macOS 11 Big Sur on Unsupported Macs Thread

[fr35hn355]

Hello!

#1 I have an issue with the Display Brightness slider not working at all, its just not moving, any ideas?

#2 The bluetooth is not finding/connecting to mouse and keyboard, can't find any device it seems...

I am new to the forum and am really appreciating all help and support as a reader only (until now) and hope I can get some ideas on how to move forward to fix the issues above... without being too annoying =).

PS. I have tried removing all kexts and applying again, I used the latest patch_kexts.sh and did it from Big Sur installation to avoid the 'zip' issue. Also deleted all files in /Library/Extensions before doing so to get around the patchers issues with "Error returned: <dictionary: 0x7fff800af5e0> ".
Perhaps deleting erasing the drive and do a fresh install is needed if no-one has any fixes in mind...

Imac Mid 2011 i7
16 GB RAM
2 SSDs installed along with upgrade to GTX780M with @Nick [D]vB BIOS flashed.
Installed Big Sur 11.0.1 using @Barry K. Nathan micro patcher

 

[mcpro2008]

Bootlooping after a BigSur installation occurs after one or more of these situations:

- clean installing BigSur with a non-APFS Mac (legacy USB devices) on external USB host root device target (installing on internal SATA should work easier)
- Legacy USB fixes not properly applied or telemetry plugin not properly deleted through a valid snapshot UUID
- incompatible CPU (some Intel Xeon and many Nehalem or similar) architecture (try OpenCore with khronokernel SSDT ACPI patch) with BigSur kernel
- incompatible non apple GPU with BigSur kernel (try an advanced OpenCore setup)
- stage3 installer hasn't completed properly (installing on internal SATA disk should fix this, then you can clone to external)
- incompatible Wifi Bluetooth combo card (or any other PCI express card) with BigSur kernelcollections

There is a circumstance where you can avoid the stage3 installer, when there is already an external USB BigSur installation (or upgrading a previous Catalina install), so updating that installation will work also skipping the stage3 installer, this because there is an apple setup done with a root account for the APFS Data Volume.

Anyway regardless of those hints, you should first check that your machine is capable to boot a BigSur recovery installer graphical environment, note that many that installed BigSur through a Catalina or Mojave desktop with Hax3 app, haven't encountered any BigSur graphical environment because the stage1 installer is made directly from Catalina or Mojave desktop, and even the stage2 installer is not a graphical environment it's simply an apple logo with loading bar showing "29 minutes remaining" this is NOT a BigSur graphical environment (also stage3 installer is not a graphical environment).

So my advise try first to boot any BigSur installer graphical environment, then you can establish what's the issue of bootlooping on MacPro3,1 (Intel Xeon or similar cpu) for example this : https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...unsupported-macs-thread.2242172/post-29315114

Hi, I gave your base system fix dmg a try and after booting from the installer and installing BS on an NVME drive, I get the prohibited sign again. I tried running the stage2 installer fix and the legacy USB fix, but that didn’t do anything.

Any idea as to what I might be doing wrong?

 

[Sevenfeet]

And I was unsuccessful again. Removing the bluetooth card did help but not enough to get past whatever is going on with my machine. I'm still left with the Big Sur, Big Sur - Data and Update partitions. But I can't go any further.

The only good news is that the removal of the BT card forces my machine to use the USB version of Bluetooth I've had for a while, which means that my Airpods Pro finally work with this thing (BT 4.0). Of course, I imagine that I can't control the boot volume selection with the option key on a Bluetooth keyboard anymore. But that's not a horrible problem.

 

[haralds]

I gave up on my "enhanced" cMP 5,1 with EFI flashed RX-580 and modified BLE/WiFI. Overall it runs very well including Handoff and Watch unlock. But recurring USB issues with build in USB ignoring HID devices plugged in after boot and USB 3 not streaming media smoothly from webcam to to audio make it a show stopper.
Alas, I had upgraded my smoothly running Catalina on an internal NVME after testing Big Sur on an SSD where the USB 3 issues had been rare. Rebuilding that from scratch after a CCC recovery failed was somewhat time consuming.
I will stay with Catalina for my main use and leave the Big Sur on a 1TB SSD for playing around with.
I have mainly been using my M1 MacBook Pro anyway...

 

[mrbubzie1993]

I'm curious guys maybe this is the wrong post but I was curious for those of us running full Big Sur on unsupported hardware what your favorite feature was and why?

 

[BenSova]

I'm curious guys maybe this is the wrong post but I was curious for this of us running full Big Sur on unsupported hardware what your favorite feature was and why?

Big Sur feature? The redesign. Some people hate it, but I honestly love it. The new UI makes macOS look much cleaner, more modern, and more focused. I haven't cared about the other features nearly as much. The Control Center is nice, automatic AirPods switching is okay-ish (even on supported Macs), I haven't seen many good widgets for the new notification center (Widgy for Mac is probably going to change my perspective a little bit) so I don't think I need it, the new Safari, Maps, and Messages features I don't care about because I don't use on my Mac.

 

[Objectivist-C]

I'm currently running unpatched Catalina installed via VMWare raw disk mode on a Mac Pro 5,1. Has anyone with a similar install tried upgrading in place to Big Sur? Does the Bluetooth card still work?

 

[macsba]

Big Sur feature? The redesign. Some people hate it, but I honestly love it. The new UI makes macOS look much cleaner, more modern, and more focused. I haven't cared about the other features nearly as much. The Control Center is nice, automatic AirPods switching is okay-ish (even on supported Macs), I haven't seen many good widgets for the new notification center (Widgy for Mac is probably going to change my perspective a little bit) so I don't think I need it, the new Safari, Maps, and Messages features I don't care about because I don't use on my Mac.

I love Messages and Safari. Please don't ever make ill will statements of them. Maps, I don't know much to comment about them. So you know, the other message apps just plainly spy upon people. Does this mean we shouldn't trust your Big Sur patchers or advice? Do they like other message apps spy upon us? This is the impression I'm getting from your post. Seems like you don't like the applications that Apple develops in conjunction with macOS Big Sur. We're hyper sensitive to our data in the Mac world. I've never been a windows fan nor the environment from them. I'm one of the few in here that has a deep thought that microsoft stole the windows idea from Apple's Macintosh. Just my thoughts.

 

[BenSova]

I love Messages and Safari. Please don't ever make ill will statements of them. Maps, I don't know much to comment about them. So you know, the other message apps just plainly spy upon people. Does this mean we shouldn't trust your Big Sur patchers or advice? Do they like other message apps spy upon us? This is the impression I'm getting from your post. Seems like you don't like the applications that Apple develops in conjunction with macOS Big Sur. We're hyper sensitive to our data in the Mac world. I've never been a windows fan nor the environment from them. I'm one of the few in here that has a deep thought that microsoft stole the windows idea from Apple's Macintosh. Just my thoughts.

Safari and Messages are great apps, don't get me wrong, but I don't use either of them. As much as I loved the features at first, I don't use Messages on my Mac that much and I prefer Firefox over Safari. How does that have anything to do with my patcher? You can look through the code if you don't trust it, it is open source after all. I believe in privacy and security, I have no idea how me not using something relates to that.

 

[jackluke]

Hi, I gave your base system fix dmg a try and after booting from the installer and installing BS on an NVME drive, I get the prohibited sign again. I tried running the stage2 installer fix and the legacy USB fix, but that didn’t do anything.

Any idea as to what I might be doing wrong?

Does your MacPro3,1 have an APFS firmware patch or are you using OpenCore ?

Could you post a picture of the output of "BigSurFixes Legacy USB patches" ?

Try also from BigSurFixes the "stage3 installer fix" that should fix that prohibitory symbol, if still can't proceed then try to make an external USB OpenCore setup with this: USBOpenCoreAPFSloader4b.zip

and reboot with alt-option key select this opencore icon and from the submenu select BigSur (or its Preboot or its Data) volume.

 

[mcpro2008]

Does your MacPro3,1 have an APFS firmware patch or are you using OpenCore ?

Could you post a picture of the output of "BigSurFixes Legacy USB patches" ?

Try also from BigSurFixes the "stage3 installer fix" that should fix that prohibitory symbol, if still can't proceed then try to make an external USB OpenCore setup with this: USBOpenCoreAPFSloader4b.zip

and reboot with alt-option key select this opencore icon and from the submenu select BigSur (or its Preboot or its Data) volume.

My 3.1 should have the APFS patcher, though I wouldn’t mind trying OC.

Is it safe to run the BigSurFixes Legacy USB patches again?

I ran the stage3 installer fix, and now my boot screen sees the BS drive as “BigSur” with the icon as well, but still a no-go. Tried installing OpenCore4b from the installer disk, but I’ll now try using the USB method you just pointed out, since selecting OpenCore at boot just gives a black and white prohibited symbol.

 

[mcpro2008]

Does your MacPro3,1 have an APFS firmware patch or are you using OpenCore ?

Could you post a picture of the output of "BigSurFixes Legacy USB patches" ?

Try also from BigSurFixes the "stage3 installer fix" that should fix that prohibitory symbol, if still can't proceed then try to make an external USB OpenCore setup with this: USBOpenCoreAPFSloader4b.zip

and reboot with alt-option key select this opencore icon and from the submenu select BigSur (or its Preboot or its Data) volume.

Tried running the USB Legacy Patch on another drive I tried the install on, this is the output I’m getting

 

[MacHacJac]

Alright, guys. In case you didn't know, I'm making an automator for BarryKN's patcher. I think I can officially say that it will be automated start-to-finish. Within the next week, I can almost guarantee that I will make a new release of the automator with kext patching automated.

 

[MacHacJac]

View attachment 1682448
Tried running the USB Legacy Patch on another drive I tried the install on, this is the output I’m getting

You can't run sudo in recovery.

 

[jackluke]

View attachment 1682448
Tried running the USB Legacy Patch on another drive I tried the install on, this is the output I’m getting

From your picture, your BigSur installation hasn't neither started yet, because you should have instead:

disk1s1 for APFS Big Sur - Data
disk1s5 for APFS Big Sur (System from your picture it's incorrectly on disk1s1)
disk1s3 for APFS Recovery from your picture is 20 KB while it should be 650 MB

disk1s2 that is your APFS Preboot after stage3 installer should have a minimum size of 200 MB

having the APFS BigSur - Data on diskXs1 is mandatory because the APFS Preboot UUID is based on the Data Volume since apple idea is to snapshot the System Volume (while previously on Catalina was based on APFS System diskXs1, on Mojave "APFS patches" were easier because there was no APFS Data Volume).

So you should reinstall BigSur and complete the "stage2 installer" where "29 minutes remaining" is showed but this step will take around 1 hour and 30 minutes (picture example attached), after stage2 installer you should have a disk1s1 for APFS Data and disk1s5 for APFS System this is the correct BigSur structure.

Then you should also complete the "stage3 installer" with apple logo and many bootloops (five or six bootloops) until you get the attached example message of kernel panic, only then you can apply "stage3 installer fix" and "BigSurFixes Legacy USB patches".

You wrote that you have an "APFS patcher" so I assume is not a ROM patch but an APFS software fix, this is not sufficient for an APFS BigSur staged installer, instead if you have a non-APFS Mac and your target is an external legacy USB hard disk, you should after the stage1 installer that is from the recovery graphical environment (or from a Mojave or Catalina desktop), reboot the BaseSystemfix and apply the "stage2 installer fix", then you can continue booting with OpenCoreAPFSloader that is the only third party bootloader capable to detect the hidden "macOS Installer" on non APFS firmware Mac.

Anyway installing and booting BigSur without an APFS firmware is very possible, it just require Opencore and some efforts when the target is an external USB hard disk plugged to a legacy USB host .

 

[jackluke]

You can't run sudo in recovery.

I'm aware of that "sudo" command, I made it on purpose to thrown that error when my BigSurFixes fails to don't mismatch the main APFS Preboot or multiple internal macOS installation, so if the BigSur Preboot is incomplete or invalid size or the user typed the wrong diskXs2 APFS Preboot , I put an elif condition (that applies also to the APFS System Volume) with "sudo" to deny processing any patching on the target disk.

 

[BeatCrazy]

In the spirit of giving back, here's something I learned after messing around quite a bit on my iMac 11,1.

Although I do great using CatalinaLoader as my daily OC boot picker, if you want to do a complete reinstall using @jackluke's patched installer method, you should definitely use his USBOpenCoreAPFSloader4b as your OC/bootpicker.

If you use another OC, you will probably run into the "gray screen/Language Picker" roadblock (even after PRAM reset) upon boot. For some reason, CatalinaLoader doesn't want to play nicely booting into BaseSystemfix.

 

[psbelectric]

Can you link me the instructions ?

I just logged in now, and saw your request!

I hope someone was able to help you?

I sold my late 2012 iMac and waiting for my new Mac mini
M1 this Wednesday!

anyhow hope your installation goes great...

 

[BeatCrazy]

Any ideas on why my Ethernet would suddenly disappear after a fresh/clean install using the @jackluke patcher? I did the expected troubleshooting: Reset PRAM, new cable, reset switch, etc. It was working fine yesterday

Ethernet doesn't show in the list of Network options, and it's not in the About This Mac -> System Report, either. Only Bluetooth PAN (Ethernet) and Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi works just fine.

 

[jackluke]

In the spirit of giving back, here's something I learned after messing around quite a bit on my iMac 11,1.

Although I do great using CatalinaLoader as my daily OC boot picker, if you want to do a complete reinstall using @jackluke's patched installer method, you should definitely use his USBOpenCoreAPFSloader4b as your OC/bootpicker.

If you use another OC, you will probably run into the "gray screen/Language Picker" roadblock (even after PRAM reset) upon boot. For some reason, CatalinaLoader doesn't want to play nicely booting into BaseSystemfix.

My BaseSystemfix doesn't require opencore to boot, it's simply an HFS+ bootable disk, but opencore is required for iMac11,1 or any "Arrandale Nehalem" based Intel architecture (my setup for this is 4b1 not 4b ) that require khronokernel SSDT ACPI patch, but I tested BaseSystemfix with many bootloader, not sure exactly which Catalina loader setting could disallow booting my patched recovery, but I can tell that in my opencore setup I don't use this nvram setting:

                <key>prev-lang:kbd</key>
                <data></data>

but probably there are also other different settings involved, for example Catalina loader maybe spoof to a supported Catalina Mac, while in my setup with khronokernel patch spoofing is disabled.

 

[jackluke]

Any ideas on why my Ethernet would suddenly disappear after a fresh/clean install using the @jackluke patcher? I did the expected troubleshooting: Reset PRAM, new cable, reset switch, etc. It was working fine yesterday

Ethernet doesn't show in the list of Network options, and it's not in the About This Mac -> System Report, either. Only Bluetooth PAN (Ethernet) and Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi works just fine.

I disabled Ethernet kext patching because I encountered some issues with OpenCoreAPFSloader on non-APFS Mac (Ethernet is only included for nvenet), so for Ethernet patching currently you should use micropatcher, also I guess for Intel Nehalem you need AppleBCM5701Ethernet.kext that is a barrykn patched kext.

 

[mcpro2008]

From your picture, your BigSur installation hasn't neither started yet, because you should have instead:

disk1s1 for APFS Big Sur - Data
disk1s5 for APFS Big Sur (System from your picture it's incorrectly on disk1s1)
disk1s3 for APFS Recovery from your picture is 20 KB while it should be 650 MB

disk1s2 that is your APFS Preboot after stage3 installer should have a minimum size of 200 MB

having the APFS BigSur - Data on diskXs1 is mandatory because the APFS Preboot UUID is based on the Data Volume since apple idea is to snapshot the System Volume (while previously on Catalina was based on APFS System diskXs1, on Mojave "APFS patches" were easier because there was no APFS Data Volume).

So you should reinstall BigSur and complete the "stage2 installer" where "29 minutes remaining" is showed but this step will take around 1 hour and 30 minutes (picture example attached), after stage2 installer you should have a disk1s1 for APFS Data and disk1s5 for APFS System this is the correct BigSur structure.

Then you should also complete the "stage3 installer" with apple logo and many bootloops (five or six bootloops) until you get the attached example message of kernel panic, only then you can apply "stage3 installer fix" and "BigSurFixes Legacy USB patches".

You wrote that you have an "APFS patcher" so I assume is not a ROM patch but an APFS software fix, this is not sufficient for an APFS BigSur staged installer, instead if you have a non-APFS Mac and your target is an external legacy USB hard disk, you should after the stage1 installer that is from the recovery graphical environment (or from a Mojave or Catalina desktop), reboot the BaseSystemfix and apply the "stage2 installer fix", then you can continue booting with OpenCoreAPFSloader that is the only third party bootloader capable to detect the hidden "macOS Installer" on non APFS firmware Mac.

Anyway installing and booting BigSur without an APFS firmware is very possible, it just require Opencore and some efforts when the target is an external USB hard disk plugged to a legacy USB host .

Tried doing a fresh install from your BaseSystemFix, after installing I booted into BaseSystemFix again and ran the stage2 installer fix. After that I removed the BSF drive and booted the computer from the APFS Open Core USB I created in Catalina. This results in a black and white apple boot screen with a progress bar that moves a tiny bit before a spinning wheel appears and my system reboots.

 

[jackluke]

Tried doing a fresh install from your BaseSystemFix, after installing I booted into BaseSystemFix again and ran the stage2 installer fix. After that I removed the BSF drive and booted the computer from the APFS Open Core USB I created in Catalina. This results in a black and white apple boot screen with a progress bar that moves a tiny bit before a spinning wheel appears and my system reboots.

After you select the EFI Boot, does it show another apple menu with Recovery and other bootable Volumes ?

Try boot selecting the EFI Boot opencore, then select "Restart fix", then hold alt-option key and select (without OpenCore) "macOS Installer" (apple hard disk icon) it should continue the "29 minutes remaining" stage2 installer.

 

[BeatCrazy]

I disabled Ethernet kext patching because I encountered some issues with OpenCoreAPFSloader on non-APFS Mac (Ethernet is only included for nvenet), so for Ethernet patching currently you should use micropatcher, also I guess for Intel Nehalem you need AppleBCM5701Ethernet.kext that is a barrykn patched kext.

That makes sense.

I have the Micropatcher files, but I'm unsure the best way to patch my BS boot volume since I already have a successful OS install. I've tried running the patch-kexts.sh from terminal, but of course I no longer use the Install macOS Big Sur USB that I assume it's looking for.

 

[jackluke]

That makes sense.

I have the Micropatcher files, but I'm unsure the best way to patch my BS boot volume since I already have a successful OS install. I've tried running the patch-kexts.sh from terminal, but of course I no longer use the Install macOS Big Sur USB that I assume it's looking for.

Just rename "BigSurBaseSystemfix" to "Install macOS Big Sur" and Barrykn patch kext should work.