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So, I tried to install Linux Ubuntu 20.10. I followed the instructions exactly. I get a Linux disk in OpenCanopy, but when I try to boot this disk I just get a black screen and I get moved back to OpenCanopy automatically. I am using OpenCore 0.6.6. What am I doing wrong?
What you are describing can occur if there's an error in your configuration. Double check the canonical path and PartUUID.
 
Greetings everyone;

I have a Mac Pro 5,1 (2012) with upgraded WiFi/Bluetooth (AC type) module and a metal compliant GPU card. I'm currently running the latest version of Catalina.

My main question is: Is open core really safe? Are there any other safe ways to install Big Sur and have it running without problems?

Thank you.
 
Is open core really safe?
Is a gun safe in the hands of everyone? If you don't know what you are doing, yes you can brick your Mac. However, if you take the time to read carefully the first post, you will not have any issues. The guide was battle tested by thousands of people, not to mention the attached config.plist was designed to be safe for a Mac Pro 5,1.

Personally, I would not rely on someone else telling me what to do, instead I would read and see if OC is for me. As a side note, there is no way I will use any other bootloader. That is because in my eyes, there is no other software that is flexible to revive my old Mac to it's full capabilities like OC does. You could also purchase a new Mac and never worry about OC. I personally prefer to use my 5,1 as is a very powerful machine (based on my music and video needs).
 
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@cdf about the Cpuid1Data and Cpuid1Mask, the failsafe Hex values should be 16 bytes all zeroes 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00, see #85. Your config.plist should include also these failsafe values.

1613546340341.png
 
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What you are describing can occur if there's an error in your configuration. Double check the canonical path and PartUUID.
I have a guess, does the PARTUUID change if there were less disks in the Mac before? I first took out all the other hard drives and left only the hard drive with OpenCore and the hard drive where the Linux installation should happen inside. The hard disks that were only still inside were SSD's. After entering the PARTUUID in the config, I put all the hard drives back in my Mac.
 

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In my case, I have a collection of drivers extracted from various BootCamp versions, including the Realtek driver and Apple thunderbolt driver, which I install manually through Device Manager.
Would you be so kind to share that collection? Thanks.
 
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Long time lurker for admittedly (and embarrassingly) for decades now.

cMP 5,1 DP 3.46, Sapphire Radeon RX 580 has been running stably with Martin Lo's OC for a few months now. Have been running Big Sur 11.0 and I think MLo's OC 0.6.3.

As I use it as my work machine, I've avoided doing updates. However, seeing that MLo's OC 0.6.6 now apparently handles updates just fine without doing the whole flag thing, I figured I'd give it a shot this morning.

That broke it. Won't finish booting and it restarts -- going back to the OC boot picker screen. Also a black-screen warning message that reminded me of a kernel panic...

It will boot into the 11.2.1 recovery drive just fine, though -- which is interesting. Also tried reinstalling a copy over the original failed installation. No dice. Trying a fresh install from recovery to an external drive for now to see what happens.

This is with the macOS 11.2.1 2nd release that was likely released within the past 24 hours.

Any help appreciated, again -- especially as I need this for work and my backup is 150 miles away right now. Cheers and thanks.

Still stuck here and up the creek. Any suggestions?

Assuming I have to completely start over from scratch and try to rescue whatever I can off my boot drive (using Carbon Copy Cloner), do I just need to clone my "Data" drive to save my older apps/data/settings? Can the "boot" drive in Big Sur just be safely written over?

I also noticed in that using "csrutil status" with the original drive and Martin Lo's 0.6.6, that the final item (I think it was Base-something) was still enabled whereas everything else was not. Any thoughts on this?

Again - stranded here and really appreciate your help!
 
Still stuck here and up the creek. Any suggestions?

Assuming I have to completely start over from scratch and try to rescue whatever I can off my boot drive (using Carbon Copy Cloner), do I just need to clone my "Data" drive to save my older apps/data/settings? Can the "boot" drive in Big Sur just be safely written over?

I also noticed in that using "csrutil status" with the original drive and Martin Lo's 0.6.6, that the final item (I think it was Base-something) was still enabled whereas everything else was not. Any thoughts on this?

Again - stranded here and really appreciate your help!
Just out of curiosity, but have you tried reverting OC to the previous version? Did you back up your EFI folder before updating OC?
 
Trying a bunch of things this afternoon. Pretty sure I tried backup versions of OC and no dice.

I was able to successfully install M-Lo's OC v0.6.6 on a bootable and spare backup drive running Mojave...so I have a feeling it was a borked OTA update of Big Sur 11.2.1 (rev2) and M-Lo's OC v0.6.6 -- so the question appears right now seems to be starting over from scratch and a complete reformat while saving my data. There doesn't appear to be any great and immediate fix.

My question is..is everything I need (all my apps and data) safely on a backup of my DATA drive (as Big Sur splits a drive into the original partition and the DATA" partition)? Once that's backed up, should I be good to go with trying to reformat the original SSD and starting over?

*********************

Another update. Tried doing a clean install on a separate drive of Big Sur 11.2.1 (rev2) -- separately downloaded as a file and M-Lo's OC v0.6.6 -- and it keeps hanging up with the similar reboots. I have a funny feeling that something is stopping it from completing the installation...as it keeps installing and goes back to the boot picker window...and I keep having to select "Mac OS Installer" disk. It starts doing its thing...you see the apple with the progress line beneath it...and it quits out and goes back to the boot picker window.

Now thinking of trying to source a copy of 11.2 and see what happens.
 
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The current values in cdf's config is correct.
I was under the impression the properties are actually not included into @cdf config and they are manually added with the advanced configuration. I just checked the config.plist and the property keys are there.
 
Would you be so kind to share that collection? Thanks.
Unfortunately, the license agreement forbids distributing the drivers like that. The trick is to look in BootCamp packages of machines with hardware that matches yours.

The Realtek software is from the Mac Pro BootCamp package. The rest of the collection includes the following setup information files: AppleBTBC.inf (Bluetooth), bcmwl63.inf (WiFi), and TbtHostControllerA.inf (flashed GC-TITAN RIDGE).
 
Thanks, cdf. Still scratching my head here:

1) SIP disabled using recovery drive
2) Mounted EFI using Clover Configurator
3) Copied MLo's OpenCore v0.6.6 with NO CHANGES
4) Ran Bless OpenCore utility
5) Rebooted to make sure the drive showed up in the boot picker
6) Ran the Install Big Sur package from the desktop

So upon the install, it did NOT automatically go to the correct drive - and I kept having to nudge it to the macOS Installer drive. I think it kept hanging up in the middle of the 2nd or 3rd reboot.

Really appreciate your help as I'm still dead in the water here. Currently trying the above with my original Big Sur v11.0 image and OpenCore v0.6.6.

Cheers and thanks!
 
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1) SIP disabled using recovery drive
Was it re-enabled afterwards? I believe SIP being disabled is problematic for Big Sur updates. You can bless in recovery without having to disable SIP (see the guide).

So upon the install, it did NOT automatically go to the correct drive - and I kept having to nudge it to the macOS Installer drive.
The inability to bless can also indicate a problem with the SPI flash memory. Before trying anything else: start at post #6,990 and make sure to carefully read post #7,003.
 
1) I didn't re-enable SIP. Should I be doing that after blessing?

2) Already backed up my BootROM, albeit a non-vanilla version. I'll be doing that likely tomorrow sometime. Free Space already looks good, but I'm in touch with tsialex - as he'll be checking my BootROM.

3) For whatever reason, I'm now getting "Can't install" either Big Sur or Catalina error messages. Ugh.

Beginning to wonder if I need to set the VMM flags -- I thought they didn't need messing with anymore?

**********

Update - Just tried changing the VMM flag on the boot drive and tried the Big Sur reinstall all over again over the original drive. No luck. Still in a boot loop that goes back to the original OC boot picker menu.
 
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1) I didn't re-enable SIP. Should I be doing that after blessing?

2) Already backed up my BootROM, albeit a non-vanilla version. I'll be doing that likely tomorrow sometime. Free Space already looks good, but I'm in touch with tsialex - as he'll be checking my BootROM.

3) For whatever reason, I'm now getting "Can't install" either Big Sur or Catalina error messages. Ugh.

Beginning to wonder if I need to set the VMM flags -- I thought they didn't need messing with anymore?

**********

Update - Just tried changing the VMM flag on the boot drive and tried the Big Sur reinstall all over again over the original drive. No luck. Still in a boot loop that goes back to the original OC boot picker menu.
I haven’t follow all your posts. But if you haven’t done that yet, perform a 3X NVRAM reset before you install Big Sur. quite a few users fall into that boot loop issue during installation. And successfully fixed the issue by performing 3x NVRAM reset, then start the installation again.

Also, if your target is Big Sur alone (not Catalina), experience shows that using pure FirmwareFeature spoofing is better than turn on the VMM flag.
 
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Was it re-enabled afterwards? I believe SIP being disabled is problematic for Big Sur updates. You can bless in recovery without having to disable SIP (see the guide).


The inability to bless can also indicate a problem with the SPI flash memory. Before trying anything else: start at post #6,990 and make sure to carefully read post #7,003.
For info, I always keep my SIP off, and no problem for Big Sur update / installation so far.

Therefore, I believe SIP status shouldn’t be a problem.
 
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...
Also, if your target is Big Sur alone (not Catalina), experience shows that using pure FirmwareFeature spoofing is better than turn on the VMM flag.
So we can run updates without turning on the VMM flag? That is convenient! When you say "FirmwareFeature spoofing", do you mean that as per my config.plist:

<key>SMBIOS</key>
<dict>

<key>BIOSVersion</key>
<string>9999.0.0.0.0</string>
<key>BoardProduct</key>
<string>Mac-7BA5B2D9E42DDD94</string>
<key>FirmwareFeatures</key>
<data>A1QM4A==</data>
<key>FirmwareFeaturesMask</key>
<data>P/8f/w==</data>
</dict>

Thanks!
 
So we can run updates without turning on the VMM flag? That is convenient! When you say "FirmwareFeature spoofing", do you mean that as per my config.plist:

<key>SMBIOS</key>
<dict>

<key>BIOSVersion</key>
<string>9999.0.0.0.0</string>
<key>BoardProduct</key>
<string>Mac-7BA5B2D9E42DDD94</string>
<key>FirmwareFeatures</key>
<data>A1QM4A==</data>
<key>FirmwareFeaturesMask</key>
<data>P/8f/w==</data>
</dict>

Thanks!
Correct
 
Unfortunately, the license agreement forbids distributing the drivers like that. The trick is to look in BootCamp packages of machines with hardware that matches yours.
Yes, that sounds very reasonable. I wonder, however, if there might an easy-to-follow instruction as to which particular flavor of Boot Camp drivers to download by using Brigadier. I know how to download any given Boot Camp package for one given recent Intel Mac, but I dare not actually install any of them, as I don't really know if they are valid for my Mac Pro 5,1. Would it be possible for you or someone else to give us a hint as to which particular recent Intel Mac model(s) might contain one or more valid Boot Camp installers for the Mac Pro 5,1? For instance, you could say something along these lines:
  • For up-to-date graphics drivers, use Brigadier and download "Boot Camp for Mac model 123" and then run the relevant "ABC" installer.
  • For up-to-date Thunderbolt drivers, use Brigadier and download "Boot Camp for Mac model 456" and then run the relevant "DEF" installer.
  • Et cetera.
 
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