this model." This is the only time I've ever been grateful that the HDD side of my fusion drive died years ago. I boot from an external SSD and use the internal 128GB drive as a scratch disk/temp storage, so don't have to deal with that!
Click to expand...
I really have only noticed it with white and gray tones and on maximum brightness. Not sure if that is related in any way, but that's just when I seem to notice it most when it occurs.
 
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hello friends, I get lost with so many Mac models, I have a MacBookPro 5.5 from 2009, it runs on Catalina. Do I stay like this or can I upgrade to Big Sur? Cheers
 
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air.man said:
Hi Jackluke,
according to official release I decided to get back to my attempt to install BigSur on my MB5,1 on an external USB drive. Stage2 completed successfully (even if the less than one minute lasted 1 hour..), and I fell in stage3 bootloop. I tried to apply the fix3 and the legacy USB fix (more than once..), but the bootloop didn’t leave.
Please take a look to the pic : it seems that no new snapshot was created by the fix. I checked and crsutil and authenticated root are both disabled. Is it correct or something got wrong ? Thanks once again.
Click to expand...
Same here on my MBP5,2.
Stage2 runs fine after having applied the stage2 fix.
The legacy USB fix and the stage3 fix don‘t enable stage3 to procees. Looking in single user mode, stage3 hangs with the legacy USB power problem.
In my case I can then hot swap the USB installation target disk to a USB3 port (on a nanotech expresscard), and installation proceeds, but the software solution will be preferable.
I also noticed that the stage3 fix changes the label macOS installer to Big Sur.
 
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hvds said:
Same here on my MBP5,2.
Stage2 runs fine after having applied the stage2 fix.
The legacy USB fix and the stage3 fix don‘t enable stage3 to procees. Looking in single user mode, stage3 hangs with the legacy USB power problem.
In my case I can then hot swap the USB installation target disk to a USB3 port (on a nanotech expresscard), and installation proceeds, but the software solution will be preferable.
I also noticed that the stage3 fix changes the label macOS installer to Big Sur.
Click to expand...
Ah, my tiny MacBook 13" Late 2008 can't host an expresscard for sure! 😄
 
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justperry said:
This might be unrelated, does anyone have out of sync video and voice when playing youtube videos.
It starts of in sync but slowly gets out of sync more and more, I stop the video, the audio stops but the video still plays until the video syncs with the voice, it's easy to see the speakers lips speaking the last word from the audio, if I start the video again all is synced until it start to be out of sync again and gets again worse over time.
Click to expand...
Watching youtube videos on an official catalina mac and windows pc there is a slight out of sync video and voice when playing youtube videos. It may be youtube having problems
 
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Mac_tech said:
I'm seeing the latest installer being added as of November 12, 2020. This being the public release link.

It's recommended to have a backup before installing new system software on your main device. Overwriting stable releases using unsupported software can cause irreparable hardware damage or irrecoverable data loss and should be used at one's own risk.

Here is a rough table, work in progress: (if anything needs to be changed, please let me know)
Micropatcher by @Barry K. Nathan
A primitive USB patcher for installing macOS Big Sur on unsupported Macs		Compatibility list
Patched Sur by Ben Sova
Patched Sur is a UI patcher for macOS Big Sur, designed to make it easy to run macOS 11 on unsupported Macs. This patcher hopes to allow any user of any knowledge to patch their Mac, while still giving you freedom on how you want to use your Mac.		Compatibility list
Big Mac by StarPlayrX
Big Mac 🍔 🍟 . Patch tool designed for Mac Pro 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012. Models 3,1 4,1 and 5,1.		if you have a Mac Pro, consider this. For 2008 Mac Pros (MacPro3,1) in particular, this is clearly a better option at least for now).
OpenCore
This is refered to as a "boot loader" – this is a complex piece of software that we use to prepare our systems for macOS – specifically by injecting new data for macOS such as SMBIOS, ACPI tables and kexts.		Supported hardware
USBOpenCoreAPFSloader by @jacklukeThis patcher allows booting of the Big Sur (Beta) installer on a wider range of older systems without graphics acceleration.
Click to expand...

Do it the other way around, which is the use case here?

A new user will come in and searches for a specific system in the first column, not for the name of a patcher. Honestly I do not care which tool I would have to use :)
 
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Dilli said:
If your display card in your mac is not metal then you will face issues of acceleration. This is also mentioned in first post. Bigsur is only compatible with metal GPU
Click to expand...
I did read that info, but am none the wiser as I can’t find any info on whether the GeForce GT 755M still supports metal. Google got me nowhere.

It claims to in system preferences.
 
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page3 said:
I did read that info, but am none the wiser as I can’t find any info on whether the GeForce GT 755M still supports metal. Google got me nowhere.
Click to expand...
Have a look in system information or Apple - About this mac - system report
I have a 2012 rMBP and graphics is either HD4000 or Nvidia GT650M and that seems to be Metal compatible.
I'm wondering if the M at the end of its name is a clue?

 
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darthgeekonius said:
Once the USB is patched, is there anyway to upgrade if you don't have a boot screen capable GPU? I can't upgrade from within Catalina.
Click to expand...
Install OpenCore, this gives you an emulated boot screen...

And it would be really great if you guys would simply start the post with a description of the hardware. I am not good at guessing... MacPro?
 
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Caeed said:
What version of Big Sur does this software download?
Click to expand...

You can select to download what release you want, for example the general release.

Dilli said:
Better you use Micropatcher from this link. And do read the instructions.

github.com

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 github.com
Click to expand...
See above. I've used both the Micropatcher as well as Patched Sur and both work great. Patched Sur has a GUI that's easy for people to use that are new to this.
 
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Mac_tech said:
You can select to download what release you want, for example the general release.


See above. I've used both the Micropatcher as well as Patched Sur and both work great. Patched Sur has a GUI that's easy for people to use that are new to this.
Click to expand...
Patched sur has caused issues while formatting the usb drive as installer for some in past posts.
 
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Ausdauersportler said:
Do it the other way around, which is the use case here?

A new user will come in and searches for a specific system in the first column, not for the name of a patcher. Honestly I do not care which tool I would have to use :)
Click to expand...
Thanks for the feedback, I fixed the spreadsheet to put the patcher in the second column and the specific system or compatiability list in the fist. :)
 
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TA 455SD said:
Watching youtube videos on an official catalina mac and windows pc there is a slight out of sync video and voice when playing youtube videos. It may be youtube having problems
Click to expand...
That's something, thanks, I do think though this is Safari being the problem, CPU usage is high while watching YT.
Ausdauersportler said:
Install OpenCore, this gives you an emulated boot screen...

And it would be really great if you guys would simply start the post with a description of the hardware. I am not good at guessing... MacPro?
Click to expand...

I think he has no clue... see Avatar. ;)

Just kidding, it should be mandatory for posting here.

I start of, 2012 Mac Mini i5 & 2012 13" cMBP both having Samsung Pro SSD and 16 GB RAM.
 
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air.man said:
Disabling and deleting the snapshot worked, I had no snapshot and the reboot was still bootlooping (see pic 1).
The diskutil info returned: Sealed:No.
So I tried opencore reboot fix. The system restarted very quickly. You can see the CMD+S output in pic 2.
The odd thing is that rebooting thru OpenCoreAPFSloader4b the MacOS Installer is still present.
Click to expand...

Are you installing an internal SATA disk or external USB disk, and do you used as target installation an HFS+ disk or APFS container ?

If you could try a SATA internal installation (this doesn't required stage2 and stage3 installer fix) it should work on that machine, then from BigSur recovery environment you could easily clone that installation to external USB , the main required fix after bootloop is "BigSurFix Legacy USB patches".

I am enough sure that also I fixed that apfs_get_firmlink_target_vnode ( @Ourkid and @telepati could confirm that ), but I need more testing on that stage3 installer when target is an external legacy USB host device.

You should use as target disk (for the stage1 installer) an already converted APFS container, possibly erasing it from Mojave or Catalina (that use their earlier apfs driver version), because the new BigSur apfs driver during conversion from HFS+ to APFS could made some incompatible modification to the Data Volume file system.
 
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