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Hi everyone,

first let me thank you all sincerely for all the work you put in getting my old mac pro to run High Sierra. It really means a great deal to me that my old PC isn't depreciated for another few years now.

However, today I had a small problem. I got a notification from Patch Updater that a new patch was available to enable night shift on unsupported machines. After installing this patch few to none of my system preferences work. They simply crash as soon as I open them :-(

Is there anything I can do to revert this? Everything worked perfectly before that patch.

You can find the crash log here: https://pastebin.com/izXFzApc

Thanks,

Tony

edit, all is a bit of an exaggeration. I've not checked one by one and the following crash: Dispaly, keyboard, mouse, trackpad, accessibility
Did you restart your mac after you installed the NightShift patcher?

From your link, Code Signature Invalid, suggests you didn't restart the mac, of course I might be wrong.
 
Not yet, no.

I thought we had a consensus that if you first installed High Sierra with the standard HFS partition, connected to the iCloud/FaceTime/Messages services and then, booted off a USB memory stick prepared by the High Sierra Patch application, converted the HFS volume to APFS in Disk Utility followed by applying the APFS post patch that the resulting installation worked? I can't test that here because I only have HDD and current High Sierra doesn't support conversion of those from HFS to APFS in either the Disk Utility application or the diskutil command line utility.
 
@jhowarth That was just my speculation, not a tested solution (and it should be tested by more than a handful of people).
[doublepost=1503754037][/doublepost]On top of that, even if we can replicate that every single time, it's not a viable solution in my opinion. It's just not reasonable to expect people to jump through all those hoops to get it to work. We need a better, solid solution. Majority of folks are not really tech-savvy and the only reason they can run new versions of macOS on their unsupported machines is because of those other "crazy" folks here who not only figure out how to do it, but they make simple to use tools, so everyone can do it, regardless of their skill level and knowledge.
 
@jhowarth That was just my speculation, not a tested solution (and it should be tested by more than a handful of people).
[doublepost=1503754037][/doublepost]On top of that, even if we can replicate that every single time, it's not a viable solution in my opinion. It's just not reasonable to expect people to jump through all those hoops to get it to work. We need a better, solid solution. Majority of folks are not really tech-savvy and the only reason they can run new versions of macOS on their unsupported machines is because of those other "crazy" folks here who not only figure out how to do it, but they make simple to use tools, so everyone can do it, regardless of their skill level and knowledge.

@roziek

I agree with you, that upgrading over older systems may have preserved authentication for iMessage, face time, and iCloud. That's why I stated explicitly that I never did perform a "clean install," just upgraded over older systems.

One way to call your bet, and prove a point, as you mentioned above, is for brave soul to erase completely their High Sierra installation, in process reformatting APFS back to HFS+, reinstall last system where those services were functional, via dosdude1's patcher, test to make sure services still work after each upgrade, and then, as last step apply patch to convert to APFS. On successful conversion, test if iCloud, iMessage and Face Time remain fully functional.

In regard to "erasing containers." Perhaps it is a matter of semantics, but I did not erase any containers in my rescue bid to boot my laptop. I erased *contents" of an HFS+ (helper) partition, and then merged that empty partition with the AFPS partition (container), in non destructive manner. In essence, I reversed dosdude1's partitioning schema. This gave the patcher a clean slate to resize AFPS container and allow formation of new helper partition. Dosdude1 has an explanation of his schema few posts above.

I tested the iMessage: my text was received and acknowledged by family member; two way communication.
iCloud test: I created a calendar event on my iPhone, while laptop was shutdown. When I booted laptop, the new event was present in the iCal on the laptop. I also received emails through my iCloud account.
Face Time: I can launch Face Time with camera activated and all contacts listed in sidebar. I did not have a chance to engage in face-time conversation, but I will try to do so later.

Luigi222 had an interesting idea, to call Apple support and ask why there are problems accessing iServices (?) Perhaps they could help reset the connection server (?) Alternatively, consider sequential system installation, as noted above, to solve the riddle. At some point sequential reinstallation process, might be less of a headache than not having the services in question (?)
 
We lack two data points though.

1) What does Disk Utility report if you try to run Disk First Aid on a buggy APFS partition.

2) What happens if the conversion to APFS is tweaked to that the resizing of the APFS to create the HFS partition is placed before the actual installation of High Sierra (for a clean install).

I still think we don't know if the resizing of the APFS is going wrong and damaging files. By installing the files after the resizing that should eliminate that particular possibility.
 
We lack two data points though.

1) What does Disk Utility report if you try to run Disk First Aid on a buggy APFS partition.

2) What happens if the conversion to APFS is tweaked to that the resizing of the APFS to create the HFS partition is placed before the actual installation of High Sierra (for a clean install).

I still think we don't know if the resizing of the APFS is going wrong and damaging files. By installing the files after the resizing that should eliminate that particular possibility.

@jhowarth

Please see above post; I removed helper partition, expanded AFPS container, used patcher to recreate the helper partition again and all worked as it should. Did you perform a clean install on your machine, or just upgraded sequentially from last supported system ?
 
Luigi222 had an interesting idea, to call Apple support and ask why there are problems accessing iServices (?) Perhaps they could help reset the connection server (?)

I do not believe this is something worth doing at this point. We’re still in beta. It’s not certain that this is Apple’s intent and will persist through later betas and in the final release. This problem could be resolved in later betas, or the GM build, or when High Sierra is out of beta. Until then, I see no point of calling them about this. Best to wait or find a different solution :).

As for containers: it’s just technicality. APFS handles matters differently than HFS+, under the hood, and different than CoreStorage (which will probably go into maintenance mode now that APFS and its containers are here). The actual “disks” or partitions, or whatever you want to call them, those things you actually see in Finder sidebar or disk utility, are within a special APFS container. Erasing one of them does not do anything to the container. Side note: the disks and the container can be listed as separate things in Disk Utility, but they are part of the same physical disk, so don’t let that fool you.
[doublepost=1503760222][/doublepost]As a test project: I’ll try installing HFS+ HS tonight, and converting it to APFS later + applying the Post Install patches. Will report back my results :).
 
@jhowarth

Please see above post; I removed helper partition, expanded AFPS container, used patcher to recreate the helper partition again and all worked as it should. Did you perform a clean install on your machine, or just upgraded sequentially from last supported system ?

I am boxed in regarding my options as I only have HDD at the moment to test on. Currently neither the Disk Utility application nor the diskutil command line program support conversion of HFS to APFS on HDD. I think my only option here would be to erase a drive to create an empty APFS partition, use Carbon Copy Cloner 5.0 clone my current HFS High Sierra volume onto it and then use the APFS post patch.
 
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Currently neither the Disk Utility application nor the diskutil command line program support conversion of HFS to APFS on HDD.

You may be incorrect there. Try:

Code:
diskutil apfs

And see what options you have. I believe there’s a convert option there:

Code:
diskutil apfs convert

Let me know.
 
@jhowarth Yup, just checked. You can do:

Code:
diskutil apfs convert /dev/diskX

Keep in mind you have to be booted into HS USB installer to do that, because diskutil on Sierra has very limited capabilities.
 
I had tried 'diskutil apfs convert' in an earlier seed but it had failed. This time it worked fine. The approach I ended up using was to erase HDD as a JHFS which I then ran 'diskutil apfs convert' on. This empty APFS volume was used in Carbon Copy Cloner 5.0 to clone my current HFS High Sierra volume onto followed by post patching. As expected, Message works fine after booting.

I do have a question of how this helper configuration will work when I apply the next System Update. Will we have to go through any additional steps to sync the helper volume with the updated APFS volume? If so, perhaps a utility can be added to help automate that process.
 
I had tried 'diskutil apfs convert' in an earlier seed but it had failed. This time it worked fine. The approach I ended up using was to erase HDD as a JHFS which I then ran 'diskutil apfs convert' on. This empty APFS volume was used in Carbon Copy Cloner 5.0 to clone my current HFS High Sierra volume onto followed by post patching. As expected, Message works fine after booting.

I do have a question of how this helper configuration will work when I apply the next System Update. Will we have to go through any additional steps to sync the helper volume with the updated APFS volume? If so, perhaps a utility can be added to help automate that process.

It should not be necessary. Like I said before, there's a system-wide deamon that runs every time you boot and synchronizes with the helper boot partition. Neither the name nor the partition UUID change on system update, so theoretically no system update should affect that process. But you'll have to wait for @dosdude1 to weigh in on this to be 100% sure.

Anyway, great to hear that it worked. I'm tempted to try it myself.

Although, like I said several times already, I'm not yet ruling out the possibility that this will be resolved in future betas or the final release, so I'm fine waiting for working FaceTime and iMessage (especially that I use Sierra as my main OS still).

@dosdude1 What I'm more concerned about is APFS encryption and the possibility to have it working on unsupported Macs.

I'm talking about multi-key encryption with per-file keys, because as I understand (correct me if I'm wrong), single-key encryption works even right now, as it's just basically how FileVault 2 has been working all this time, encrypting the whole disk (but once you're booted into the OS and the disk is decrypted, data is vulnerable), and it gets carried over from HFS+ installation of Sierra to APFS installation of High Sierra during upgrade.

I already tried going with multi-key encryption, but with this method, macOS Post Install can't even see the APFS volume with HS (understandable), so can't even try to attempt to apply any patches, hence you can't boot into it (the installation itself is fine, though).

Not that I'm complaining, because it looks like we're gonna be able to benefit from APFS on our unsupported Macs after all (which was not a given when beta started), but it would be great if we could benefit from all of its perks :). Here's to hoping.
 
At this point the main question would seem to be when third-party TRIM support will be toggled back on in High Sierra.
 
Forcing TRIM via command line was not working up until this point, but people managed to enable it using third-party tools like TrimEnabler, DiskSensei, etc. Maybe give that a go ?
 
Forcing TRIM via command line was not working up until this point, but people managed to enable it using third-party tools like TrimEnabler, DiskSensei, etc. Maybe give that a go ?
I believe somebody said it worked in the latest beta... Not 100% sure, though. I have a cheap SSD on the way that I'll be using for testing (as having to constantly reboot the system off an 80GB 5400RPM hard drive is agonizingly slow).
 
I believe somebody said it worked in the latest beta... Not 100% sure, though. I have a cheap SSD on the way that I'll be using for testing (as having to constantly reboot the system off an 80GB 5400RPM hard drive is agonizingly slow).

Hmm, I could swear it was via Cindori's TrimEnabler.

UPDATE: @flyboys2003 used TrimEnabler and succeeded. Not sure if sudo trimforce enable worked for anyone on the betas yet.

UPDATE 2: @jbarley too reported TRIM was working on the latest beta (17A352a), not sure though whether it was via sudo trimforce enable.
 
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Facetime and iMessages work fine under the APFSBoot implementation... (I tested signing-in since these installations don't have iCloud activated by default).

19uoROH.png
 
Beta 7 supports trim by default. My non-Apple Samsung 850 EVO was supported OOTB. With a Crucial SSD I had to run sudo trimforce: enable and reboot and then it was supported.

OAS, I can confirm that the above workaround does enable Messages and FaceTime.
Here is what I did:
1. On a HS (beta 7) install running on HFS+ (SSD) I erased an old 2 TB HDD to HFS+ using DU in HS (beta 7).
2. On the HS (beta 7) install running on HFS+ I used
Code:
 diskutil apfs convert /dev/disk1s2
to convert the HDD to APFS (no need to start from USB installer).
3. On the HS (beta 7) install running on HFS+ I used CCC5 to clone that HS beta 7 (source) to the now APFS formatted HDD (destination).
4. After restarting on the HS beta 7 USB installer, I ran dosdude1's APFS patch on the APFS formatted HDD and rebooted from the HDD—it is glacial compared to SSD booting.
5. I confirmed iCloud, Messages and FaceTime are all now working on the APFS formatted HDD with HS beta 7.

I agree with roziek, this will be a PITA for any general user to handle, but it is a workaround until we know where/why the authentication does not work with the direct install method.

One point—it would be nice if we could rename Efi_boot; I ended up with two Efi_boot disks showing in my efi screen because I forgot to pull the SSD with HS (beta 7) on the APFS SSD that had non-working Messages and FaceTime. Multi Efi_boot disks would be confusing in multi-boot disk systems.

I am interested to see how this disk handles the beta 8 update on Monday.
 
Facetime and iMessages work fine under the APFSBoot implementation... (I tested signing-in since these installations don't have iCloud activated by default).

Is APFSBoot, the same thing as NewCore? If not, is there a web page for it yet?
Jack
 
It would be nice if dosdude and Czo would cooperate to build a USB installer that does what we need with one click.
 
Is APFSBoot, the same thing as NewCore? If not, is there a web page for it yet?
Jack

APFSBoot is a component of newCore that handles APFS support at the firmware level (as with real Macs), so it's installed as part of an APFS installation. It isn't included in v0.1.
 
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OAS, I can confirm that the above workaround does enable Messages and FaceTime.
Here is what I did:
1. On a HS (beta 7) install running on HFS+ (SSD) I erased an old 2 TB HDD to HFS+ using DU in HS (beta 7).
2. On the HS (beta 7) install running on HFS+ I used
Code:
 diskutil apfs convert /dev/disk1s2
to convert the HDD to APFS (no need to start from USB installer).
3. On the HS (beta 7) install running on HFS+ I used CCC5 to clone that HS beta 7 (source) to the now APFS formatted HDD (destination).
4. After restarting on the HS beta 7 USB installer, I ran dosdude1's APFS patch on the APFS formatted HDD and rebooted from the HDD—it is glacial compared to SSD booting.
5. I confirmed iCloud, Messages and FaceTime are all now working on the APFS formatted HDD with HS beta 7.

If anyone is prepared to potentially sacrifice their APFS volume, it would be interesting to know if you can logout of iCloud and then still manage to log back in again. That is, are we just seeing a one off of the last successful login with 10.13 as a HFS volume being retained after conversion to APFS and that the breakage might reappear the moment we are forced to login again manually.
Jack
 
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