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

[paalb]

I have EFI active OpenCore partition on a SSD disk. I had some problem getting the bless command to work, so I tried to run Disk Utility on the SSD Device (Not the Volumes). After second bless it worked, anyway. Now I wonder if there is something wrong with the SSD or if it is the OpenCore setup that triggers this and I can ignore it.

I got this error:

Running First Aid on “Corsair Force GS Media” (disk3)
.........
Checking the EFI system partition’s file system
Problems were found with the partition map which might prevent booting
The partition map needs to be repaired because there’s a problem with the EFI system partition’s file system. : (-69766)

Operation failed…

Is it normal to get this Error with OpenCore in EFI partition?

 

[Pascal Baillargeau]

I have EFI active OpenCore partition on a SSD disk. I had some problem getting the bless command to work, so I tried to run Disk Utility on the SSD Device (Not the Volumes). After second bless it worked, anyway. Now I wonder if there is something wrong with the SSD or if it is the OpenCore setup that triggers this and I can ignore it.

I got this error:

Running First Aid on “Corsair Force GS Media” (disk3)
.........
Checking the EFI system partition’s file system
Problems were found with the partition map which might prevent booting
The partition map needs to be repaired because there’s a problem with the EFI system partition’s file system. : (-69766)

Operation failed…

Is it normal to get this Error with OpenCore in EFI partition?

It arrives sometimes, not only with Opencore.
To repair, use:
sudo fsck_msdos disk0sX
where disk0sX is the EFI folder you need to repair.

 

[h9826790]

Awesome, that worked a treat. Many thanks for the clear steps

If I want to retire the HDD, would I need to

1. Boot into HDD
2. Install OpenCore and Bless on SSD
3. Reboot into SSD
4. Mount HDD and remove opencore

I still can't seem to update to 11.1, I think my config is missing the SMBIOS updates.

I assume you already have both HDD and SSD working.

OC on HDD, and macOS on SSD.

If you want to retire the HDD, then

1) boot to macOS (SSD, via OC on HDD is fine)
2) install OC onto SSD (including bless it)
3) shutdown
4) remove the HDD

done.

 

[KingKongUser]

I assume you already have both HDD and SSD working.

OC on HDD, and macOS on SSD.

If you want to retire the HDD, then

1) boot to macOS (SSD, via OC on HDD is fine)
2) install OC onto SSD (including bless it)
3) shutdown
4) remove the HDD

done.

Thanks

Does anyone have a sample config file? I can't seem to get the update working. I added the SMBIOS updates but the machine wouldn't boot after I made those changes

 

[Syncretic]

I currently have an MP4,1->5,1 (144.0.0.0.0, 2x5675, 64GB, RX570) booting OC 0.6.3 from an NVMe EFI partition, then into Catalina 15.7 on the same NVMe drive (marked as internal). That's my primary system right now. I need to be able to boot into Big Sur for testing (I don't plan to use it regularly, unless I discover that it contains something indispensable, which seems awfully unlikely). I'm assuming that the Barry K. Nathan micropatcher will work its magic on my system just as it has for many others.

Questions:

1. For installation, I'm going to remove my NVMe (and all other drives) and do a clean install to a blank SATA SSD. After installation, I'll replace my NVMe (et al) and re-bless OC. Is that sufficient? I know OC will (should) find the bootable Big Sur on the SATA SSD, but do I need to do any OC tweaking for a Big Sur boot? Also, it seems like having OC out of the picture during install should streamline things and reduce possible errors, but is there any compelling reason to include OC in the Big Sur installation process?
2. On a related note, to make Big Sur work in the above scenario, do I need to upgrade to OC 0.6.4, or will 0.6.3 suffice? (I'm firmly in the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" camp, which includes upgrades/updates).

My thanks go to everyone working on this, and to anyone who bothered to read this far. ;-)

I've done the installation as described above, and now I'm having a strange problem:

Big Sur (11.1) is installed on its own separate SATA SSD. The EFI partition on that disk is empty. The physical SSD is identical to several others that I've been using with this Mac, and this drive has booted both OC and Catalina in the past (i.e. drive compatibility should not be an issue).

OC + Catalina are installed on an NVMe drive. OC is properly blessed. OC configuration is very vanilla; no kexts, no board-id spoofing. The only non-default items are: (1) NVMe is marked as "built-in", (2) I'm using OpenCanopy, (3) boot-args is set to "-no_compat_check amfi_get_out_of_my_way=1" (no quotes in config.plist, of course), and (4) at present, debugging is enabled (I have replaced the various .efi files with their debug counterparts and modified config.plist correctly; verbose debug logs are definitely generated).

With the NVMe in and the BS SSD out, OC shows the boot picker, Catalina boots, everything works, no issues. With OC debugging enabled, I get debug logs, and they look OK to me.

With the NVMe out and the BS SSD in (no OC), BS boots as expected, runs OK, no apparent issues (I'm still testing it, but it looks good so far). (And no OC logs, since... no OC.)

Here's where it gets strange. With both the NVMe and the BS SATA SSD in, nothing seems to run. I get a chime, then 30-45 seconds later the system powers itself off. OC does not produce any debug log whatsoever. The RX570 never seems to generate a video signal, much less a boot screen. No error lights on the tray or backplane, fans spin normally (slowly), no unusual sounds from the system. If I pull either drive (OC/Catalina NVMe or BS SSD), the system boots correctly as above. I have booted to the installer USB drive (with BS removed) and re-blessed OC, then put the BS drive back in and powered up (meaning that OC should definitely be properly blessed), same result - nothing.

Am I missing something obvious that I overlooked in the documentation? I know that I might need to twiddle with SMBIOS settings to get BS to run well with OC, but I’m not even getting that far. Just seeing a boot picker screen would be nice...

 

[h9826790]

Thanks

Does anyone have a sample config file? I can't seem to get the update working. I added the SMBIOS updates but the machine wouldn't boot after I made those changes

Activate AMD hardware acceleration

I created a new "easy to install package" as per many requested (based on the official OpenCore). [The attached package updated to 1.0.0] For those who only need HWAccel, post #594 has everything you need. This new package mainly offer HWAccel + boot screen. Also, this package should work in...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[Dayo]

I've done the installation as described above, and now I'm having a strange problem:
With both the NVMe and the BS SATA SSD in, nothing seems to run.

I assume you blessed OC again after putting the NVMe drive back in

 

[cdf]

Here's where it gets strange. With both the NVMe and the BS SATA SSD in, nothing seems to run. I get a chime, then 30-45 seconds later the system powers itself off.

Powering off like that is an indication that your machine is trying to boot Catalina without OpenCore (or without no_compat_check). As @Dayo pointed out, drive blessing is important, especially with OC. The Mac Pro will try to boot something depending on which drive is blessed and which drives are present. Of course, that something can be OC, but if OC is not blessed in the first place, then RequestBootVarRouting (a key feature of OC) will not work properly. To make matters worse, blessing OC while booted through it will not work if RequestBootVarRouting is enabled.

 

[TECK]

I don't own that repo so I can't do it there

I talked to @vit9696, he has this scheduled for next January.

 

[naerct]

I've done the installation as described above, and now I'm having a strange problem:

Big Sur (11.1) is installed on its own separate SATA SSD. The EFI partition on that disk is empty. The physical SSD is identical to several others that I've been using with this Mac, and this drive has booted both OC and Catalina in the past (i.e. drive compatibility should not be an issue).

OC + Catalina are installed on an NVMe drive. OC is properly blessed. OC configuration is very vanilla; no kexts, no board-id spoofing. The only non-default items are: (1) NVMe is marked as "built-in", (2) I'm using OpenCanopy, (3) boot-args is set to "-no_compat_check amfi_get_out_of_my_way=1" (no quotes in config.plist, of course), and (4) at present, debugging is enabled (I have replaced the various .efi files with their debug counterparts and modified config.plist correctly; verbose debug logs are definitely generated).

With the NVMe in and the BS SSD out, OC shows the boot picker, Catalina boots, everything works, no issues. With OC debugging enabled, I get debug logs, and they look OK to me.

With the NVMe out and the BS SSD in (no OC), BS boots as expected, runs OK, no apparent issues (I'm still testing it, but it looks good so far). (And no OC logs, since... no OC.)

Here's where it gets strange. With both the NVMe and the BS SATA SSD in, nothing seems to run. I get a chime, then 30-45 seconds later the system powers itself off. OC does not produce any debug log whatsoever. The RX570 never seems to generate a video signal, much less a boot screen. No error lights on the tray or backplane, fans spin normally (slowly), no unusual sounds from the system. If I pull either drive (OC/Catalina NVMe or BS SSD), the system boots correctly as above. I have booted to the installer USB drive (with BS removed) and re-blessed OC, then put the BS drive back in and powered up (meaning that OC should definitely be properly blessed), same result - nothing.

Am I missing something obvious that I overlooked in the documentation? I know that I might need to twiddle with SMBIOS settings to get BS to run well with OC, but I’m not even getting that far. Just seeing a boot picker screen would be nice...

I have had similar problems in the past. While I believe that the suggestions by Dayo and CDF are the more likely solutions, the problem that I found was that I had mistakenly installed an OC EFI on more than one of the disks. I believe this was prior to Big Sur.

I also had problems with more than one OS per physical disk. I have kept my OC on the Catalina disk, and the only volume on that disk. I have both Mojave and Big Sur as volumes on another drive. On my 6-core, I have Mojave and Big Sur on a 960, and Catalina w/OC on a eSATA SSD. On my 12-core, I have basically the same setup, but both drives are 970 EVO and 970 EVO+ in a bifurcation PCI card, slot 2.

Since Disk Utility doesn't wipe the EFI when erased, I would suggest that you check all your drives for OC in the EFI. My experience is totally anecdotal.

 

[Syncretic]

I assume you blessed OC again after putting the NVMe drive back in

Absolutely. Tried simple bless, 4x PRAM clear then bless, explicit nvram variable deletion then bless, etc. I even verified that the GUID in the nvram efi boot variables matched the GUID on my NVMe. If it's not properly blessed, it's not for lack of trying.

Powering off like that is an indication that your machine is trying to boot Catalina without OpenCore (or without no_compat_check). As @Dayo pointed out, drive blessing is important, especially with OC. The Mac Pro will try to boot something depending on which drive is blessed and which drives are present. Of course, that something can be OC, but if OC is not blessed in the first place, then RequestBootVarRouting (a key feature of OC) will not work properly. To make matters worse, blessing OC while booted through it will not work if RequestBootVarRouting is enabled.

I bless from either a USB boot (to installer/recovery) or CMD-R boot to recovery. Every indication is that OC is correctly blessed, and is on the only non-empty EFI partition on the system.

Since Disk Utility doesn't wipe the EFI when erased, I would suggest that you check all your drives for OC in the EFI. My experience is totally anecdotal.

I verified that all EFI paritions (other than OC on NVMe) are empty. I have also tried removing all drives other than OC/Catalina and the BS drive, just in case. The BS EFI partition is definitely empty.

---

More data points from subsequent testing:

• It doesn't matter if the BS SSD is connected in the ODD bay, in the lower drive bays, or via USB adapter - failure is always identical.
• CMD-R does not work with both drives in - failure is the same as if no keys were pressed.
• I have examined all the GUIDs in the GPTs and APFS filesystems, just in case I was astronomically unlucky and got a conflict. Not surprisingly, all GUIDs are unique. (If they weren't, I'd go buy a lottery ticket.)

I need to get some other things done, but the next test I'll try when I get time is to install BS to another SSD from a different manufacturer - just in case there's some subtle incompatibility going on. I'll also stick in some other bootable MacOS disks (Catalina 15.4, Mojave, etc.) to see if they behave properly.

Thanks for the help. I was hoping it was just a "dumb user" mistake, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

EDIT: Another quick data point: it's definitely the Big Sur disk that's problematic. Identical (and comparable) SSDs containing bootable copies of Mojave, Catalina, and High Sierra all appear correctly in the OC boot picker and don't cause the power-off problem. I'll investigate what's different about the Big Sur disk when time permits.

 

[mangombia]

Hello All, got myself into a bit of a pickle...

MacPro 5,1, mid 2012

Installed BigSur via OpenCore 0.6.3 on a HHD and working fine, then instlled on my SSD. Been fine for a few weeks, but wasn't getting the updates, played around with the config but didn't help. Must have done something because now I've lost the boot screen and it boots straight into my original HHD version. I looked at the config on the SSD and all looked ok, tried a few reboots and still no menu and booted into HHD. Decided to re-bless the SSD but now it won't boot unless I remove the SSD drive and it then boots into the HHD Big Sur version.

I really need to get back to my SSD version, any thoughts on where I'm going wrong and what I should do?

Any help would be appreciated, thanks in advan

Absolutely. Tried simple bless, 4x PRAM clear then bless, explicit nvram variable deletion then bless, etc. I even verified that the GUID in the nvram efi boot variables matched the GUID on my NVMe. If it's not properly blessed, it's not for lack of trying.


I bless from either a USB boot (to installer/recovery) or CMD-R boot to recovery. Every indication is that OC is correctly blessed, and is on the only non-empty EFI partition on the system.


I verified that all EFI paritions (other than OC on NVMe) are empty. I have also tried removing all drives other than OC/Catalina and the BS drive, just in case. The BS EFI partition is definitely empty.

---

More data points from subsequent testing:

• It doesn't matter if the BS SSD is connected in the ODD bay, in the lower drive bays, or via USB adapter - failure is always identical.
• CMD-R does not work with both drives in - failure is the same as if no keys were pressed.
• I have examined all the GUIDs in the GPTs and APFS filesystems, just in case I was astronomically unlucky and got a conflict. Not surprisingly, all GUIDs are unique. (If they weren't, I'd go buy a lottery ticket.)

I need to get some other things done, but the next test I'll try when I get time is to install BS to another SSD from a different manufacturer - just in case there's some subtle incompatibility going on. I'll also stick in some other bootable MacOS disks (Catalina 15.4, Mojave, etc.) to see if they behave properly.

Thanks for the help. I was hoping it was just a "dumb user" mistake, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I've never had success with OC on the EFI of any NVMe, that's why I stick with the EFI of USB drives - they're cheap, easily accessible and they work.

 

[jimithing1]

So got myself into a similar pickle as the user above. Long story short, I accidentally deleted my Mojave HD. I've still got my Big Sur HD with OC on it. It too will not boot into Big Sur now. I'm trying to reinstall Mojave onto the wiped HD and just start over again with the OC setup. When I boot into my bootable USB stick of Mojave, it's not recognizing the wiped HD i'm wanting to install Mojave on. I've tried the HD in drive bay 1 and 2 and nothing. When I run diskutil -list it's not listed there either. I’ve reset NVRAM and done a SMC reset. The drives show up if i connect one to an external enclosure. Any ideas on how I can get the HDs to show up internally?

 

[Dayo]

Absolutely. Tried simple bless, 4x PRAM clear then bless, explicit nvram variable deletion then bless, etc. I even verified that the GUID in the nvram efi boot variables matched the GUID on my NVMe. If it's not properly blessed, it's not for lack of trying.

Other thing to consider is that you need to bless it while not booted in via OpenCore as @cdf touched on.

 

[jimithing1]

So got myself into a similar pickle as the user above. Long story short, I accidentally deleted my Mojave HD. I've still got my Big Sur HD with OC on it. It too will not boot into Big Sur now. I'm trying to reinstall Mojave onto the wiped HD and just start over again with the OC setup. When I boot into my bootable USB stick of Mojave, it's not recognizing the wiped HD i'm wanting to install Mojave on. I've tried the HD in drive bay 1 and 2 and nothing. When I run diskutil -list it's not listed there either. I’ve reset NVRAM and done a SMC reset. The drives show up if i connect one to an external enclosure. Any ideas on how I can get the HDs to show up internally?

Got things back up and going. I reverted back to installing High Sierra externally and then popped the drive back into bay 1 and started working again.

 

[GSXB]

I think you will find you are mistaken, take a look at the picture no spoofing going on here. Full on 2009 Mac Pro running macOS Big Sur, no need for that any more

Latest beta installed no problem with 0,6,3
Easy as pie, zero spoofing 👊

 

[Eschers]

Hi all, thanks for the great work!

Just installed everything up to hardware acceleration and nightshift (which both work fine) but I am stuck with "no bootpicker"

I have a Rx 580 Pulse with a original bios, it is identified within macos with a orinoco frambuffer.. but no matter what I do I dont have a bootpicker, which is essential for to get into win10 from catalina (and vice versa) and retain OC since I will soon be getting a 5700XT..

Is there a way to switch from catalina <-> win10 without the bootpicker or has anyone any other suggestions on what to try next to get this fixed before installing win10?

ps: 3 displays connected (1x DP 4K Samsung, 1x DP LED Cinem Display, 1 DVI FHD BenQ), 2 HDMI ports free

 

[nobullone1964]

Hi all, thanks for the great work!

Just installed everything up to hardware acceleration and nightshift (which both work fine) but I am stuck with "no bootpicker"

I have a Rx 580 Pulse with a original bios, it is identified within macos with a orinoco frambuffer.. but no matter what I do I dont have a bootpicker, which is essential for to get into win10 from catalina (and vice versa) and retain OC since I will soon be getting a 5700XT..

Is there a way to switch from catalina <-> win10 without the bootpicker or has anyone any other suggestions on what to try next to get this fixed before installing win10?

ps: 3 displays connected (1x DP 4K Samsung, 1x DP LED Cinem Display, 1 DVI FHD BenQ), 2 HDMI ports free

You can use startup disk in system prefs. Thing is you'll need bootcamp installed in Windows to get back to macOS unless you pull the drive to force boot back to macOS. Also, if you have the bios switch on your 580 you may want to switch that to get the bootpicker. The card should be in gaming mode if you have that option.

 

[frankiee]

Does anyone know if OC also runs with the MP7,1? What I want to achieve is disabling my NVIDIA card, and also try to make my NVME drive seen as internal. What do you think - could this be possible?

 

[h9826790]

Does anyone know if OC also runs with the MP7,1? What I want to achieve is disabling my NVIDIA card, and also try to make my NVME drive seen as internal. What do you think - could this be possible?

Sounds possible to me.

I think you can disable some T2 limitation to allow the cMP to boot from something apart from macOS.

Once that's possible, the remaining part is relatively simple.

 

[startergo]

Does anyone know if OC also runs with the MP7,1? What I want to achieve is disabling my NVIDIA card, and also try to make my NVME drive seen as internal. What do you think - could this be possible?

The answer is yes. I created/booted external Big Sur+ Bootcamp NVME USB-PCIE enclosure on a MacBookPro15,1, by making the external drive appear as internal. As @h9826790 stated you will have to disable the T2 security and the external Boot:

 

[haralds]

Has anybody using OpenCore been able to get the Catalina Security update?

 

[startergo]

Has anybody using OpenCore been able to get the Catalina Security update?

Which one? Did you try with the VMM flag ON?

 

[frankiee]

The answer is yes. I created/booted external Big Sur+ Bootcamp NVME USB-PCIE enclosure on a MacBookPro15,1, by making the external drive appear as internal. As @h9826790 stated you will have to disable the T2 security and the external Boot:

So you managed to make the NVME drive seen as an internal one? Any guides out there to follow, also regarding disabling NVIDIA?

So I understand I have to disable T2 security for this to work, shouldn't be a problem. However, I am still a bit wary to try this. Is it possible to brick the MP when doing something wrong?

 

[startergo]

So you managed to make the NVME drive seen as an internal one? Any guides out there to follow, also regarding disabling NVIDIA?

So I understand I have to disable T2 security for this to work, shouldn't be a problem. However, I am still a bit wary to try this. Is it possible to brick the MP when doing something wrong?

You can follow the first page guide and completely disable any Platforminfo injection. You will have to find in Hackintool the PCIE device path for the drive:
https://github.com/acidanthera/OpenCorePkg/pull/162#issuecomment-735424218 and inject device property
built-in=00