macOS High Sierra (10.13) Unsupported Macs Thread

[Brale]

That doesn't look like the High Sierra Disk Utility... Are you sure you're using the latest version of the High Sierra installer? If not, you can just use to "Download macOS High Sierra" option in the Tools menu of the tool to download the latest version. Also, in the boot menu, the volume should be named "<High Sierra APFS Volume Name>_BOOT". It may also just show up as "EFI Boot".

I booted to working Sierra partition. Thats how it looks. Yeah, I downloaded the latest version 2 hrs ago. Damn, there was EFI Boot partition but Its gone now lol. I reformatted the partition to start over.

He's probably booted into working Sierra or something, since he can't boot into HS.

@Brale There's a "High Sierra_BOOT" visible on your screenshot - that's the HFS+ helper partition that handles booting into an APFS volume, so it looks like the patcher did what it should.

Try going into Startup Disk in System Preferences and see if you can see "High Sierra_BOOT" there. If you can, select it as the startup disk and reboot (or select it and click Restart).

I'm not sure but I guess it was working fine. The problem was that I was looking for High Sierra partition to boot from. I should have tried to boot from EFI partition.

 

[roziek]

The problem was that I was looking for High Sierra partition to boot from. I should have tried to boot from EFI partition.

Yeah, basically. Let us know when you do the dance again .

 

[Brale]

Yeah, basically. Let us know when you do the dance again .

I will, it should be finished in 20 min

 

[nekton1]

Thanks roziek. That was the problem, I HAD selected the patch for Recovery Disk too as well as the APFS patch. Rebooting from the USB footer/installer and reapplying the patch only for APFS fixed it.
Now for more testing.

@nekton1 @dosdude1 I can confirm that it works (with caveats, more below) on a Mac Pro 3,1. I'm using the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT just to be safe, because I wanted to make sure that if any problems occur, they're not related to graphics.

@nekton1 That "Spare" you talked about is not the helper boot partition that @dosdude1's patcher tool creates. Looking at your diskutil list screenshot I can see that the patch did not work for you. When it does, it resizes the APFS container and creates the helper boot partition there, with a _BOOT suffix. In other words, if it would have worked, you would see something like this:

/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:           GUID_partition_scheme                   *50.0 GB    disk1
   1:                         EFI EFI                    209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                      Apple_APFS Container disk2    49.8 GB    disk1s2
   3:                       Apple_HFS Spare_BOOT         209.7 MB   disk1s3

Instead of your:

/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:           GUID_partition_scheme                   *50.0 GB    disk1
   1:                         EFI EFI                    209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                      Apple_APFS Container disk2    49.8 GB    disk1s2

You're missing the "Spare_BOOT" of type Apple_HFS.

This happened to me too at first, but I think the culprit is the Recovery Volume patch. If you select both the Recovery Volume and the APFS patch - it will simply not work. Fortunately you can fix that without repeating the OS installation process. Simply reboot into the installer created with @dosdude1's patcher tool, choose the Post Install Tool, select your Mac, and check the APFS Patch, but make sure that Recovery Volume patch is not selected. It should work.

You'll know it worked because you'll also see a message below saying it's applying the APFS patch and it might take a minute. I assume you did not see that message before, right?

@dosdude1 It would be nice if the Post Install was smart enough to not let you choose the APFS Patch if you have the Recovery Volume patch checked and vice versa (at least until you figure out how to make them both work).

Also, you said "[...] Hides the helper partition, so it is not apparently visible when running macOS". That's not the case for me. The helper partition is clearly visible, both in Disk Utility and in Finder's sidebar, when booted into High Sierra.

[doublepost=1503607041][/doublepost]dosdude1,

See my reply to roziek. The problem was caused by having both the Recovery Disk and APFS patches ticked. Reapplying the post install with only APFS ticked fixed the problem.

@nekton1, can you run the post-install patch using Terminal? That will give you output, which should give me an idea of what's happening. When booted in your High Sierra installer, run "/Applications/Utilities/macOS\ Post\ Install.app/Contents/MacOS/macOS\ Post\ Install" in Terminal, and then apply the APFS patch. Get resulting Terminal output.

 

[dosdude1]

Thanks roziek. That was the problem, I HAD selected the patch for Recovery Disk too as well as the APFS patch. Rebooting from the USB footer/installer and reapplying the patch only for APFS fixed it.
Now for more testing.


[doublepost=1503607041][/doublepost]dosdude1,

See my reply to roziek. The problem was caused by having both the Recovery Disk and APFS patches ticked. Reapplying the post install with only APFS ticked fixed the problem.

Ah, got it. Well, I changed it so it won't allow the Recovery Partition Patch to be applied if patching an APFS volume in version 2.1.1 of the tool, so this should no longer be an issue.

 

[nekton1]

Thanks dosdude1—great support. Everything else like icloud seems to be working fine. I'll be interested to see how this setup handles the next beta update!

 

[gotcoding24]

Runs perfectly on my old iMac 24" 7,1 2007 in the office.

Hi, I just wanted to say that I too have a iMac 24" (Mid-2007), but the crazy thing is that we have the EXACT (I mean EXACTLY) same setup. I too have the processor issue of showing 400 MHZ in About this Mac. Glad to see I'm not the only one with this model.

 

[Luigi222]

Thanks dosdude1—great support. Everything else like icloud seems to be working fine. I'll be interested to see how this setup handles the next beta update!

You are able to log in into iCloud, use iMessage and Facetime on APFS ???

 

[jbarley]

Just finished installing latest High Sierra Beta on my MacPro3,1 using the latest patcher and all seems to have gone well.
As always, thanks to those responsible for helping us keep these old work horses alive and productive.
Installed using APFS...

 

[nekton1]

I can sign into iCloud and services like Mail, Notes, Safari tabs are working BUT I get an error message when trying to sign in to Messages and FaceTime accounts.
Anyone else other than Luigi and me seeing this problem?

You are able to log in into iCloud, use iMessage and Facetime on APFS ???

 

[roziek]

Ah, got it. Well, I changed it so it won't allow the Recovery Partition Patch to be applied if patching an APFS volume in version 2.1.1 of the tool, so this should no longer be an issue.

Ha, I made a bet with myself that that’s the change in the tool the moment I saw it go up from 2.1.0 to 2.1.1 on your site . Greats thanks.

@nekton1 Glad this solved it .

I myself am reluctant to log into my iCloud account on the beta (the account I use in day-to-day on my devices), but if all of you guys are not - it would be good to hear if it’s working for you. Also, if it failed on you, please state whether it was during the onboarding process after the installation (connecting to WiFi, setting up account, etc) or later, when you’re fully booted into the system and you try to log in via System Preferences > iCloud. And, of course, if you’re running HS on APFS or HFS+.

 

[Brale]

@dosdude1 @roziek

Yes guys, thats was it. This time I booted from EFI partition and it booted straight to High Sierra. But it looks like I have 1 extra _BOOT partition. Is that a leftover from the previous installation? I did reformat the partition before HS installation but its still there.
And, it took at least 10 min. to boot to HS.

Thank you @dosdude1 for all your hard work.

[doublepost=1503612540][/doublepost]

Ha, I made a bet with myself that that’s the change in the tool the moment I saw it go up from 2.1.0 to 2.1.1 on your site . Greats thanks.

@nekton1 Glad this solved it .

I myself am reluctant to log into my iCloud account on the beta (the account I use in day-to-day on my devices), but if all of you guys are not - it would be good to hear if it’s working for you. Also, if it failed on you, please state whether it was during the onboarding process after the installation (connecting to WiFi, setting up account, etc) or later, when you’re fully booted into the system and you try to log in via System Preferences > iCloud. And, of course, if you’re running HS on APFS or HFS+.

iCloud is working fine on my MacBook Air, HS supported. I will try on this unsupported MacBook. I will let you know if its working. Give me 15 min

 

[jbarley]

First question, there'll probably be more.
Seeing as how you select the "High-Sierra_Boot" as the drive to boot from and it magically boots the High Sierra drive, how does one get a Carbon copy Clone backup to boot when needed?

 

[Brale]

First question, there'll probably be more.
Seeing as how you select the "High-Sierra_Boot" as the drive to boot from and it magically boots the High Sierra drive, how does one get a Carbon copy Clone backup to boot when needed?

You should be fine as long as you have _BOOT partition to boot from.

 

[jhowarth]

Is the current implementation of the _BOOT partition approach capable of coping with the user renaming the APFS volume that High Sierra was installed on or is the volume name hardcoded at install time?

 

[roziek]

@Brale You reformatted it, but that doesn’t cut it when it comes to APFS. It’s more complicated than HFS+ regarding what it does under the hood, the stuff you don’t see.

If you truly want to start from scratch, without any leftovers from previous tries, then you have to turn into Terminal and delete the whole APFS container.

Boot into High Sierra USB installer, open Terminal, and this command is your friend:

diskutil apfs deleteContainer /dev/diskX

Where X is the number identifier for your HS disk.

To get that number, run “diskutil list” first and look for the disk with “(synthesized)”. Then you can format it again with Disk Utility and install HS.
[doublepost=1503614143][/doublepost]

Is the current implementation of the _BOOT partition approach capable of coping with the user renaming the APFS volume that High Sierra was installed on or is the volume name hardcoded at install time?

Haven’t tried that. What I did try is renaming the helper boot partition (the one with _BOOT suffix). That you can do safely. Theoretically, that should not cause any problems, but I’ll let you know in a minute.

[doublepost=1503614274][/doublepost]

First question, there'll probably be more.
Seeing as how you select the "High-Sierra_Boot" as the drive to boot from and it magically boots the High Sierra drive, how does one get a Carbon copy Clone backup to boot when needed?

Is your CCC backup HFS+ or APFS?

 

[jbarley]

You should be fine as long as you have _BOOT partition to boot from.

Mmm, I wonder...
I notice that the CCC which does boot is not in the APFS format but instead in normal Apple extended.
Now I have to wonder if I needed to restore this clone would it somehow restore properly as an APFS volume.
Same goes for Apples Time Machine backups, will they correctly handle the APFS format.
Alot of questions I'm going to need answers to, but I guess it's to be expected of a totally new system.

 

[roziek]

Mmm, I wonder...
I notice that the CCC which does boot is not in the APFS format but instead in normal Apple extended.
Now I have to wonder if I needed to restore this clone would it somehow restore properly as an APFS volume.
Same goes for Apples Time Machine backups, will they correctly handle the APFS format.
Alot of questions I'm going to need answers to, but I guess it's to be expected of a totally new system.

Time Machine can’t yet take advantage of APFS’s perks.

[doublepost=1503614806][/doublepost]

Is the current implementation of the _BOOT partition approach capable of coping with the user renaming the APFS volume that High Sierra was installed on or is the volume name hardcoded at install time?

Like I suspected - you can change the name safely. I did it via Terminal while booted into HS USB installer:

diskutil rename /dev/diskXsY “new name”

It probably uses Partition UUID rather then name, because it’s safer. Name can change, but the Partition UUID stays the same until you partition/reformat the disk again.

 

[Brale]

@Brale You reformatted it, but that doesn’t cut it when it comes to APFS. It’s more complicated than HFS+ regarding what it does under the hood, the stuff you don’t see.

If you truly want to start from scratch, without any leftovers from previous tries, then you have to turn into Terminal and delete the whole APFS container.

Boot into High Sierra USB installer, open Terminal, and this command is your friend:

diskutil apfs deleteContainer /dev/diskX

Where X is the number identifier for your HS disk.

To get that number, run “diskutil list” first and look for the disk that has your helper boot partition (the one with _BOOT) - you’ll recognize it by “(internal, physical)”. The “(synthesized)” is not the one you’re looking for.

Then you can format it again with Disk Utility and install HS.
[doublepost=1503614143][/doublepost]

Haven’t tried that. What I did try is renaming the helper boot partition (the one with _BOOT suffix). That you can do safely. Theoretically, that should not cause any problems, but I’ll let you know in a minute.

[doublepost=1503614274][/doublepost]

Is your CCC backup HFS+ or APFS?
[doublepost=1503614806][/doublepost]

Like I suspected - you can change the name safely. I did it via Terminal while booted into HS USB installer:

diskutil rename /dev/diskXsY

It probably uses Partition UUID rather then name, because it’s safer. Name can change, but the Partition UUID stays the same until you partition/reformat the disk again.

Tnx bud for all the info.
About iCloud. So far so good. All contacts, notes, reminders are there. No issues with iTunes, iBooks, AppStore. The problem is I can't login to iMessage and FaceTime. That can be a network issue. I will try to reboot and try it again.

 

[dosdude1]

Time Machine disks stay HFS+ for now. Time Machine can’t yet take advantage of APFS’s perks.

[doublepost=1503614806][/doublepost]

Like I suspected - you can change the name safely. I did it via Terminal while booted into HS USB installer:

diskutil rename /dev/diskXsY “new name”

It probably uses Partition UUID rather then name, because it’s safer. Name can change, but the Partition UUID stays the same until you partition/reformat the disk again.

Renaming the helper partition will cause an issue if you re-apply the APFS patch to the same volume again... Not a detrimental problem, but it will just create an unnecessary new helper partition. Same thing will occur if renaming the main APFS partition, and re-running the APFS patch. I'll probably see if I can change it to coordinate volumes by UUID instead of name, which should resolve that issue.

 

[roziek]

Renaming the helper partition will cause an issue if you re-apply the APFS patch to the same volume again... Not a detrimental problem, but it will just create an unnecessary new helper partition.

Good to know, didn’t think to test that since all was working fine . Let us know how it went.

@Brale It can, keep trying or wait before your next try. This happens sometimes even on supported machines.

Anyone in the know - where are we with getting NightShift to work on High Sierra? Via NightShift Enabler or any other method?

 

[nekton1]

Same here. iMessage and FaceTime resist all log-in attempts. Could it be a Keychain thing?

[QUOTE="Brale, post: 24929580, member: 1039699"]Tnx bud for all the info.
The problem is I can't login to iMessage and FaceTime. That can be a network issue. I will try to reboot and try it again.[/QUOTE]

 

[Brale]

Good to know, didn’t think to test that since all was working fine . Let us know how it went.

@Brale It can, keep trying or wait before your next try. This happens sometimes even on supported machines.

Anyone in the know - where are we with getting NightShift to work on High Sierra? Via NightShift Enabler or any other method?

I using Backlight app. Its working just fine.

Sorry, this app is for brightness, lol.

 

[Luigi222]

I can sign into iCloud and services like Mail, Notes, Safari tabs are working BUT I get an error message when trying to sign in to Messages and FaceTime accounts.
Anyone else other than Luigi and me seeing this problem?

yep thats exactly what happens to me! @Brale is having this issue too... many more as soon as they try it will report the same thing I believe... clearly something weird is going on... iMessage and FaceTime don't log in just gets an error and says to try again later, I even changed my password and been trying for the last several hours... But a bug from Apple this big on beta 7 ??? hum 2nd or 3rd beta maybe, but seventh? Does iMessage or FaceTime need some weird access to the firmware for the serial number of the Mac or something? And since it's boots from the " helper partition " because of APFS it can't find it? Could that be the issue?

HERE IS A QUOTE FROM OS X HACKERS: bugs installing Yosemite on unsupported Macs....
"" iMessage/FaceTime note: Most users cannot initially login to iMessage or FaceTime using their Apple ID from their Macs after installing Yosemite as a security precaution. When trying to login, they receive an iMessage Registration validation code. The solution is to contact Apple support, provide the Mac's serial number, explain that Yosemite was installed using our guide and that iMessage isn't working and provide the validation code. Apple then unblocks the Mac, allowing iMessage and FaceTime login immediately and in the future OS updates. They really don't care. """"



Could that be the issue?

 

[roziek]

@Brale My mistake earlier. What you want is the disk identifier with the “(synthesized)”. Use that one with:

diskutil apfs deleteContainer /dev/diskX