macOS High Sierra (10.13) Unsupported Macs Thread

[Sevenfeet]

Good to know it’s actually working in VMs. As for iCloud - that’s working. The problem is FaceTime and iMessage. Please try to sign in into them and kindly report back your results.

Well I tried to sign in to iCloud under VMWare Fusion Pro 8.58 and it refused to let me sign in. I peeked at the console and it looked like the system was in a loop much like is described above. iCloud just sat there on the login dialog with a spinning "waiting" circle which lasted forever before I gave up (it eventually gave up too but I wasn't around to see it). '

For the record, I installed Developer Release 7 with APFS which boots correctly in the VM. But there is some kind of bug with iCloud and APFS that seems to be a problem with some configurations, especially unrecognized machines. Apple may not care that much about the efforts of this forum, but I'm sure that they do care about High Sierra working in virtualization.

VMWare Fusion 10 gets released in a few weeks and I don't know if there will be a difference. Parallels has already released a High Sierra compatible version this past week but I don't own a copy.

 

[roziek]

@Sevenfeet Thanks for trying and reporting back, that’s valuable info.

P.S. Wouldn’t be so sure about Apple caring about High Sierra working in VMs. I think most of that work falls on folks from VMware and Parallels; they have to adapt and adjust to whatever Apple cooks up.

 

[foxlet]

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

From what I can tell, signing in-and-out works, including switching between different accounts.

Interestingly, looking through the console, accounts become banned when they're used to sign in under an unqualified system (such as an APFS system prepared by dosdude1's technique, or if it signed in previously under a Hackintosh).

Apple's servers in those cases will reject the registration and the account will be marked as disabled in the Console (making it potentially impossible to sign in without contacting Apple).

 

[nekton1]

Can you post the lines in Console where you see that please?

Interestingly, looking through the console, accounts become banned when they're used to sign in under an APFS system prepared by dosdude1's technique

 

[Luigi222]

From what I can tell, signing in-and-out works, including switching between different accounts.

Thanks for sharing that info @foxlet , long time no see by the way...

So Im only a newbie but Im going to pore in my 2 cents if it helps...

So here is what I did today, yanked out my SSD slapped it on a external usb case, and thru my wife's supported MBA 2012, I installed High Sierra dev 7 on APFS and signed into iCloud, iMessage and FaceTime with my account, everything went smooth at I suspected,

So then I grabbed the SSD put it in my unsupported Mac, applied @dosdude1 post install patch for APFS ( had to apply it twice, for some reason it didn't boot the first time, got the forbidden sign), and it booted up and as soon as it logged in baaaammmmm, no iMessage and no FaceTime...

So if @foxlet APFSboot works on the firmware level, and his video shows clearly that iMessage and FaceTime logging in and out of accounts no problem, Im pretty much guessing the problem has been found... Apparently Macs on APFS have some tricks up there sleeve not allowing unsupported Macs to use these services, with is odd as hell... Looks like these services to work properly really need to boot from a firmware basis... But I don't know, Im just sharing my results from some hours of testing!

By the way @foxlet when are we going to see this tool of yours come out? Or are you waiting for the GM ?

 

[foxlet]

Can you post the lines in Console where you see that please?

Sure, here's a previously banned account attempting to sign in under the APFSBoot system. Note that in this instance the server is rejecting the registration.

 

[nekton1]

Yes, since foxlet's method works unless we can solve the root cause in dosdude's method, it would seem the way to proceed. Maybe waiting until the GM release is wise or Apple might take countermeasures.

 

[dosdude1]

Yes, since foxlet's method works unless we can solve the root cause in dosdude's method, it would seem the way to proceed. Maybe waiting until the GM release is wise or Apple might take countermeasures.

Wait a second... It appears he's using a case-sensitive APFS volume... Not sure if that plays some sort of factor (probably not), but I'll give the helper partition method a test with a case-sensitive APFS volume, and see if that makes any difference.

 

[nekton1]

I think I read on an Apple forum that case-sensitive APFS causes problems but maybe just hallucinating. Here is one reference:

https://eclecticlight.co/2017/04/06/apfs-is-currently-unusable-with-most-non-english-languages/

This would be a disaster for me because I use a lot of Japanese in file names and elsewhere.

 

[dosdude1]

Just finished updating the APFS patch in High Sierra Patcher. It now synchronizes volumes based on UUID rather than name, so you are free to rename either your APFS or helper partition whatever you please. Also, hiding of the helper partition has been improved. Download available from my webpage.

 

[jhowarth]

Just finished updating the APFS patch in High Sierra Patcher. It now synchronizes volumes based on UUID rather than name, so you are free to rename either your APFS or helper partition whatever you please. Also, hiding of the helper partition has been improved. Download available from my webpage.

Will the Patch Updater from a 2.1.1 installation automatically update the APFS patch without creating an extra helper partition for an existing APFS volume of High Sierra?

 

[dosdude1]

Will the Patch Updater from a 2.1.1 installation automatically update the APFS patch without creating an extra helper partition for an existing APFS volume of High Sierra?

Yeah, as long as you didn't rename the volume. With 2.1.2, the volume name doesn't matter, and won't create a second unnecessary helper partition even if the volume names have changed.

 

[Sevenfeet]

@Sevenfeet Thanks for trying and reporting back, that’s valuable info.

P.S. Wouldn’t be so sure about Apple caring about High Sierra working in VMs. I think most of that work falls on folks from VMware and Parallels; they have to adapt and adjust to whatever Apple cooks up.

Don't be so sure. For example my company (a very large well known software company) already supports Macs for the software development division and will officially allow the rest of us to buy Macs company wide by the end of the year (previously we could bring our own Macs but the company wouldn't pay for them). I suspect the internal IT folks rely on VMs to prototype and test software images and configurations (I know they do this on the Windows side). Not supporting all features of the OS would be a major pain.

Also, Apple has officially supported Mac OS X running in VMs for a few years now. VMWare did have to make a change in the latest 8.58 patch in order to get APFS working (and Fusion 10 will have full support). They reference https://github.com/norio-nomura code on Github (although they did not use his actual code to solve the problem). Not sure if what he's done has any application to this forum.

Read about their effort at https://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/ below the announcement for Fusion 10.

And this APFS tech note was published by Apple earlier this week. It says that APFS will be standard on High Sierra for flash drive Macs but not hard drive or Fusion drive Macs.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208018

 

[Luigi222]

Just finished updating the APFS patch in High Sierra Patcher. It now synchronizes volumes based on UUID rather than name, so you are free to rename either your APFS or helper partition whatever you please. Also, hiding of the helper partition has been improved. Download available from my webpage.

Well I just tested your patch and Im sad to report that the mods that you made still does not solve the iMessage and FaceTime issue....

 

[roziek]

Well I just tested your patch and Im sad to report that the mods that you made still does not solve the iMessage and FaceTime issue....

Because they weren’t made to do that. It’s simply so you can now change the name of your High Sierra volume and the helper boot partition and things will still work, because the daemon that runs on system boot now synchronizes them via Partition UUID (which stays the same even if you rename a volume) rather than name.

 

[Luigi222]

Because they weren’t made to do that. It’s simply so you can now change the name of your High Sierra volume and the helper boot partition and things will still work, because the daemon that runs on system boot now synchronizes them via Partition UUID (which stays the same even if you rename a volume) rather than name.

Oh my bad... I thought It also was because the iMessage and FaceTime issue...

 

[jhowarth]

Oh my bad... I thought It also was because the iMessage and FaceTime issue...

You should be able to avoid that issue if you first install High Sierra on a JHFS volume and then use 'diskutil apfs convert' from the Terminal window ,when booted from a High Sierra Patch created macOS USB stick, to switch the installed volume to APFS followed by applying the APFS post patch.
[doublepost=1503833353][/doublepost]

Yeah, as long as you didn't rename the volume. With 2.1.2, the volume name doesn't matter, and won't create a second unnecessary helper partition even if the volume names have changed.

Actually, I meant would the change in the APFS patch be distributed via the Patch Updater mechanism? That doesn't seem to be the case as when I launch it, Patch Updater still reports that I am at the latest version and doesn't try to push down the new APFS patch.

 

[Luigi222]

Are you sure?

Yesterday I yanked out my SSD slapped it on a external usb case, and thru my wife's supported MBA 2012, I installed High Sierra dev 7 on APFS and signed into iCloud, iMessage and FaceTime with my account, everything went smooth at I suspected,

So then I grabbed the SSD put it in my unsupported Mac, applied @dosdude1 post install patch for APFS ( had to apply it twice, for some reason it didn't boot the first time, got the forbidden sign), and it booted up and as soon as it logged in baaaammmmm, no iMessage and no FaceTime...

So I really don’t know if that works

 

[roziek]

And this APFS tech note was published by Apple earlier this week. It says that APFS will be standard on High Sierra for flash drive Macs but not hard drive or Fusion drive Macs.

APFS will be default for SSDs, but you can still use it on plain old spinning hard drives, even on external drives connected via USB etc.

Actually, I meant would the change in the APFS patch be distributed via the Patch Updater mechanism? That doesn't seem to be the case as when I launch it, Patch Updater still reports that I am at the latest version and doesn't try to push down the new APFS patch.

You need to download v2.1.2, make a USB installer with that version, boot into it, and apply the post install patches to your High Sierra volume. From now on, the daemon will synchronize the HS volume and the helper boot partition via Partition UUID.

Are you sure?

Yesterday I yanked out my SSD slapped it on a external usb case, and thru my wife's supported MBA 2012, I installed High Sierra dev 7 on APFS and signed into iCloud, iMessage and FaceTime with my account, everything went smooth at I suspected,

So then I grabbed the SSD put it in my unsupported Mac, applied @dosdude1 post install patch for APFS ( had to apply it twice, for some reason it didn't boot the first time, got the forbidden sign), and it booted up and as soon as it logged in baaaammmmm, no iMessage and no FaceTime...

So I really don’t know if that works

It's probably because the authentication and authorization is tied to the specific machine (maybe a combination of Hardware UUID + Mac model). In that case, it wouldn't matter that you used the same SSD. You carried out the installation process to that SSD from an entirely different machine (your wife's officially supported Mac) than what it was later put in. It knows it's being used on a different machine than the one you used to sign in into FaceTime and iMessage, and won't let you. If you would have installed it on the same Mac, as HFS+, and then converted to APFS, it would almost certainly work.

 

[jhowarth]

Just another observation that the APFS patch still needs tweaking as reapplication of it from High Sierra Patch 2.1.2 onto a previous APFS installation from High Sierra Patch 2.1.1 (without renaming the helper partition), ends up producing another helper partition by the identical volume name...

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *250.1 GB disk0
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_APFS Container disk4 249.3 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_HFS High Sierra APFS HD_... 209.7 MB disk0s3
4: Apple_HFS High Sierra APFS HD_... 209.7 MB disk0s4

I ended up deleting both of the duplicated partitions, to make sure I had the updated syncing code, and reinstalling the APFS patch.

 

[matgen84]

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.

I would like to try. I left several messages for the new version of newcore. Please share the download link

 

[Maltaire]

My install drive will not be displayed with APFS format when booting unfortunately (MacPro 3.1 early 2008).

 

[roziek]

My install drive will not be displayed with APFS format when booting unfortunately (MacPro 3.1 early 2008).

Have you applied macOS Post Install patches?

 

[Maltaire]

Have you applied macOS Post Install patches?

Yes, I have applied, the drive does not appear in the boot menu (Alt key)

 

[roziek]

Yes, I have applied, the drive does not appear in the boot menu (Alt key)

It will be named EFI Boot. Choose that one if you see it.
[doublepost=1503854552][/doublepost]On a side note: you didn’t actually have to hold option/alt after the reboot, this is the default boot partition after applying macOS Post Install patches.