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

[avro707]

It appears that the blessing operation is being routed through your original instance of OC. See below.


If you are referring to the OC boot picker, then RequestBootVarRouting must be disabled first, otherwise you're telling the original instance of OC to boot the new one by default, which will just end up booting the original, because OC will not boot another instance of itself.


Yes, completely outside OC, which is to say, a supported Recovery (Mojave or earlier) booted natively, otherwise the situation will be as explained above. Alternatively, disable RequestBootVarRouting first.

It seems to have worked with the following command:

disk0s1 is the one I needed to bless.

It took a little while to show up but it has booted and without the old HDD in. Just about to restart and double check.

Edit: Confirmed - it takes a while for the boot menu to appear but it does appear now and the old HDD is stored away. Thanks for the help. The SSD is in the second superdrive bay with an adaptor frame I had from an old PC build.

 

[joevt]

It seems to have worked with the following command:

disk0s1 is the one I needed to bless.

It took a little while to show up but it has booted and without the old HDD in. Just about to restart and double check.

Edit: Confirmed - it takes a while for the boot menu to appear but it does appear now and the old HDD is stored away. Thanks for the help. The SSD is in the second superdrive bay with an adaptor frame I had from an old PC build.

You can use the dumpallbootvars command from my gfxutil.sh script to see what the bless command uses for the boot variable.
https://gist.github.com/joevt/477fe842d16095c2bfd839e2ab4794ff

Usually I would include the --file option with the bless command to specify the bootx64.efi file.
sudo bless --mount /Volumes/EFI*/*bay2/.. --file /Volumes/EFI*/*bay2/../EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi --setBoot

where bay2 is the name of a folder on the EFI partition in case I have more than one EFI partition mounted. My MacPro3,1 has 4 drive bays (plus two SATA ODD (optical disk drive) connectors and two PATA ODD connectors).

 

[Bmju]

I wonder if native blessing from within OC without having to turn off RequestBootVarRouting might be a feature worth adding to OC for Macs that don't have the native boot picker. Perhaps @Bmju could comment on the feasibility of adding such a feature.

Various issues!

• OC NVRAM redirection is in place for OC too. (Obviously could code round it, but at least - would have to do so.)
• OC hides itself in the menu - so isn't the one thing you want to bless not there?!
• I doubt there'd be appetite from 'the bosses' for including something that in theory is needed so rarely and is do-able another way (i.e. via Recovery) in the default menu key controls (even as an option); with the new boot entry protocol, there could be a driver which installs a new tool - but it would need it's own mini-menu to select what to bless, might not be worth it all (again for something which can always be done another way...).
• Thinking about it now, if there was a config flag to toggle OC to do this, e.g. to toggle it to either bless outside OC or only inside ... wouldn't that be just what RequestBoot VarRouting does now? (Or what am I missing?)

Actually, can you remind me again what do your MacPro's have, for a pre-boot menu without OC? Just nothing at all? (I recall some v. old Macs have an Intel style EFI menu?) (And I think I recall you said there is something else you can install to give the MPs a menu, even without OC? Or no? Or only on some?)

 

[Dayo]

Thinking about it now, if there was a config flag to toggle OC to do this, e.g. to toggle it to either bless outside OC or only inside ... wouldn't that be just what RequestBoot VarRouting does now? (Or what am I missing?)

I might be wrong, but I think the thought (at least in one of the follow up posts) is for some sort of key combination that will essentially toggle RequestVarRouting On/Off.

I believe though that by the time OC is loaded, that boat has already sailed but yeah, a key combination when in the picker would be convenient if possible.

 

[Bmju]

I might be wrong, but I think the thought (at least in one of the follow up posts) is for some sort of key combination that will essentially toggle RequestVarRouting On/Off.

I believe though that by the time OC is loaded, that boat has already sailed but yeah, a key combination when in the picker would be convenient if possible.

Okay, makes sense. What about my point that OC won't even be there to bless, though?

 

[Dayo]

Okay, makes sense. What about my point that OC won't even be there to bless, though?

Again, just reading the runes of posts by others but I think the idea is that once it is toggled off, the user will then boot into Mac OS as normal and bless whatever they want, OC or anything else, from within Mac OS without RequestVarRouting "Hijacking" the attempt.

Presumably, the preference would be that it defaults back to the config setting on the next restart.
Basically, a temporary (one time each time) override of the config setting that can be done after the picker is loaded but before Mac OS is loaded.

 

[Engender]

Hello all! I'm not seeing a WhateverGreen.kext file in the WhateverGreen zip I pulled from GitHub via that link in the wiki. Is there something I'm not seeing or not understanding?

 

[cdf]

Thinking about it now, if there was a config flag to toggle OC to do this, e.g. to toggle it to either bless outside OC or only inside ... wouldn't that be just what RequestBoot VarRouting does now? (Or what am I missing?)

Ideally, we would have a key combination like Control-Option-Enter that would set a selection as the top boot entry in UEFI variable storage, even if RequestBootVarRouting is enabled. Currently, LauncherOption allows OC to set itself as the top entry for boot persistence on every boot and it does this with RequestBootVarRouting enabled.

I doubt there'd be appetite from 'the bosses' for including something that in theory is needed so rarely and is do-able another way (i.e. via Recovery) in the default menu key controls (even as an option); with the new boot entry protocol, there could be a driver which installs a new tool - but it would need it's own mini-menu to select what to bless, might not be worth it all (again for something which can always be done another way...).

Blessing is just so easy when it can be done on startup by holding Option. Unfortunately, this option is usually unavailable on the classic Mac Pro. Of course, Recovery provides an alternative, but accessing Recovery natively can be nontrivial. It requires having a legacy version of macOS around, which needs to be set as the default boot entry in the first place!

Actually, can you remind me again what do your MacPro's have, for a pre-boot menu without OC? Just nothing at all? (I recall some v. old Macs have an Intel style EFI menu?) (And I think I recall you said there is something else you can install to give the MPs a menu, even without OC? Or no? Or only on some?)

With a standard graphics card, nothing at all. Installing @Dayo's RefindPlus will provide a menu, but I'm not sure if RP can be used to bless a boot entry, at least not without that entry booting through RP in the first place.

OC hides itself in the menu - so isn't the one thing you want to bless not there?!

Yes, it hides itself, but not other instances of itself. Perhaps this is a bug, but it has turned out to be very useful, because it allows us to use OC on a CD to easily bless a main installation of OC. Why a CD? Because a CD can be booted on demand by holding C, much like holding Option to bring up the boot picker, except that the latter is not available with a standard graphics card!

 

[NC12]

I’m having a problem with my wireless mouse since i’ve started using opencore. MacOS only detects my mouse if it is connected in on startup and refuses to reconnect if the dongle is unplugged, charging cable is unpluged, or if bluetooth is turned off. What could’ve caused this and how do I remedy it?

 

[Fastsavage]

Hi, I am having a problem installing Catalina after successfully installing OpenCore 0.6.9.

When I am trying to install Catalina it goes through the first part fine and everything looks ok but when it goes to the restart it starts back up in Mojave.

Any ideas what I am doing wrong?

Thanks,
Chris

2010 Mac Pro 2 x 3.46, 96GB and Mac flashed GTX 680 4GB.

Hi Chris, Not being smart, cause I had issues too, BUT the best idea is to read the first post thoroughly,
Are you holding down your "cmd" key to get the boot picker? (must be on a wired keyboard)

 

[Dayo]

RefindPlus will provide a menu but I'm not sure if RP can be used to bless a boot entry

Not directly from RP. Will have to be done in one OS or the other at this time.

@joevt probably has some UEFI Shell stuff that could possibly be used but as with all UEFI Shell based stuff, we can't consider such (if existing) as accessible.

 

[cdf]

I’m having a problem with my wireless mouse since i’ve started using opencore. MacOS only detects my mouse if it is connected in on startup and refuses to reconnect if the dongle is unplugged, charging cable is unpluged, or if bluetooth is turned off. What could’ve caused this and how do I remedy it?

If you are using Big Sur, then this is a known issue. USB 1 devices will only work if plugged in before booting. A workaround is to connect such devices through a hub.

 

[cuppuccino]

Will MacPro5,1 with BigSur work with the Magic Trackpad (Bluetooth) ?

 

[cdf]

Will MacPro5,1 with BigSur work with the Magic Trackpad (Bluetooth) ?

I can confirm that it works with Magic Trackpad 2.

 

[cuppuccino]

@cdf Thanks a bunch. One more question, I'm still on Catalina everything works fine, but I'm kinda forced to upgrade to BigSur as I need newest Xcode for work. I saw on frontpage that 11.3+ is problematic, would it work to simply stay on 11.0 or 11.2 or are there any limitations?

 

[PeterHolbrook]

@cdf Thanks a bunch. One more question, I'm still on Catalina everything works fine, but I'm kinda forced to upgrade to BigSur as I need newest Xcode for work. I saw on frontpage that 11.3+ is problematic, would it work to simply stay on 11.0 or 11.2?

Up to 11.2.3 there are no problems whatsoever. After 11.3, there are no guarantees, but I see no reason why latebloom wouldn't work for you. It works great for me and for quite a few other users. I'm currently on 11.5.2 and some users are even booting the latest Monterey beta successfully.

 

[cdf]

@cdf Thanks a bunch. One more question, I'm still on Catalina everything works fine, but I'm kinda forced to upgrade to BigSur as I need newest Xcode for work. I saw on frontpage that 11.3+ is problematic, would it work to simply stay on 11.0 or 11.2?

As @PeterHolbrook mentioned, Latebloom is definitely worth trying. It works great for me with just the default parameters.

 

[joevt]

Not directly from RP. Will have to be done in one OS or the other at this time.

@joevt probably has some UEFI Shell stuff that could possibly be used but as with all UEFI Shell based stuff, we can't consider such (if existing) as accessible.

I haven't created any bless utility for UEFI.

RefindPlus does have the ability to set BootNext for some firmware boot options.

RefindPlus also has a menu to modify the boot options (change the order or delete an option). A simple change may be to include the list of scanned boot options in the list of boot options in that menu as unnamed Boot options (named boot options have names like Boot####). Then if the user chooses one of those unnamed options, then RefindPlus could give it a name (Boot####) and set it as the default boot option.

Another option would be for RefindPlus to add a submenu item for each boot option (sub menu is accessed with Tab key?) which would allow the user to set that item as the default boot option.

Either of those methods would stop RefindPlus from being the default boot option which is maybe something you don't want if you are depending on RefindPlus to show a boot screen menu on new graphics cards. In that case, RefindPlus has an option to remember the last RefindPlus selected boot option as the default RefindPlus selected boot option and an option to automatically boot that default after a timeout.

 

[sfalatko]

@cdf Thanks a bunch. One more question, I'm still on Catalina everything works fine, but I'm kinda forced to upgrade to BigSur as I need newest Xcode for work. I saw on frontpage that 11.3+ is problematic, would it work to simply stay on 11.0 or 11.2 or are there any limitations?

Many have had success with Latebloom (including me). Though it doesn't fix the issue it makes booting much, much more reliable.

I would not use 11.2.3 as you will not have the latest security fixes. I would suggest you install Big Sur with Latebloom on another drive and see how it works for you while preserving your Catalina install.

You might also consider something like a supported Mac Mini for Big Sur since you need it for work.

Regards,
@sfalatko

 

[Bmju]

Hi @cdf @Dayo :

                <key>Tools</key>
                <array>
                        <dict>
                                <key>Arguments</key>
                                <string>disable</string>
                                <key>Auxiliary</key>
                                <true/>
                                <key>Comment</key>
                                <string></string>
                                <key>Enabled</key>
                                <true/>
                                <key>Flavour</key>
                                <string>NVRAMTool</string>
                                <key>Name</key>
                                <string>Allow Bless</string>
                                <key>Path</key>
                                <string>OpenControl.efi</string>
                                <key>RealPath</key>
                                <false/>
                                <key>TextMode</key>
                                <true/>
                        </dict>
                        ...
                </array>

Boot entry. Flashes briefly. Temporarily allows bless until next boot.

The fact that OC shows other OCs is a side effect of https://github.com/acidanthera/OpenCorePkg/commit/3ef3e17a3 - it should only happen between different versions on either side of that commit - so you might be back to blessing from Recovery, but hopefully at least booted via OC.

 

[Dayo]

@Bmju ... since you are on a roll, wonder whether it is possible to expose whether RequestBootVarRouting is active or not after booting into OC.

 

[Bmju]

... but as with all UEFI Shell based stuff, we can't consider such (if existing) as accessible.

@Dayo It may be obvious now, but about this, see also the config extract I posted above. OpenControl.efi is actually a UEFI Shell command! [EDIT: shell tool I guess is more accurate.] So it turns out OC lets you make simple, single fixed calls to these much more accessible by wrapping them in a menu entry like this.

 

[Bmju]

@Bmju ... since you are on a roll, wonder whether it is possible to expose whether RequestBootVarRouting is active or not after booting into OC.

Lol. Well I figured out what tool you needed, then asked if it was reasonable to consider making it and was told it basically existed. So it turns out with the trick of wrapping the tool as an entry, no coding was even needed - OC could already do what you wanted, in fact! There's no way to get that extra info without some additional coding, though.

 

[Dayo]

OpenControl.efi is actually a UEFI Shell command! [EDIT: shell tool I guess is more accurate.]

Yeah. Once packaged as a tool, it becomes much more accessible.

There's no way to get that extra info without some additional coding, though.

I thought so but as you have never shirked a challenge, it's only a short matter of time before it is done!

 

[Bmju]

Yeah. Once packaged as a tool, it becomes much more accessible.


I thought so but as you have never shirked a challenge, it's only a short matter of time before it is done!

There's effort return ratio! I think if this pans out you've got more or less what you need for this, now? There's other things such as LVM EFI drivers for Linux to think about!