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MP 1,1-5,1 MacPro5,1: BootROM thread | 144.0.0.0.0
- Thread starter tsialex
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Yep, same case as here:
MP5,1: BootROM thread | 144.0.0.0.0
Earlier today I've talked about the second VSS store being overrun by the first one, some hours latter @fatespawn sent me the dump from his cross-flashed single CPU early-2009 and take a look: DECIMAL HEXADECIMAL DESCRIPTION...
forums.macrumors.com
This is worryingly becoming more common lately. I've sent you instructions by PM.
How many MP do you think you have saved from brick?Yep, same case as here:
MP5,1: BootROM thread | 144.0.0.0.0
Earlier today I've talked about the second VSS store being overrun by the first one, some hours latter @fatespawn sent me the dump from his cross-flashed single CPU early-2009 and take a look: DECIMAL HEXADECIMAL DESCRIPTION...
This is worryingly becoming more common lately. I've sent you instructions by PM.
This is not a simple question to answer, there are direct and indirect effects, lot's of people started to save dumps and learned to how to do deep NVRAM resets and followed the best practices.
I have a stash of 550 to 600 dumps of different MacPro4,1/MacPro5,1, but not all were reconstructed and for around two years when I was doing everything completely free of charge, lot's of people that sent the dumps never downloaded the reconstructions and I think that some didn't even bothered to go back and read the diagnostic reports.
Now that I charge for reconstructions, diagnostics are always free, things are completely different since when people pay, they want a return for the money spent.
You are a gem sir, on this forum.... ?
Your input is invaluable.
Your input is invaluable.
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Did anyone else have any weird problems with their boot rom after allowing apple’s recent Mojave security update to go through? Mine started acting wonky with my HDD drives for some reason. I tried to reflash by never-booted rom but interestingly after I did that then apple software update suddenly wanted me to do the security update again; which gave me pause. Did the security update mess with the boot rom in some way?
If you don't manually put a MacPro5,1 in firmware programming mode, nothing can interact with the BootROM itself. The problem is indirect, to do updates a series of NVRAM variables are written to the NVRAM volume and files are written to the EFI partition/main disk. This itself can mess with some installs.
I've wondered about this. Would you say, then, that we are being overly cautious when spoofing the firmware version to a high value in OpenCore?
MacPro5,1 tiny NVRAM for today's standards is the Achilles heel of the whole design now and I don't think that we are being overly cautious, let me explain my point.
When spoofing, if Apple sends a firmware update that is newer than the version OC is spoofing, not the case with your current setting of
BIOSVersion, the firmware image for the spoofed Mac and some support files are written to the EFI partition and the NVRAM volume get some variables with giant data to get everything set up for the efiflasher to do it's job. While efiflasher won't flash the wrong/spoofed firmware to the MacPro5,1 SPI flash memory itself, the constant tries/files written to the ESP/etc can make a mess itself inside the NVRAM volume and ESP.
It's not improbable that the MacPro5,1 could have a failed garbage collection, or the SPI flash is on the last legs, and just the flurry of NVRAM variable writes can corrupt the NVRAM volume or even the SPI flash itself fails from NAND cell damage after 8+ years of usage (11+ for an early-2009).
So, setting
BIOSVersion to the highest possible value is a best practice when using OC and a MacPro5,1.
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Yea it definitely did something to my EFI, or actually the partition map, the next day I started getting a thing where the whole SATA HDD disk would self-eject itself during the night.. Notification messages that the disk was turned off without properly ejecting or something to that effect. I think probably due to display sleep after so many hours in the middle of the night, but not entirely sure. I rebooted and everything seemed to be working ok. Then it did it again the next night. DiskUtility showed unfixable problems. The drive started acting very slow and unresponsive...I tried to repair the EFI and unfortunately now none of the volumes on that device will mount at all. The error messages I was getting were about the partition map. SMART showed no errors.
I'm pretty sure the security update did something to that partition map, including the EFI that I was using as my primary boot device. The OS wasn't there on that device, just the EFI with RefindPlus and OC...Even when I boot to Mojave without OC...I go through RefindPlus on that drive. Or did. Maybe the partiionMap I had was confusing to the Mojave security updater. I had it setup with three partitions, two of which were separate APFS containers and one was HFS in order to use TimeMachine. Then of course EFI partition was there. Given the fact that the last error messages I saw were saying the partition map was FUBAR, I'd say that somehow my partition map was confusing to the security Update....and/or perhaps the NVRAM issue came up, though my NVRAM doesn't normally have that much stuff in it, and it wasn't that long since I had refreshed my never-booted rom either...so I dunno....
But anyway, then I tried to reflash the bootrom hoping that might fix the issue, but when I booted into Mojave again...it said I needed the security update all over again, which is the part that threw me for a loop. Why would it be asking for that again when I had already run it a few days before? All the security updates to OSX should have already been installed. Unless somehow it was never completed properly due to the partition map break down maybe....
I'm pretty sure the security update did something to that partition map, including the EFI that I was using as my primary boot device. The OS wasn't there on that device, just the EFI with RefindPlus and OC...Even when I boot to Mojave without OC...I go through RefindPlus on that drive. Or did. Maybe the partiionMap I had was confusing to the Mojave security updater. I had it setup with three partitions, two of which were separate APFS containers and one was HFS in order to use TimeMachine. Then of course EFI partition was there. Given the fact that the last error messages I saw were saying the partition map was FUBAR, I'd say that somehow my partition map was confusing to the security Update....and/or perhaps the NVRAM issue came up, though my NVRAM doesn't normally have that much stuff in it, and it wasn't that long since I had refreshed my never-booted rom either...so I dunno....
But anyway, then I tried to reflash the bootrom hoping that might fix the issue, but when I booted into Mojave again...it said I needed the security update all over again, which is the part that threw me for a loop. Why would it be asking for that again when I had already run it a few days before? All the security updates to OSX should have already been installed. Unless somehow it was never completed properly due to the partition map break down maybe....
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Even if the SecurityUpdates had been correctly applied, it's possible that Apple released an improved version later with a different build version.
Back in Lion days, Apple released sequentially five new builds in a week or so for the 10.7.3 ComboUpdate, from 11D50 to 11D50d, all of them published in the SUS. While I don't remember any other extreme case like this one, it's fairly common for Apple to quietly improve the builds after problems are reported/detected by Q&A.
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Another example of an overrun NVRAM/secondary VSS header corrupted, this time is a MP4,1>5,1 from @Muckd:
This is starting to become common place with hybrids (cross-flashed early-2009 Mac Pros). Read more about the problem below:
forums.macrumors.com
This is starting to become common place with hybrids (cross-flashed early-2009 Mac Pros). Read more about the problem below:
MP5,1: BootROM thread | 144.0.0.0.0
Earlier today I've talked about the second VSS store being overrun by the first one, some hours latter @fatespawn sent me the dump from his cross-flashed single CPU early-2009 and take a look: DECIMAL HEXADECIMAL DESCRIPTION...
forums.macrumors.com
Hello everybody!
Long time reader, first time poster…
I bought a Dual Processor MacPro5,1 Mid2012 to use in my home studio setup which is centered around some old Echo Audiofire 12 firewire audiocards, so I thought it makes sense to get a MacPro which is nearly not supported anymore; I’m looking for stability and don’t want to be bugged with software updates…
Anyway, long story short, the MacPro had El Capitan installed and the original Firmware; I made incremental updates to High Sierra and then Mojave; I dumped each version of the firmware(s) using RomTool as described in this forum.
Everything is working fine for the moment but by reading this topic I want to be prepared if the worst will happen; I ordered replacement SPI chip 25L3205D, I have a CH341 programmer, tools to solder SMDs…
The video card that was in the MacPro when I received it was a Quadro 5000 (non K); from what I have read here it seems that Nvidia web drivers (which I imagine were used in the past) can mangle the content of the SPI chip, so basically I’m looking for tsialex expertise to have a look at my firmware dumps.
@tsialex, I would have directly PM’d you, but as a newbie I cannot do it before the 5 post rule…
Best regards to everybody!
Long time reader, first time poster…
I bought a Dual Processor MacPro5,1 Mid2012 to use in my home studio setup which is centered around some old Echo Audiofire 12 firewire audiocards, so I thought it makes sense to get a MacPro which is nearly not supported anymore; I’m looking for stability and don’t want to be bugged with software updates…
Anyway, long story short, the MacPro had El Capitan installed and the original Firmware; I made incremental updates to High Sierra and then Mojave; I dumped each version of the firmware(s) using RomTool as described in this forum.
Everything is working fine for the moment but by reading this topic I want to be prepared if the worst will happen; I ordered replacement SPI chip 25L3205D, I have a CH341 programmer, tools to solder SMDs…
The video card that was in the MacPro when I received it was a Quadro 5000 (non K); from what I have read here it seems that Nvidia web drivers (which I imagine were used in the past) can mangle the content of the SPI chip, so basically I’m looking for tsialex expertise to have a look at my firmware dumps.
@tsialex, I would have directly PM’d you, but as a newbie I cannot do it before the 5 post rule…
Best regards to everybody!
Apple
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I'm not sure that this is a reissue as much as it was making them available for separate download. There wasn't a change in the software update catalog for these updates since their initial release on the 24th of May.
Edit: I downloaded the updater and the included package was built on May 20, so it's definitely not a re-release.
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Thanks for the heads up. I think the security update was applied correctly the first time or second time, it’s just that the disk where I have OC EFI, got completely messed up, partition map was destroyed and after that I tried to do low level full erase but eventually it would not even detect the drive in drive utility. Something got seriously messed up. I have since put it into a pc and running seatools on it, it’s possible the HDD chose this same moment to fail but it’s mighty coincidental that happened on the same night that I originally ran the security update.
in the future I am going to put my OC/RefindPlus EFI on a USB key and use that to boot, with nothing else on it. That way, hypothetically, if something like that happens again at least it would destroy the partition map of a drive with nothing else in it. I was using that HDD for timemachine and ccc backups and main EFI. When I did the Mojave security update I was not using OC, through RefindPlus it boots Mojave natively. But still it boots through that EFI, so somehow the security update must have gotten confused about non standard setup or else like you said maybe the rom didn’t garbage clean and had some overrun or something but when I looked at it later it looked ok that way, I’m more suspicious of nvram not handling some long scary value or else simply my non standard EFI confused the updater. Hard to say
I went to have a look at that Catalina Security update, I used the URL I see in your screen shots, but when I open that link it shows the same page as you see, but when I click on the Download button I am getting directed to something that Safari is flagging impersonating "updates.cdn-apple.com to steal your personal or financial information"
What gives?
What gives?
Direct link to the support page for Security Update 2021-003 (Catalina):
https://support.apple.com/kb/DL2075?locale=en_US
Link of the update package works fine from Safari and it's an Apple official domain.
Code:
whois cdn-apple.com
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