macOS 11 Big Sur on Unsupported Macs Thread

[Stevejediknight]

Greetings everyone. I have a 2012 iMac and have been reading that it has been successfully loaded with BS minus the WiFi. Would replacing the WiFi card currently in the machine to a newer one help the problem? If so which would you recommend? I have opened my machine and changed the HD to an ssd so I’m ok with opening it up again. Amazing work that you’re all doing for us with older machines that want a little more life out of them. Thank you.

 

[indiawallah]

Been tinkering with my MacBook Pro 5,4 ( Mid 2009 ) since installing Big Sur after getting wifi to work using the jackluke prelinkedkernel fix.

I have since made a discovery after using the alternative method of disabling SIP without the Big Sur recovery partition available to me. That is the way that ASentientBot found out and was agreed with by dosdude1 in post #726 . After reloading Big Sur after applying that fix on my Catalina partition I entered ' csrutil status ' in terminal and found that SIP was indeed disabled.

I had downloaded and was trying the chris1111 Kext Droplet dmg with not much success (prior to disabling SIP) using the method of jackluke #933 for adding to the kernelcollections or whatever to PreBoot.

The interesting thing that I found when trying to get sound to work was that after I had SIP disabled on Big Sur and was using the Kext Droplet again was that after rebooting after ' installing ' the AppleHDHA.kext from High Sierra that sound was working and was able to increase , decrease and mute without having to do anything further to the kernel collection on PreBoot. To double check the ' sound fix' was still working I rebooted a few times and it was indeed still working each time.

I guess it could feasibly work with other kexts to further improve functionality on Big Sur though I wouldn't know what those kexts would be.

Noted another benefit of having SIP disabled on Big Sur.....able to boot into it without Cmd+S ( Single User Mode ) or needing to boot it into through OpenCoreAPFSloader3.

 

[eric89074]

Greetings everyone. I have a 2012 iMac and have been reading that it has been successfully loaded with BS minus the WiFi. Would replacing the WiFi card currently in the machine to a newer one help the problem? If so which would you recommend? I have opened my machine and changed the HD to an ssd so I’m ok with opening it up again. Amazing work that you’re all doing for us with older machines that want a little more life out of them. Thank you.

Just wait and WiFi will probably be fixed. If not get a USB wireless adapter. I wouldn’t tear apart an iMac for the wireless card.

 

[webg3]

Does anyone own the original com.apple.Boot.plist? I ended up modifying it here and I don't have it anymore, copy from:

Volume\*\Library\Preferences\SystemConfiguration

Thanks

 

[telepati]

Guys, how should I know my LibraryDisableValidation actually disabled?

 

[jackluke]

Does anyone own the original com.apple.Boot.plist? I ended up modifying it here and I don't have it anymore, copy from:

Volume\*\Library\Preferences\SystemConfiguration

Thanks

The stock BigSur com.apple.Boot.plist is empty, probably because the BigSur kernel know how where pick the BootKernelExtensions.kc because there are multiple copies of it, or more simply (from Preboot) is this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Kernel Cache</key>
    <string>boot\System\Library\KernelCollections\BootKernelExtensions.kc</string>
    <key>Kernel Flags</key>
    <string></string>
</dict>
</plist>

[automerge]1593791514[/automerge]

Been tinkering with my MacBook Pro 5,4 ( Mid 2009 ) since installing Big Sur after getting wifi to work using the jackluke prelinkedkernel fix.

I have since made a discovery after using the alternative method of disabling SIP without the Big Sur recovery partition available to me. That is the way that ASentientBot found out and was agreed with by dosdude1 in post #726 . After reloading Big Sur after applying that fix on my Catalina partition I entered ' csrutil status ' in terminal and found that SIP was indeed disabled.

I had downloaded and was trying the chris1111 Kext Droplet dmg with not much success (prior to disabling SIP) using the method of jackluke #933 for adding to the kernelcollections or whatever to PreBoot.

The interesting thing that I found when trying to get sound to work was that after I had SIP disabled on Big Sur and was using the Kext Droplet again was that after rebooting after ' installing ' the AppleHDHA.kext from High Sierra that sound was working and was able to increase , decrease and mute without having to do anything further to the kernel collection on PreBoot. To double check the ' sound fix' was still working I rebooted a few times and it was indeed still working each time.

I guess it could feasibly work with other kexts to further improve functionality on Big Sur.

Will add pics once I load back into Big Sur.

To use properly my patched prelinkedkernel , SIP needs to be properly disabled with "csrutil disable" (non-APFS Mac can surely do this through the El Capitan firmware) from a Recovery environment (I do this with USBopencore), while "csrutil authenticated-root disable" is not mandatory (even if useful), but the classic SIP must be disabled (and I guess AMFI too) otherwise the patched kext embedded in the prelinkedkernel cannot override the BigSur Extensions as AppleHDA and IO80211Family .

 

[TimothyR734]

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I took this screenshot in Catalina I wonder if I could replace the boot.efi, prelinked Kernel in the MSUPreservedObjects since that has the Kernel extensions. boot.efi. i386, Kernel Collections, Base System etc.

 

[Alex-Microsmeta]

@jackluke @TimothyR734 FIX 3 is PERFECT! @dosdude1 @ASentientBot @parrotgeek1

-Fixed USB keyboard and USB wired mouse (that works better than Magic Mouse (no right mouse functions)
-Fixed Wifi!!!!! I'm writing from Big Sur Safari that is quite fast also without Graphic Acceleration.

@jackluke I have tried to clone Big Sur APFS container to a BS BKP APFS container using BS recovery. It starts, but if fails at the end.

After Patch 3 BS boots fine also without USBOpenCore. The system Is fully usable without acceleration, so I have started to check applications compatibility. Chrome and WhatsApp ok, next will be CCC

 

[19SK91]

Greetings everyone. I have a 2012 iMac and have been reading that it has been successfully loaded with BS minus the WiFi. Would replacing the WiFi card currently in the machine to a newer one help the problem? If so which would you recommend? I have opened my machine and changed the HD to an ssd so I’m ok with opening it up again. Amazing work that you’re all doing for us with older machines that want a little more life out of them. Thank you.

I have the same iMac and got WiFi working following this tutorial: macOS Big Sur Installation + WiFi on unsupported macs

 

[MacHacJac]

Do you think that hackintoshing a 2011 MBP would work?

 

[ASentientBot]

The system Is fully usable without acceleration

 

[kral84]

Yes, kmutil works when booted from the USB installer. (So does kcditto, although it might work a bit differently than you would expect if you haven't carefully read the kcditto man page.)

On a related note, I just released version 0.0.6 of my patcher, which now includes a shell script that can install the WiFi kexts if you're booted from the USB installer. (I do want to see if I can meke the kext installer script more robust for the next release, maybe this weekend or early next week, but I think it's still reasonably robust as it is.)

Edit: I forgot to mention, my patcher doesn't do anything involving legacy USB (yet), so for machines that need legacy USB, it's still too immature.

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

Thank you i have install with your script big sur on my 2011 with k2100 gpu... But one question inwill install totalfinder but this need mount -uw ...i has 66 error can you help me or give me an trick ?

 

[MacHacJac]

I'm trying to use barrykn's micro patcher, but when I try to run the terminal command for micropatcher.sh, it tells me that "payloads" folder wasn't found, even though I have it downloaded! Please help!

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

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Let me know if this prevents me from installing the beta later due to BIErrorDomain3. After trying so many methods, I'm really itching to get this on my 2011 MBP...

 

[jhowarth]

The stock BigSur com.apple.Boot.plist is empty, probably because the BigSur kernel know how where pick the BootKernelExtensions.kc because there are multiple copies of it, or more simply (from Preboot) is this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Kernel Cache</key>
    <string>boot\System\Library\KernelCollections\BootKernelExtensions.kc</string>
    <key>Kernel Flags</key>
    <string></string>
</dict>
</plist>

[automerge]1593791514[/automerge]


To use properly my patched prelinkedkernel , SIP needs to be properly disabled with "csrutil disable" (non-APFS Mac can surely do this through the El Capitan firmware) from a Recovery environment (I do this with USBopencore), while "csrutil authenticated-root disable" is not mandatory (even if useful), but the classic SIP must be disabled (and I guess AMFI too) otherwise the patched kext embedded in the prelinkedkernel cannot override the BigSur Extensions as AppleHDA and IO80211Family .

Started from a fresh install of Big Sur Beta 1 onto an APFS formatted usb external drive and followed the commands from "BigSur prelinkedkernel fix2.command" to move aside PlatformSupport.plist, install the custom com.apple.Boot.plist and replace the prelinkedkernel with the copy from

jacklukem/BigSurfixes

Big Sur fixes for unsupported Mac. Contribute to jacklukem/BigSurfixes development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

as well as replacing the boot.efi in Preboot's System/Library/CoreServices/ with a renamed copy from...

boot 0x867.efi

I am still finding that the wifi and sound is broken on a MacPro 3,1. Although 'csrutil status' reports the SIP is disabled, it also reports the authenticated-root is still enabled from 'csrutil authenticated-root status' which I suspect is blocking the prelinked copies of AppleHDA.kext from loading. Is there some other place that boot.efi needs to be installed than in Preboot?

I did confirm that the System Report shows IO80211Family.kext to be 1200.12.2 but there are no wifi devices detected in that section. So I suspect that MacPro 3,1's may need to downgrade IO80211Family.kext to 1200.12.2 from Catalina.

 

[Alex-Microsmeta]

@jackluke @ASentientBot @parrotgeek1 Finally Carbon Copy Cloner beta for Big Sur (30 days free trial) correctly clones your masterpiece ?

Sent from my Apple Unsupported Macmini 2010 Big Sur.

 

[jhowarth]

@jackluke @ASentientBot @parrotgeek1 Finally Carbon Copy Cloner beta for Big Sur (30 days free trial) correctly clones your masterpiece ?

Sent from my Apple Unsupported Macmini 2010 Big Sur.

The current Carbon Copy Cloner beta only supports data backups from Big Sur. You can't clone a functional boot drive from it yet.

 

[Bravo2zero]

After have a go again to install Big Sur on a 2012 mac mini by following guides. I have found some guides Don't work which was my issue. After reading the page and spending must have been hours on someones walkthrough to find it was flawed.

Here are the steps i took, This was a guide from this page BUT a couple of steps were in the wrong order giving the GREYED out HDD/SSD.

1. Download pkg from http://swcdn.apple.com/content/down...kxzj3zjshu1srsh4n74a41n4/InstallAssistant.pkg
2. Download https://forums.macrumors.com/attachments/really-simple-installer-hack-zip.926156/
3. Unzip and copy hax.dylib to home folder
4. Boot into recovery ( CMD + R ) on start up chimes
5. Run csrutil disable in Terminal , Then type reboot in terminal

RED is what you copy exactly into terminal

6. Open terminal once restarted and copy this in Terminal sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.security.libraryvalidation.plist DisableLibraryValidation -bool true press return , your password will require imputting

7. Run this in Terminal launchctl setenv DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES $PWD/Hax.dylib press return

8. Run this in Terminal sudo nvram boot-args="-no_compat_check" press return

9. Open the InstallAssistant.pkg, install, open the Installer.app in Launchpad / Applications folder
10. Wait for install to finish.

This worked for me 100%, following the unetited guide was locking my mac mini up, running ram 100% etc... some real weired stuff. After i did this there was no issues and installed just like apple had sent it to me.

 

[Fangio]

After have a go again to install Big Sur on a 2012 mac mini by following guides. I have found some guides Don't work which was my issue. After reading the page and spending must have been hours on someones walkthrough to find it was flawed.

Here are the steps i took, This was a guide from this page BUT a couple of steps were in the wrong order giving the GREYED out HDD/SSD.

1. Download pkg from http://swcdn.apple.com/content/down...kxzj3zjshu1srsh4n74a41n4/InstallAssistant.pkg
2. Download https://forums.macrumors.com/attachments/really-simple-installer-hack-zip.926156/
3. Unzip and copy hax.dylib to home folder
4. Boot into recovery ( CMD + R ) on start up chimes
5. Run csrutil disable in Terminal , Then type reboot in terminal

RED is what you copy exactly into terminal

6. Open terminal once restarted and copy this in Terminal sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.security.libraryvalidation.plist DisableLibraryValidation -bool true press return , your password will require imputting

7. Run this in Terminal launchctl setenv DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES $PWD/Hax.dylib press return

8. Run this in Terminal sudo nvram boot-args="-no_compat_check" press return

9. Open the InstallAssistant.pkg, install, open the Installer.app in Launchpad / Applications folder
10. Wait for install to finish.

This worked for me 100%, following the unetited guide was locking my mac mini up, running ram 100% etc... some real weired stuff. After i did this there was no issues and installed just like apple had sent it to me.

That's the working guide in #1122, based on #308 by @GameRoof which was only missing the -no_compat check.

Glad that it worked for you.

 

[jackluke]

Started from a fresh install of Big Sur Beta 1 onto an APFS formatted usb external drive and followed the commands from "BigSur prelinkedkernel fix2.command" to move aside PlatformSupport.plist, install the custom com.apple.Boot.plist and replace the prelinkedkernel with the copy from

jacklukem/BigSurfixes

Big Sur fixes for unsupported Mac. Contribute to jacklukem/BigSurfixes development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

as well as replacing the boot.efi in Preboot's System/Library/CoreServices/ with a renamed copy from...

boot 0x867.efi

I am still finding that the wifi and sound is broken on a MacPro 3,1. Although 'csrutil status' reports the SIP is disabled, it also reports the authenticated-root is still enabled from 'csrutil authenticated-root status' which I suspect is blocking the prelinked copies of AppleHDA.kext from loading. Is there some other place that boot.efi needs to be installed than in Preboot?

I did confirm that the System Report shows IO80211Family.kext to be 1200.12.2 but there are no wifi devices detected in that section. So I suspect that MacPro 3,1's may need to downgrade IO80211Family.kext to 1200.12.2 from Catalina.

For AirPortBrcmNIC driver you don't need any downgrade IO80211Family.kext just the stock BigSur one , for AppleHDA maybe the issue is due to "csrutil authenticated-root", the patched boot.efi I guess should be replaced on the BigSur System volume that in your case is a sealed snapshot.

Try this other prelinkedkernel fix that includes a stock BigSur Wifi driver (also stock AppleHDA): prelinkedkernel fix legacy usb stock wifi

If after replaced you don't have responsive usb devices, then try to boot BigSur with CMD+S and type "exit" to continue booting.

 

[fabiojuniorr]

After have a go again to install Big Sur on a 2012 mac mini by following guides. I have found some guides Don't work which was my issue. After reading the page and spending must have been hours on someones walkthrough to find it was flawed.

Here are the steps i took, This was a guide from this page BUT a couple of steps were in the wrong order giving the GREYED out HDD/SSD.

1. Download pkg from http://swcdn.apple.com/content/down...kxzj3zjshu1srsh4n74a41n4/InstallAssistant.pkg
2. Download https://forums.macrumors.com/attachments/really-simple-installer-hack-zip.926156/
3. Unzip and copy hax.dylib to home folder
4. Boot into recovery ( CMD + R ) on start up chimes
5. Run csrutil disable in Terminal , Then type reboot in terminal

RED is what you copy exactly into terminal

6. Open terminal once restarted and copy this in Terminal sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.security.libraryvalidation.plist DisableLibraryValidation -bool true press return , your password will require imputting

7. Run this in Terminal launchctl setenv DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES $PWD/Hax.dylib press return

8. Run this in Terminal sudo nvram boot-args="-no_compat_check" press return

9. Open the InstallAssistant.pkg, install, open the Installer.app in Launchpad / Applications folder
10. Wait for install to finish.

This worked for me 100%, following the unetited guide was locking my mac mini up, running ram 100% etc... some real weired stuff. After i did this there was no issues and installed just like apple had sent it to me.

This may sound stupid but, as stated in step 3, where exactly is located "home folder"? Thanks in advance

 

[jhowarth]

For AirPortBrcmNIC driver you don't need any downgrade IO80211Family.kext just the stock BigSur one , for AppleHDA maybe the issue is due to "csrutil authenticated-root", the patched boot.efi I guess should be replaced on the BigSur System volume that in your case is a sealed snapshot.

Try this other prelinkedkernel fix that includes a stock BigSur Wifi driver (also stock AppleHDA): prelinkedkernel fix legacy usb stock wifi

If after replaced you don't have responsive usb devices, then try to boot BigSur with CMD+S and type "exit" to continue booting.

Actually I just got WiFi working on my MacPro 3,1 using the Kext-Droplet approach from #1,377 and the IO80211Family.kext from Catalina. The Big Sur one never showed a wifi device but after installing the Catalina copy and rebooting it did show the device and actually listed all the wifi networks found. It came up a little wonky the first time as the network panel didn't show those wifi networks and when I manually entered one, it claimed to not find it. I rebooted with the intention to try adding corecapture.kext as well but was surprised to then see the wifi connected to that network and the network preference panel scan suddenly showing all of the those networks which were shown in system profiler.

I am still having no luck with Sound. Using the droplet approach to install the AppleHDA from Catalina Patcher or from High Sierra failed to produce the missing audio device.

My assumption is that Kext-Droplet is rebuilding the prelinked kernel each time, no? In any case, the hacked boot.efi does seem to allow Kext-Droplet installed kext's to override those in /System/Library/Extensions. The complete set of kexts that I have added with Kext-Droplet are...

(from Catalina Patcher's files)
AppleHDA.kext
LegacyUSBInjector.kext
LegacyUSBVideoSupport.kext
AppleIntelPIIXATA.kext

(from Catalina 10.15.5)
IO80211Family.kext

The AppleIntelPIIXATA.kext one allows the DVD drive to work. I wonder if some other buried kext has been pruned from Big Sur that inhibits the Intel sound chip set from being accessed on the motherboard. Has anyone actually confirmed recovering sound on a MacPro 3,1 under Big Sur?

 

[jhowarth]

Been tinkering with my MacBook Pro 5,4 ( Mid 2009 ) since installing Big Sur after getting wifi to work using the jackluke prelinkedkernel fix.

I have since made a discovery after using the alternative method of disabling SIP without the Big Sur recovery partition available to me. That is the way that ASentientBot found out and was agreed with by dosdude1 in post #726 . After reloading Big Sur after applying that fix on my Catalina partition I entered ' csrutil status ' in terminal and found that SIP was indeed disabled.

I had downloaded and was trying the chris1111 Kext Droplet dmg with not much success (prior to disabling SIP) using the method of jackluke #933 for adding to the kernelcollections or whatever to PreBoot.

The interesting thing that I found when trying to get sound to work was that after I had SIP disabled on Big Sur and was using the Kext Droplet again was that after rebooting after ' installing ' the AppleHDHA.kext from High Sierra that sound was working and was able to increase , decrease and mute without having to do anything further to the kernel collection on PreBoot. To double check the ' sound fix' was still working I rebooted a few times and it was indeed still working each time.

I guess it could feasibly work with other kexts to further improve functionality on Big Sur though I wouldn't know what those kexts would be.

Noted another benefit of having SIP disabled on Big Sur.....able to boot into it without Cmd+S ( Single User Mode ) or needing to boot it into through OpenCoreAPFSloader3.

Can you check in System Profile from About this Mac to see which of the two AppleHDA kexts are loaded on your machine? On my MacPro 3,1, I am finding that the Big Sur copy always wins out. Which is odd, because the IO80211Family.kext 1200.12.2 from Catalina wins out over the 1200.12.2b1 copy from Big Sur.

 

[jhowarth]

For AirPortBrcmNIC driver you don't need any downgrade IO80211Family.kext just the stock BigSur one , for AppleHDA maybe the issue is due to "csrutil authenticated-root", the patched boot.efi I guess should be replaced on the BigSur System volume that in your case is a sealed snapshot.

Try this other prelinkedkernel fix that includes a stock BigSur Wifi driver (also stock AppleHDA): prelinkedkernel fix legacy usb stock wifi

If after replaced you don't have responsive usb devices, then try to boot BigSur with CMD+S and type "exit" to continue booting.

That alternative patched prelinked kernel (which is smaller than the other) doesn't provide functional usb injection. It boots up to the dialog asking to find a bluetooth keyboard because of that issue.

 

[indiawallah]

Can you check in System Profile from About this Mac to see which of the two AppleHDA kexts are loaded on your machine? On my MacPro 3,1, I am finding that the Big Sur copy always wins out. Which is odd, because the IO80211Family.kext 1200.12.2 from Catalina wins out over the 1200.12.2b1 copy from Big Sur.

The kext that I loaded through Kext Droplet wins out for me that I got from High Sierra and the Big Sur one is coming up as not loaded. I wonder if it is possible to mount the Big Sur system volume in Catalina terminal and whilst in there delete the loaded kext to see if that enables the other kext to win out or at least once back in Big Sur reapply the kext through the droplet method. I have no idea just got lucky I guess as I am very much a noob. I have noticed , however , if I have a KP after installing a kext that is not suitable for some reason that if you reinsert the pre-existing prelinkedkernel from jackluke that Big Sur resets itself. I have no idea of further kexts that would improve functionality so any suggestions would be appreciated. Was just happy for now having sound available!

edit I applied some kexts that didn't work and so I ended up losing wifi and bluetooth. In Catalina terminal I mounted Big Sur system and opened /Volumes/Big Sur and then went into Extensions and deleted the naughty kexts. When I then rebooted into Big Sur wifi and bluetooth were working as before. So you could do the same with the AppleHDA kext that Big Sur imposes upon you and then reapply the kext from High Sierra to see if that fixes your sound. I am feeling around in the dark and seeing what works and what doesn't!

edit came across this that may help too #932 the part at the bottom of the post

 

[Fangio]

I just wrote two scripts to automatically apply my prelinkedkernel fix to a BigSur installation:

1) "BigSur prelinkedkernel fix.command" is for those who want to use the prelinkedkernel instead of BootKernelExtensions.kc (even on Metal GPU mac it will work)
2) "BigSur prelinkedkernel fix2.command" is mainly for those who want to fix telemetry kp and legacy usb (maybe also sound and wifi) without using opencore, or for those who use USBOpenCoreAPFSloader3 (needed for non-APFS mac)

Both the script can be launched from Finder with double click (hold ctrl and open to allow unidentified developer) through a Catalina normal booting, HighSierra, Mojave (the macOS that can use APFS containers in few words), even directly from BigSur .

edit:

added "BigSur prelinkedkernel fix3.command" for any non-APFS and legacy USB Mac (works also without opencore)

Got WiFi working on my 2012 MacBook Pro 9,1 by just running 'BigSur prelinkedkernel fix1+2.commands' in a Mojave Terminal. Booted back to the Big Sur partition and bingo. Great job as usual @jackluke, thanks a lot.