macOS 11 Big Sur on Unsupported Macs Thread

[internetzel]

I have an issue. I am on BigSur . I have a 160GB hdd connected through Firewire 800 through Apple Thunderbolt to firewire adapter connected to the thunderbolt port.

Strangely the disk keeps getting ejected and mounted without any reason. This happens once a while not very often.

The disk is properly partitioned with Mac OS Extended Journaled with GUID partition. However, while connecting with USB 2.0 port there is no Issue.

I have currently daisy chained 2 Firewire 800 External 3.5 inch HDD(Self Powered through AC Outlet) through single Thunderbolt port on the iMac 27' inch and both drives show well on the desktop

I want to use the higher speed Thunderbolt port as it allows me above process and freeing my USB port.

Anybody having similar issue could provide some insights. Any solution would really help. I face similar issue on Catalina using Thunderbolt Port, maybe also on High Sierra.

Why not directly use the Firewire 800 port of your iMac?

 

[Dayo]

Struggling to see how supported machines would manage though.
I presume "csrutil disable" sets that bit on such units. Why would they not experience the same issue if this would mean they would also be trying to reach an inaccessible private DNS target?

@startergo ferreted out the answer: https://github.com/mooons/darwin-xn...aa54967f04ca5f8/bsd/kern/kern_csr.c#L177-L183

Big Sur apparently fixes this discrepancy on boot but possibly due to OC namespacing or similar, the fix may not work on exotic setups such as ours. Implementing the Big Sur fix in RefindPlus.

 

[Dilli]

Why not directly use the Firewire 800 port of your iMac?

Perhaps you are not aware that Apple has dropped support for Firewire from Catalina onwards.

 

[internetzel]

Perhaps you are not aware that Apple has dropped support for Firewire from Catalina onwards.

It does still work but Catalina and later will not boot from it.
Does it still boot via Thunderbolt Firewire adapter?

Maybe Apple did forbid Firewire booting on purpose for security reasons. Unlike USB, Firewire allows DMA access from the device to the host. While being good for performance it is a security problem. And unlike Thunderbolt (somehow being the successor to Firewire in the DMA aspect) the security aspect seemingly has not been an important part in the Firewire specifications.

 

[Ramonsterrr1981]

Aside from a few tiny graphic ui glitches, I have Big Sur working very smoothly on my 2011 MacBook Pro. A big thank you to the people here involved in the development of patchers and enabling graphics acceleration on unsupported Macs.

 

[0134168]

Aside from a few tiny graphic ui glitches, I have Big Sur working very smoothly on my 2011 MacBook Pro. A big thank you to the people here involved in the development of patchers and enabling graphics acceleration on unsupported Macs.

What method did you use?

 

[Ramonsterrr1981]

The open core legacy patcher. Was really easy! https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/

 

[ghost82]

@chris1111 your themes are fantastic, thanks a lot for sharing.

 

[Dilli]

It does still work but Catalina and later will not boot from it.
Does it still boot via Thunderbolt Firewire adapter?

Maybe Apple did forbid Firewire booting on purpose for security reasons. Unlike USB, Firewire allows DMA access from the device to the host. While being good for performance it is a security problem. And unlike Thunderbolt (somehow being the successor to Firewire in the DMA aspect) the security aspect seemingly has not been an important part in the Firewire specifications.

I normally don't require for booting except for backups of Time Machine. The issue is that the Disk keeps ejecting when attached through the thunderbolt 2 adapter. But does not happen often.

I was just few minutes back uploading file to the cloud and bam the disk got ejected. Had to use USB port.. So I need solution as to how this can be stopped.

Some Terminal Command by developers could help.

 

[internetzel]

I normally don't require for booting except for backups of Time Machine. The issue is that the Disk keeps ejecting when attached through the thunderbolt 2 adapter. But does not happen often.

I was just few minutes back uploading file to the cloud and bam the disk got ejected. Had to use USB port.. So I need solution as to how this can be stopped.

Some Terminal Command by developers could help.

View attachment 1787273

All right, but are you able to boot via Thunderbolt Firewire adapter?
And did you try directly using the Firewire 800 port of your iMac?

 

[Dilli]

All right, but are you able to boot via Thunderbolt Firewire adapter?
And did you try directly using the Firewire 800 port of your iMac?

Ok I will have to get a bootable disk that I can try to check on booting through thunder port. As of now I attached the drive directly through firewire 800 and its mounted on Catalina desktop. Lets hope I don't get pop up of disk ejected wrongly.( I spoke early Firewire gets ejected. So it is clear there is no support for Firewire on BigSur & Catalina

 

[internetzel]

Ok I will have to get a bootable disk that I can try to check on booting through thunder port. As of now I attached the drive directly through firewire 800 and its mounted on Catalina desktop. Lets hope I don't get pop up of disk ejected wrongly.

I have seen external disks being ejected spuriously when the cables/connectors or power supply of the external disk weren't in good state.

 

[chris1111]

@chris1111 your themes are fantastic, thanks a lot for sharing.

Thanks you also have the blackosx repository which is beautiful

 

[Dilli]

I have seen external disks being ejected spuriously when the cables/connectors or power supply of the external disk weren't in good state.

You may be right but I don't have that issue with my drives or cables . OR my USB connection too would have got terminated which apparently it did not.. I just uploaded 4GB to the cloud from same drive without issue. So I feel that the apple thunderbolt adapter is not allowing firewire connections to stay for long.

 

[AlexSakha67]

Hello, the impossible is possible😊MacBook7,1(320m)👌MacPro3,1(R9 280)👍
For the experiment, I installed 11.5 (20G5033c) OCLP 0.1.6 with an ATI Radeon HD 5770 Mac Edition video card.
But, there is no progress in accelerating ATI Radeon HD 5770 Mac Edition🙁" AttributeError: 'PatchSysVolume' object has no attribute 'success_status' "
Thank you dosdude1,khronokernel,ASentientBot and other developers

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[internetzel]

You may be right but I don't have that issue with my drives or cables . OR my USB connection too have got terminated. I just uploaded 4GB to the cloud from same drive without issue. So I feel that the apple thunderbolt adapter is not allowing firewire connections to stay for long.

Just tried to inject the Firewire kernel extension from Mojave into Catalina by means of OpenCore - and it's working! I can boot into Catalina via Firewire again!

I also did a source code compare and the Mojave and Catalina extensions are practically identical, just some compilation issues got fixed. The only real difference is that the Mojave versions are flagged to be loaded at early boot time.
I bet I had already tried injecting those kernel extensions some months ago, but it didn't work then.
The Big Sur versions have received some small DMA handling related updates, but the Mojave versions might still work; so I'll try to boot into Big Sur 11.4 now, using the Mojave kernel extensions. In case they don't work I think I can simply have OpenCore inject the Big Sur versions at early boot stage.

Edit: Mojave Firewire kernel extensions are working for booting to Big Sur 11.4 as well! That means fast external SSD access is available again for non-Thunderbolt Macs!

 

[mdgm]

Hello, the impossible is possible😊MacBook7,1(320m)👌MacPro3,1(R9 280)👍
For the experiment, I installed 11.5 (20G5033c) OCLP 0.1.6 with an ATI Radeon HD 5770 Mac Edition video card.
But, there is no progress in accelerating ATI Radeon HD 5770 Mac Edition🙁" AttributeError: 'PatchSysVolume' object has no attribute 'success_status' "
Thank you dosdude1,khronokernel,ASentientBot and other developers

I read that there is pre-alpha fix in development: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread....2242172/page-424?post=29959879#post-29959879

It's pre-alpha so don't expect it any time soon. Once the drivers are available, I'm sure it'll be mentioned in an update in this thread. I'm in no rush and happy to wait at least until they are beta quality, if not longer.

 

[Dilli]

Just tried to inject the Firewire kernel extension from Mojave into Catalina by means of OpenCore - and it's working! I can boot into Catalina via Firewire again!

I also did a source code compare and the Mojave and Catalina extensions are practically identical, just some compilation issues got fixed. The only real difference is that the Mojave versions are flagged to be loaded at early boot time.
I bet I had already tried injecting those kernel extensions some months ago, but it didn't work then.
The Big Sur versions have received some small DMA handling related updates, but the Mojave versions might still work; so I'll try to boot into Big Sur 11.4 now, using the Mojave kernel extensions. In case they don't work I think I can simply have OpenCore inject the Big Sur versions at early boot stage.

Edit: Mojave Firewire kernel extensions are working for booting to Big Sur 11.4 as well! That means fast external SSD access is available again for non-Thunderbolt Macs!

So can the Mojave kernels work on BigSur & Catalina. If you get success can you provide some kext or terminal settings to get this corrected. I am not a developer nor good with codes etc so whatever way you get success please share. Tks.

 

[internetzel]

So can the Mojave kernels work on BigSur & Catalina. If you get success can you provide some kext or terminal settings to get this corrected. I am not a developer nor good with codes etc so whatever way you get success please share. Tks.

I'll try to have that added as an option to OpenCore Legacy Patcher, so anyone needing it can enable it - having been warned about the security risk this implies.

 

[Dilli]

I'll try to have that added as an option to OpenCore Legacy Patcher, so anyone needing it can enable it - having been warned about the security risk this implies.

That would be wonderful. Tks.

 

[macinfo]

Does the latest Apple Developer app 9.2.1 run for others on oclp patched Big Sur?
Here, Big Sur 11.5beta1/oclp 0.1.5/volume-patch applied, the app crashes before fully starting up.

Next try would be a fresh install of Big Sur 11.4 final, then patch with oclp 0.1.6.

Does this app starting with v9.1 possibly need metal graphics and or a SSE4.2 capable CPU?

I do have Apple Developer app 9.0.1 running fine on same MacBookPro4,1 within patched Catalina. IIRC that is also one of those catalyst ported apps.

 

[Potsdamer]

Thank you dosdude1,khronokernel,ASentientBot and other developers for hard working.
I upgraded successful my MacBookPro 8,1 with OpenCore Legacy Patcher, but I can't use Camera & Microphone for online class. I opened System References, and nothing there to active. Please, help me, I have Final presentation on Monday! Thank you so much!

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Thank you dosdude1,khronokernel,ASentientBot and other developers for hard working.
I upgraded successful my MacBookPro 8,1 with OpenCore Legacy Patcher, but I can't use Camera & Microphone for online class. I opened System References, and nothing there to active. Please, help me, I have Final presentation on Monday! Thank you so much!

Check the online docs of OCLP, it is a known issue. Solution included there if I am not mistaken.

Unable to grant special permissions to apps (ie. Camera Access to Zoom)

 

[K two]

Thank you dosdude1,khronokernel,ASentientBot and other developers for hard working.
I upgraded successful my MacBookPro 8,1 with OpenCore Legacy Patcher, but I can't use Camera & Microphone for online class. I opened System References, and nothing there to active. Please, help me, I have Final presentation on Monday! Thank you so much!

Camera and Mic access in the Security&Privacy CP under Privacy tab. If not functional, see above in 10,677. 🧐

 

[chris1111]

I just create NightBlue theme specially for real macs
Enjoy