macOS 11 Big Sur on Unsupported Macs Thread

[Jaida]

I sucessfully installed Big Sur 11.13.1 on MBP Pro 5,1 with OCLP patcher Many thnaks to khronokernel, dosdude1, ASentientBot and other devs for this great work which is making such old machines like mine to work with newest systems
My MBP is preety usable for internet browsing and other light tasks works similary like od Catalina from dosdude1 patcher.
During installation installer stuck on half of progress bar, I had to reboot computer two times, but finnally installation was finished.
On version 11.2.3 the installation proceeded automatically.
View attachment 1774819

I noticed one thing odd thing. When running Catalina, computer was idling with temperature about 43*C on CPU.
On Big Sur things are different. I noticed that idle temperatures rising after screen goes sleep and are about 50*C.
View attachment 1774823
When I disable screen powering off in power preferences computer idling with temperature about 45*C which is fine


View attachment 1774824

On Catalina I not observing such behavior.
Maybe someone has an idea what could be the reason?

Regards!

Congrats! What about Wifi, no issue ?

 

[Jann89]

@Jaida I'm not observing any issues with WiFi Working both on my 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks.

 

[Macdctr]

I recently got a pristine Early 2013 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro (10,1) and used OCLP vers 0.1.4 to install Big Sur 11.3.1

Method Used: OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher by @khronokernel and @dhinakg (vers. 0.1.4)

My wifi card installed is a Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0

I found the process very easy to follow and straightforward.

Awesome work to dosdude1 for compiling all the info to make this thread and allow us to have the info at our fingertips so to speak, also to everyone involved in developing OCLP my thanks for taking the time to develop this app to make installing Big Sur an easy process

I can now say that all the laptops listed in my signature below are running MacOS Big Sur

Everything is running perfectly after this install. No issues.

 

[OKonnel]

Good morning. I need a little help. Of course I use OpenCore Legacy Patcher (always the latest main build ...).
So! I haven't used CMD+R keys when starting my iMac in a long time to access Recovery Utilities that work thanks to OCLP as does Safe Mode and Single User mode too.
So, this morning, I tried pressing CMD+R on the Gong, but just the globe to restore macOS via the internet appear.
Questions:
- am I doing something wrong or the last OCLPs no longer allows this modalities?
- perhaps it depends on the fact that I have two internal disks? (a 2TB SSD in which there is Big Sur 11.3.1 and all my files and the 128GB Apple SSD, which belonged to the Fusion Drive, in which I installed Big Sur 11.4 .beta 3)
- depends on whether the 2TB SSD with my files is encrypted with FileVault?
I tried, of course, both to press CMD+R at power-on (Gong!) and after starting OpenCore EFI and selecting one of the two SSDs.
Thank you.

P.S.
My aim is to use csrutil and disable SIP as I would like to try replacing the GeForce drivers on the SSD with the Beta, suitable for experimentation. I want to see if I fix the problems with Photo Booth. Comparing the Big Sur and Catalina drivers, in fact, I saw that in Big Sur there is no longer the binary file in the /MacOS folder of the GeForce Metal driver kext. Maybe Apple thinks the Nvidia GeForce GTX 780M is no longer supported and eliminated in Big Sur drivers?...
Obviously then I will communicate my results and even if the video glitches will be gone by opening many HEIC files with Preview.app, made with my iPhone XS.

 

[Larsvonhier]

Also, thanks to Larsvonhier for catching this. Force quitting and relaunch fixed it here. Thank you for the site search tip, as well. 😎

Lil' update: I found that just hitting return key also works sometimes to dismiss the Maps and FindMy Apps initial popup with non-metal GPUs on patched systems.

Also good news: Resizing Finder windows now also runs without bouncing/wobbling since OC patcher 0.1.5 on non-metal GPUs. Window resizing of other apps almost works flawlessly, but much better than before. Still buggy yet on HD3000 and NVidia GPUs is the mouse-movement across translucent window sections. Perhaps 0.1.7 brings some remedy here, @ASentientBot ...? ;-)

All in all already super useable results now, thanks to the OCLP team!

 

[Dilli]

Today I updated my MacBook Air 4,2 mid 2011 using OCLP 0.1.4 patcher to version 11.3.1. However, I sighted this last paragraph on the terminal window. Will it make any difference? Just curious.



Also OCLP made the MacBook air boot thrice and took a very long time to upgrade from 11.3 to 11.3.1 but finally I was on the Login page of BigSur. Only important element missing is the brightness slider in display. Cannot adjust display brightness. Guess I have to download a 3rd party slider from apps store

 

[AvaQueen]

Well, I would like to, if you can.

Since I read about machines with EFI erased which can work anymore unless you bring them to Apple (in my country there's no stores), I was afraid to try it... but if you can, Im glad.

Can I PM you?

Yeah sure. (Sorry for the late reply)

 

[Budmaster]

...I tried pressing CMD+R on the Gong, but just the globe to restore macOS...

In the same situation with iMac 27" Late 2013 I booted from a USB flash drive and used the terminal to disable SIP

 

[internetzel]

Good morning. I need a little help. Of course I use OpenCore Legacy Patcher (always the latest main build ...).
So! I haven't used CMD+R keys when starting my iMac in a long time to access Recovery Utilities that work thanks to OCLP as does Safe Mode and Single User mode too.
So, this morning, I tried pressing CMD+R on the Gong, but just the globe to restore macOS via the internet appear.
Questions:
- am I doing something wrong or the last OCLPs no longer allows this modalities?
- perhaps it depends on the fact that I have two internal disks? (a 2TB SSD in which there is Big Sur 11.3.1 and all my files and the 128GB Apple SSD, which belonged to the Fusion Drive, in which I installed Big Sur 11.4 .beta 3)
- depends on whether the 2TB SSD with my files is encrypted with FileVault?
I tried, of course, both to press CMD+R at power-on (Gong!) and after starting OpenCore EFI and selecting one of the two SSDs.
Thank you.

P.S.
My aim is to use csrutil and disable SIP as I would like to try replacing the GeForce drivers on the SSD with the Beta, suitable for experimentation. I want to see if I fix the problems with Photo Booth. Comparing the Big Sur and Catalina drivers, in fact, I saw that in Big Sur there is no longer the binary file in the /MacOS folder of the GeForce Metal driver kext. Maybe Apple thinks the Nvidia GeForce GTX 780M is no longer supported and eliminated in Big Sur drivers?...
Obviously then I will communicate my results and even if the video glitches will be gone by opening many HEIC files with Preview.app, made with my iPhone XS.

At the OpenCore boot picker you need to press the space bar in order to see the recovery boot entries. That is described in the OCLP documentation. However I think the SIP settings are overwritten by OpenCore on each start with the values specified in the OCLP options, so maybe you cannot change the SIP settings via the recovery.

 

[OKonnel]

At the OpenCore boot picker you need to press the space bar in order to see the recovery boot entries...

Thank you @internetzel ! I had forgotten about the Spacebar trick In the meantime I have used the OCLP Option to deactivate SIP and Volume Protection and the Terminal confirms that everything has been well deactivated.
At this point, (since I didn't remember the use of the Spacebar...), I rebooted with the installation USB Key and mounted the disk where I wanted to replace the two GeForce KEXT.
After running the command:
/sbin/mount -uw Macintosh\ SD /
to mount disk for writing, I tried to copy the two Kext GeForce which seem to me to be guilty of Photo Booth malfunction and maybe of some video glitches with Preview.app.
I gave the copy command
cp -vfR /Volumes/Users/Shared/GeForce* /Volumes/Macintosh\ SD/System/Library/Extensions/
and the Terminal showed me a correct copy.
However, restarting the Mac in Normal Mode ... I found that the two original Big Sur's Kext were not replaced by those of Catalina... Yet the Terminal gave me no errors when copying! Mah...
What am I wrong this time? Thank you

 

[Macdctr]

I had a minor glitch because I forgot a step while installing BS on my laptop and followed up this morning with the developers of OCLP using the discord app to discuss what I might have done wrong to cause the glitch and they were vey helpful and brought to light a step I forgot to do while installing OCLP into my MacBook Pro last night.

I followed their suggestion and corrected my mistake and can say if you follow their steps exactly as posted you should have no problem installing Big Sur using OCLP on your computer.

The developers of OCLP are awesome group of people who respond quickly if you connect with them using the discord app. Well done!!

EDIT: I did a successful OS update to 11.4 Beta 3 this afternoon.

 

[RogueB]

Hello to all,

1) Successful installation of 11.4 beta3 on iMac 13,2 (late 2012)

Method: micropatcher by @Barry K. Nathan. (version 0.5.1)

All system functions operational.

2) Successful installation of 11.4 beta3 on MacBook Pro 5,2 (17" mid-2009) with an SSD

Method: OCLP version 0.1.2 - see post 10107 on page 405 for instructions.
Graphic acceleration is present with some minor glitches.
Keyboard lighting is absent, but can be activated using application LabTick (no association with that program).
Maps do work, though I can not use main address search bar (maps crash). However, choosing (clicking-on) one
of the old addresses (listed in original search window), opens another small window which will accept new address
in its search-bar, and functions as expected.

Hope this may be of help.

 

[dhinakg]

macOS Big Sur 11.4 RC has been seeded to all beta channels (developer beta, public beta, AppleSeed). No InstallAssistant yet as usual.

 

[khronokernel]

Hello everyone, we're proud to release OpenCore Legacy Patcher 0.1.5!

Release 0.1.5 · dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher

Fix crashing when Wireless module not present Add iMac10,1 default dGPU pathing Add agdpmod=vit9696 to all Nvidia Metal iMacs Fixes external display support on Nvidia iMac12,x Remove reliance on...

github.com

Overall note worthy changes are:
- Enhanced GPU Power management for El-Capitan Era Macs
- Fixed Brightness Control for MacBookPro8,2/3
- Enhancements to Legacy acceleration Patches
- SeedUtil Configuration in Advanced Patcher Settings

Hope everyone enjoys the new changes!

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Good morning. I need a little help. Of course I use OpenCore Legacy Patcher (always the latest main build ...).
So! I haven't used CMD+R keys when starting my iMac in a long time to access Recovery Utilities that work thanks to OCLP as does Safe Mode and Single User mode too.
So, this morning, I tried pressing CMD+R on the Gong, but just the globe to restore macOS via the internet appear.
Questions:
- am I doing something wrong or the last OCLPs no longer allows this modalities?
- perhaps it depends on the fact that I have two internal disks? (a 2TB SSD in which there is Big Sur 11.3.1 and all my files and the 128GB Apple SSD, which belonged to the Fusion Drive, in which I installed Big Sur 11.4 .beta 3)
- depends on whether the 2TB SSD with my files is encrypted with FileVault?
I tried, of course, both to press CMD+R at power-on (Gong!) and after starting OpenCore EFI and selecting one of the two SSDs.
Thank you.

P.S.
My aim is to use csrutil and disable SIP as I would like to try replacing the GeForce drivers on the SSD with the Beta, suitable for experimentation. I want to see if I fix the problems with Photo Booth. Comparing the Big Sur and Catalina drivers, in fact, I saw that in Big Sur there is no longer the binary file in the /MacOS folder of the GeForce Metal driver kext. Maybe Apple thinks the Nvidia GeForce GTX 780M is no longer supported and eliminated in Big Sur drivers?...
Obviously then I will communicate my results and even if the video glitches will be gone by opening many HEIC files with Preview.app, made with my iPhone XS.

Hi!

You came late to join this party. There is a post way back explaining how to make the root system volume writable. Somewhere is have a sheil script doing all this automatically called nanopatcher. Have to find it...

Happy patching!

 

[webg3]

OTA 11.3.1 to 11.4 sucess!

OpenCore 0.7.0

 

[hvds]

Hello everyone, we're proud to release OpenCore Legacy Patcher 0.1.5!

Release 0.1.5 · dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher

Fix crashing when Wireless module not present Add iMac10,1 default dGPU pathing Add agdpmod=vit9696 to all Nvidia Metal iMacs Fixes external display support on Nvidia iMac12,x Remove reliance on...

github.com

Overall note worthy changes are:
- Enhanced GPU Power management for El-Capitan Era Macs
- Fixed Brightness Control for MacBookPro8,2/3
- Enhancements to Legacy acceleration Patches
- SeedUtil Configuration in Advanced Patcher Settings

Hope everyone enjoys the new changes!

Just successfully re-applied the Post-Install System Volume Patch of 0.1.5 to an 11.3.1 installation made earlier with 0.1.3. Using an SSD on USB as always for testing, OCLP 0.1.5 on the same medium. MBP5,2, Legacy USB machine. No hangs during boot.

As Larsvonhier said a few posts above about his setup, my MBP5,2 accelerated with NVIDIA 9600M GT is already so good that I use it as my everyday system since several days now (production SSD on internal SATA). The OS is super stable, very few failing apps (which likely need real Metal) which can be worked around.

Now more testing to see what hides behind bullet 3...

Thanks!

 

[serafin79]

anyone encounter a bug with message app where it won't load. when I run it through command line I get this error

Messages[749:28116] Invalid absolute dimension, must be > 0.0. NOTE: This will be a hard-assert soon, please update your call site

 

[Pri-est]

Hi Guys!
Successfully Updated to 11.4 RC from 11.4 Beta3 on Mac Pro 3.1 (early 2008)
Without issues
OCLP 0.1.5

 

[BenSova]

So I know you all are using OpenCore and the older patching method is kind of dead, but I'm going down with my ship, and to finish everything up, I have one last goal and getting there I might need a little help with (I will switch to OC with macOS 12, also Objective-C, and also try to fix every other dumb decision I've made with this patcher, that has nothing to do with this though). I think someone has already figured out it, so I'm just going to ask here before confusing myself more haha.

I was trying to patch the kexts on an installer USB's BaseSystem, so I patched the kexts, fixed the permissions then went to rebuild the kernel collection, but I noticed that there's not a kernel. I check macOS Base System, the Preboot, and the main Install macOS Big Sur volume, but nothing.

I later noticed that @jackluke had a repo on GitHub that does this, but without any source code that explains how the kernel was rebuilt (https://github.com/jacklukem/BigSurfixes), the only source code I could find was the scripts to copy a pre-made custom kernel collection to the USB.

I'm wondering, does anyone know (possibly jackluke, maybe someone else) how this was achieved? I could just be dumb/blind and I'm missing something big that could help me (I probably am...), but I thought it would be good to come here since somebody probably knows what I'm missing.

Thanks in advance!

 

[buckrock]

Today I updated my MacBook Air 4,2 mid 2011 using OCLP 0.1.4 patcher to version 11.3.1. However, I sighted this last paragraph on the terminal window. Will it make any difference? Just curious.

View attachment 1775901

Also OCLP made the MacBook air boot thrice and took a very long time to upgrade from 11.3 to 11.3.1 but finally I was on the Login page of BigSur. Only important element missing is the brightness slider in display. Cannot adjust display brightness. Guess I have to download a 3rd party slider from apps store

That "Working around a very dumb Apple bug ..." was a subject I posted about some time ago. It comes from a python script called "installinstallmacos.py".

If your install went without problems, then you have nothing more to do. As I understand, the bug requires all peripherals to be unplugged, even microSD cards, lest the installer confuse them with your intended target volume.

 

[iMac-Oldschool]

So I know you all are using OpenCore and the older patching method is kind of dead, but I'm going down with my ship, and to finish everything up, I have one last goal and getting there I might need a little help with (I will switch to OC with macOS 12, also Objective-C, and also try to fix every other dumb decision I've made with this patcher, that has nothing to do with this though). I think someone has already figured out it, so I'm just going to ask here before confusing myself more haha.

I was trying to patch the kexts on an installer USB's BaseSystem, so I patched the kexts, fixed the permissions then went to rebuild the kernel collection, but I noticed that there's not a kernel. I check macOS Base System, the Preboot, and the main Install macOS Big Sur volume, but nothing.

I later noticed that @jackluke had a repo on GitHub that does this, but without any source code that explains how the kernel was rebuilt (https://github.com/jacklukem/BigSurfixes), the only source code I could find was the scripts to copy a pre-made custom kernel collection to the USB.

I'm wondering, does anyone know (possibly jackluke, maybe someone else) how this was achieved? I could just be dumb/blind and I'm missing something big that could help me (I probably am...), but I thought it would be good to come here since somebody probably knows what I'm missing.

Thanks in advance!

 

[iMac-Oldschool]

Some of us are still using a patcher and are very happy with it. My iMac will probably be replaced by a new Apple Silicon machine by the end of the year, but in the meantime I'll stick with the patcher.

 

[hvds]

So I know you all are using OpenCore and the older patching method is kind of dead, but I'm going down with my ship, and to finish everything up, I have one last goal and getting there I might need a little help with (I will switch to OC with macOS 12, also Objective-C, and also try to fix every other dumb decision I've made with this patcher, that has nothing to do with this though). I think someone has already figured out it, so I'm just going to ask here before confusing myself more haha.

I was trying to patch the kexts on an installer USB's BaseSystem, so I patched the kexts, fixed the permissions then went to rebuild the kernel collection, but I noticed that there's not a kernel. I check macOS Base System, the Preboot, and the main Install macOS Big Sur volume, but nothing.

I later noticed that @jackluke had a repo on GitHub that does this, but without any source code that explains how the kernel was rebuilt (https://github.com/jacklukem/BigSurfixes), the only source code I could find was the scripts to copy a pre-made custom kernel collection to the USB.

I'm wondering, does anyone know (possibly jackluke, maybe someone else) how this was achieved? I could just be dumb/blind and I'm missing something big that could help me (I probably am...), but I thought it would be good to come here since somebody probably knows what I'm missing.

Thanks in advance!

Hi BenSova,

OCLP is working well and I use it successfully. But for similar kext reasons as you, I also use BigSurBaseSystemfix. Can't help you with explaining how jackluke's method does it in detail, but I am using it for cases important to me and where I don't see other solutions.

In the Catalina case, there was more than one patcher, though dosdude1's patcher was overwhelmingly used, and it was (and is!) excellent. OCLP is now for BS. Still I think there is nothing against having more than one patcher, if only for rare cases and for broadening the knowledge of how BS works in terms of installation and modification.

 

[OKonnel]

Hi! You came late to join this party. There is a post way back explaining how to make the root system volume writable. Somewhere is have sheil script doing all this automatically called nanopatcher. Have to find it... Happy patching!

Thanks, @Ausdauersportler ... Now I'll look for nanopatcher ... So, I like first to understand "where the future macOS going" and act based on knowledge.
But in this case I ran into a mystery ... I perfectly disabled everything (with csrutil and csrutil authenticated-root) and from Recovery Mode I perfectly REPLACED the two GeForce drivers I wanted to change. With Terminal and ls -alGO I verified that the replacement had occurred perfectly in /System/Library/Extensions/. BUT ... when macOS restarts... it always RESETS its Big Sur drivers!!!! Grrrrr....
I will be using nanopatcher, but I also want to understand how this can be done directly. It's useful to understand for remediate any future problems, even with Macs that support Big Sur. The knowledge it's all
In any case, this afternoon I investigated the matter in depth and starting from your indications I understood the mechanism behind Big Sur and "virtual images" it uses ... Unfortunately I don't have time to dedicate and it means that I will wait for some Utility in which just insert the Kexts files or other system files to replace and the utility does it all. Thank you for your time