MP 1,1-5,1 Manually Configured OpenCore on the Mac Pro

[PeterHolbrook]

Baffling instability

I've been following this thread for a few months. Seeing so many successful stories was an inspiration and I was looking forward to the opportunity to try my hand at generating a valid OpenCore configuration that might work on my Mac Pro 5,1. I must express my gratitude to cdf for the initial post of this thread and, in particular, to Alex-IN, for giving me some insights and providing the first config.plist that actually allowed me to boot my regular Catalina disk. It also allowed me to boot Snow Leopard, High Sierra and an older, auxiliary bare-bones installation of Catalina.

Sadly, trying to fine-tune that config.plist (for instance, for adding the VMM flag) caused OpenCore to get stuck at the Apple logo when trying to boot my regular Catalina disk (and leaving it the way it was, without the VMM flag didn't work either). Oddly enough, it works just fine as far as booting Snow Leopard, High Sierra and the bare-bones Catalina goes. I've been thinking that there might be something wrong on my regular Catalina disk, but, much to my surprise, I've found it that a hung OpenCore with Catalina, though rare, is not an unheard-of occurrence on the Internet. Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to solve the issue. Do any of the geniuses in this thread have any suggestions as to how to troubleshoot this situation?

EDIT: I don't know if the "solution" I've found (it's the only thing that has worked, immediately after applying it, after more than a dozen freezes) will be stable in future boot processes using OpenCore, but, just in case it helps someone in the same situation, I thought about the possibility that lilu.kext, whatevergreen.kext and AppleALC.kext in Library/Extensions might be interfering with the same kernel extensions in the EFI folder. So, on a hunch, I erased all three kexts from Library/Extensions, rebuilt the cache, rebooted into OpenCore and then to my regular Catalina disk and, voilà, it worked flawlessly. Whether this is the solution or not, I'd appreciate if those more knowledgeable than myself (almost everybody here) can comment on this.

 

[mode11]

You're showing your work...

How do you mean (not familiar with this expression)?

 

[nobullone1964]

How do you mean (not familiar with this expression)?

It's from the Big Bang Theory. They say that when they're figuring problems.

 

[mode11]

Oh OK, like with maths (working). I've watched BBT a few times, but hadn't caught that one.

I tested the drive with a single partition and it booted up fine (thanks for the tip). I used CCC to do the clone. Do you (or anyone else) know why OC might not like booting macOS from a USB HDD with more than one partition? In fact, will OC boot macOS from an internal drive that has more than one partition? I seem to remember reading that bootcamp shouldn't be on the macOS drive, for instance.

Booting from USB 2 isn't fun though. It took a while to boot and macOS is grindingly slow whilst doing anything. It's not a practical way of using a machine. The only thing is that my backup drive is formatted as unencrypted APFS now, and FileVault apparently has to be turned on whilst booted in to it. Can't think how long it would take to encrypt the drive (though the initial clone could be minimal, skipping most user folders, then add them in once booted back into NVMe once the encryption is done). Might make sense to back up the system to a cheap SATA SSD (or even HDD) instead, which could then be swapped in if necessary.

 

[nobullone1964]

Oh OK, like with maths (working). I've watched BBT a few times, but hadn't caught that one.

I tested the drive with a single partition and it booted up fine (thanks for the tip). I used CCC to do the clone. Do you (or anyone else) know why OC might not like booting macOS from a USB HDD with more than one partition? In fact, will OC boot macOS from an internal drive that has more than one partition? I seem to remember reading that bootcamp shouldn't be on the macOS drive, for instance.

Booting from USB 2 isn't fun though. It took a while to boot and macOS is grindingly slow whilst doing anything. It's not a practical way of using a machine. The only thing is that my backup drive is formatted as unencrypted APFS now, and FileVault apparently has to be turned on whilst booted in to it. Can't think how long it would take to encrypt the drive (though the initial clone could be minimal, skipping most user folders, then add them in once booted back into NVMe once the encryption is done). Might make sense to back up the system to a cheap SATA SSD (or even HDD) instead, which could then be swapped in if necessary.

Congrats!

I have an external hard drive that is partitioned with Mojave install, Catalina install, time machine and the two recoveries. I'm able to use them all through OC. I'm sure an operating system won't make a difference.

Oh, and do encrypt before putting files back. It'll save a lot of time.

 

[nobullone1964]

Baffling instability

I've been following this thread for a few months. Seeing so many successful stories was an inspiration and I was looking forward to the opportunity to try my hand at generating a valid OpenCore configuration that might work on my Mac Pro 5,1. I must express my gratitude to cdf for the initial post of this thread and, in particular, to Alex-IN, for giving me some insights and providing the first config.plist that actually allowed me to boot my regular Catalina disk. It also allowed me to boot Snow Leopard, High Sierra and an older, auxiliary bare-bones installation of Catalina.

Sadly, trying to fine-tune that config.plist (for instance, for adding the VMM flag) caused OpenCore to get stuck at the Apple logo when trying to boot my regular Catalina disk (and leaving it the way it was, without the VMM flag didn't work either). Oddly enough, it works just fine as far as booting Snow Leopard, High Sierra and the bare-bones Catalina goes. I've been thinking that there might be something wrong on my regular Catalina disk, but, much to my surprise, I've found it that a hung OpenCore with Catalina, though rare, is not an unheard-of occurrence on the Internet. Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to solve the issue. Do any of the geniuses in this thread have any suggestions as to how to troubleshoot this situation?

EDIT: I don't know if the "solution" I've found (it's the only thing that has worked, immediately after applying it, after more than a dozen freezes) will be stable in future boot processes using OpenCore, but, just in case it helps someone in the same situation, I thought about the possibility that lilu.kext, whatevergreen.kext and AppleALC.kext in Library/Extensions might be interfering with the same kernel extensions in the EFI folder. So, on a hunch, I erased all three kexts from Library/Extensions, rebuilt the cache, rebooted into OpenCore and then to my regular Catalina disk and, voilà, it worked flawlessly. Whether this is the solution or not, I'd appreciate if those more knowledgeable than myself (almost everybody here) can comment on this.

Deleting those kexts locally is explained in the instructions.

 

[mode11]

Congrats!

I have an external hard drive that is partitioned with Mojave install, Catalina install, time machine and the two recoveries. I'm able to use them all through OC. I'm sure an operating system won't make a difference.

Oh, and do encrypt before putting files back. It'll save a lot of time.

Interesting. Perhaps I could install Catalina to a partitioned external drive, then use CCC to update it to match my internal one? According to CCC, you can't make an initial clone of Catalina directly to an encrypted drive - did you install to an encrypted partition though?

Presumably you're booting from USB 2? Or are you using SATA (or eSATA)? SSD or HDD?

 

[dataid]

Has anyone documented the procedure for installing Big Sur and OpenCore 0.6.0 using the just released Public Beta without having installed the prior Developers Beta(s)? Could you share your experience.

 

[nobullone1964]

Interesting. Perhaps I could install Catalina to a partitioned external drive, then use CCC to update it to match my internal one? According to CCC, you can't make an initial clone of Catalina directly to an encrypted drive - did you install to an encrypted partition though?

Presumably you're booting from USB 2? Or are you using SATA (or eSATA)? SSD or HDD?

Nothing is encrypted. I'm using a HDD connected with firewire.

 

[mode11]

Reading CCC's notes, they don't recommend portable 5400rpm 2.5" HDDs for bootable backups, as they are very slow with APFS (this was also my experience). The simplest approach is just to clone Catalina's Data volume. It won't be bootable, but means the backup disk or partition can use HFS+ encrypted, keeping things performant and secure. I've got a bootable Mojave install on a 3.5" SATA HDD, so can always slot that in when necessary.

 

[PeterHolbrook]

H264 and HEVC hardware acceleration

My current OpenCore configuration on a Mac Pro 5,1 running Catalina 10.15.6 with a flashed AMD Radeon HD 7970 3 GB includes all the relevant parameters for H264 and HEVC hardware acceleration (including the correct physical path to the GPU itself). However, VideoProc doesn't show hardware acceleration as available. Am I missing something?

 

[h9826790]

H264 and HEVC hardware acceleration

My current OpenCore configuration on a Mac Pro 5,1 running Catalina 10.15.6 with a flashed AMD Radeon HD 7970 3 GB includes all the relevant parameters for H264 and HEVC hardware acceleration (including the correct physical path to the GPU itself). However, VideoProc doesn't show hardware acceleration as available. Am I missing something?
View attachment 942391

Any GPU before Polaris does NOT support HWAccel in macOS.

 

[PeterHolbrook]

Any GPU before Polaris does NOT support HWAccel in macOS.

In that case, would I be better off if I remove the relevant parameters from config.plist that, in my case, do not actually achieve acceleration, or is their inclusion irrelevant?

 

[nobullone1964]

In that case, would I be better off if I remove the relevant parameters from config.plist that, in my case, do not actually achieve acceleration, or is their inclusion irrelevant?

Remove it. Why have it look for something that's not there?

 

[PeterHolbrook]

OpcodeEmulator.kext?

This is not directly related to booting a Mac Pro using OpenCore, but it's supposedly connected with adding some instructions to old processors. If I'm not mistaken, adding this kernel extension to OpenCore might allow the Xeon processor of a Mac Pro 5,1 to "understand" (via emulation) AVX/AVX instructions. Can anyone comment on this? I haven't found the kext itself. In case this is a reasonable option, I hope someone can provide a link to download such a kernel extension.

 

[startergo]

OpcodeEmulator.kext?

This is not directly related to booting a Mac Pro using OpenCore, but it's supposedly connected with adding some instructions to old processors. If I'm not mistaken, adding this kernel extension to OpenCore might allow the Xeon processor of a Mac Pro 5,1 to "understand" (via emulation) AVX/AVX instructions. Can anyone comment on this? I haven't found the kext itself. In case this is a reasonable option, I hope someone can provide a link to download such a kernel extension.

No you can just fake not make "understand".

 

[PeterHolbrook]

No you can just fake not make "understand".

I very much doubt the correctness of your assessment. In order to just pretend a processor supports AVX/AVX2 instructions, you hardly need any developement. Obviously, some development went into the generation of such kext. After I wrote my previous message, not only have I got the kernel extension, but its source code as well. I don't think there's anything fake in it. Perhaps it isn't efficient, or may be it isn't even for Intel processors, but only for AMD, but it isn't fake.

 

[jackluke]

When spoofing through OpenCore with a dual GPU Mac, I have the issue that after apple stage 2 loading bar encounter a blank screen (already tried several Mac board id spoofing configurations), meaning that the Mac can't switch to choose one of two GPUs , this issue doesn't occur when use only one GPU .

Could someone explain from config.plist how to patch the AppleGraphicsControl.kext (or AppleGraphicsDevicePolicy.kext) or through some boot-args to force use only the IGPU or the Discrete GPU ?

In few words, while both GPUs are active (Intel HD 4000 and Nvidia Kepler), I'd want to disable one of them from OpenCore .

 

[startergo]

When spoofing through OpenCore with a dual GPU Mac, I have the issue that after apple stage 2 loading bar encounter a blank screen (already tried several Mac board id spoofing configurations), meaning that the Mac can't switch to choose one of two GPUs , this issue doesn't occur when use only one GPU .

Could someone explain from config.plist how to patch the AppleGraphicsControl.kext or through some boot-args to force use only the IGPU or the Discrete GPU ?

In few words, while both GPUs are active (Intel HD 4000 and Nvidia Kepler), I'd want to disable one of them from OpenCore .

Try agdpmod=pikera in the boot arguments:
It is based on Piker's work here:

Patching AppleGraphicsDevicePolicy.kext

A long time ago (read seventeen months ago) I blogged about the changes in the AGDP (Apple Graphics Device Policy) and had to came up with a workaround for an issue in AppleGraphicsDevicePolicy.kex…

pikeralpha.wordpress.com

 

[jackluke]

Try agdpmod=pikera in the boot arguments:
It is based on Piker's work here:

Patching AppleGraphicsDevicePolicy.kext

A long time ago (read seventeen months ago) I blogged about the changes in the AGDP (Apple Graphics Device Policy) and had to came up with a workaround for an issue in AppleGraphicsDevicePolicy.kex…

pikeralpha.wordpress.com

For my configuration seems doesn't worked, I am enough sure that depends from AGC kext because I notice them loaded on verbose mode before a blank screen, do I need also to use Lilu.kext for that ?

edit:
Without Lilu.kext, I used agdpmod=pikera and spoof to MacPro6,1 and after stage2 loading screen showed, but without usb input devices responsive, instead using other spoofing with blank screen I have responsive usb (can notice that from single user mode).

 

[startergo]

For my configuration seems doesn't worked, I am enough sure that depends from AGC kext because I notice them loaded on verbose mode before a blank screen, do I need also to use Lilu.kext for that ?

edit:
Without Lilu.kext, I used agdpmod=pikera and spoof to MacPro6,1 and after stage2 loading screen showed, but without usb input devices responsive, instead using other spoofing with blank screen I have responsive usb (can notice that from single user mode).

It is a WhateverGreen flag, which depends on LILU so you need both:

WhateverGreen/README.md at master · acidanthera/WhateverGreen

Various patches necessary for certain ATI/AMD/Intel/Nvidia GPUs - acidanthera/WhateverGreen

github.com

 

[startergo]

The latest commit of OpenCore and HibernationFixup fixes hibernation/sleep in BigSur.

 

[startergo]

I very much doubt the correctness of your assessment

Sorry I did not see the kext I was actually referring to the OC emulation. I am not sure how effective it is, but if you find it effective please let us know.

 

[PeterHolbrook]

Sorry I did not see the kext I was actually referring to the OC emulation. I am not sure how effective it is, but if you find it effective please let us know.

The version I downloaded hangs the boot process at the Apple logo. I’ve recompiled the kext, but haven’t run it yet.

 

[startergo]

The version I downloaded hangs the boot process at the Apple logo. I’ve recompiled the kext, but haven’t run it yet.

If you have the source code compile it with the latest LiLU as I saw original kext was compiled with 1.3.5 version of LILU.