MP 1,1-5,1 Advice for OSX version for a 4.1->5.1 cMP

[thibsweb]

Hello everyone,

I still use my old 2009 MacPro as my main computer at home. It is used as a both a server machine (media server, web server, file server) and workstation (office, web, medias, photo...) with lots of HDD and SDD attached to it (8 drives total). It only has one CPU (W3690) and a bios flashed RX590 (Polaris). I did a BootRom reconstruction and revert to the clean version each year or so. And it has the latest BT 4.2 card with external antenna.

It currently runs very fine on OCLP/Monterey since a few years and is extremely stable ; system disk is an AHCI Apple SSD fitted in pci-e card I bought a while ago for compatibility before nvme was even possible on these machines. I usually reboot the machine every 6 months and never have a crash in between. X58 diode runs around 70°C after some hardware DIY upgrades. In fact it is one of the most stable and satisfying machine/OS I have ever owned.

(I also have a Mojave system on sata 1 drive for safety reasons but haven't booted on that one since ages).

I would not bother upgrading if Safari could be updated but that is not the case and even if firefox ESR is working great, I have a lot of data stored in Safari settings that I use on various devices and also use the continuity functionality a lot.

I am considering installing either Sonoma or Sequoia. Sonoma would buy me 2 years of tranquility, Sequoia 3 years. Slow boot time is really not an issue for me but I have read various reports here and there about issues on Sequoia caused by AVX instructions.

What would be your recommendation, Sonoma of Sequoia, for a painless, hassle-free update ?

Regarding the procedure, I intend to proceed as usual with an installation from a USB 32GB system key prepared by OCLP and plugged on the front USB port of the MacPro. Mouse/keyboard issue should not be a problem because they are both plugged in though the USB Hub integrated in my monitor. Is there anything I should take care ? I already installed previous versions of OSX the same route with no trouble.

Thanks for any input!

Best

thibsweb

 

[reader50]

With a system as stable as yours, I recommend against a direct upgrade. Clone your working install to a separate drive or partition, and upgrade that clone. If things don't work out, reboot to your Monterey install and everything is back to normal.

Apple makes it exceptionally hard to downgrade back to a previous macOS. You pretty much need to keep your old install intact, or do a reinstall followed by restore from backups. Leaving the current install intact is by far the easier route to being able to back out of a bad upgrade.

I've personally used both Sonoma and Sequoia on my cMP 4,1 -> 5,1 without significant issues. But I don't use Pro software, or anything else likely to have AVX opcodes. So my experience might not be typical.

You could even test both Sonoma and Sequoia at the same time, by making two clones from Monterey. See if you like one over the other. With your stable Monterey install always a reboot away.

 

[AlexMaximus]

Hello everyone,

I still use my old 2009 MacPro as my main computer at home. It is used as a both a server machine (media server, web server, file server) and workstation (office, web, medias, photo...) with lots of HDD and SDD attached to it (8 drives total). It only has one CPU (W3690) and a bios flashed RX590 (Polaris). I did a BootRom reconstruction and revert to the clean version each year or so. And it has the latest BT 4.2 card with external antenna.

It currently runs very fine on OCLP/Monterey since a few years and is extremely stable ; system disk is an AHCI Apple SSD fitted in pci-e card I bought a while ago for compatibility before nvme was even possible on these machines. I usually reboot the machine every 6 months and never have a crash in between. X58 diode runs around 70°C after some hardware DIY upgrades. In fact it is one of the most stable and satisfying machine/OS I have ever owned.

(I also have a Mojave system on sata 1 drive for safety reasons but haven't booted on that one since ages).

I would not bother upgrading if Safari could be updated but that is not the case and even if firefox ESR is working great, I have a lot of data stored in Safari settings that I use on various devices and also use the continuity functionality a lot.

I am considering installing either Sonoma or Sequoia. Sonoma would buy me 2 years of tranquility, Sequoia 3 years. Slow boot time is really not an issue for me but I have read various reports here and there about issues on Sequoia caused by AVX instructions.

What would be your recommendation, Sonoma of Sequoia, for a painless, hassle-free update ?

Regarding the procedure, I intend to proceed as usual with an installation from a USB 32GB system key prepared by OCLP and plugged on the front USB port of the MacPro. Mouse/keyboard issue should not be a problem because they are both plugged in though the USB Hub integrated in my monitor. Is there anything I should take care ? I already installed previous versions of OSX the same route with no trouble.

Thanks for any input!

Best

thibsweb

After more than 12 years of usage of my Mac Pro 5.1, I am in the process to move all data to a new refurb 7.1 at the moment. I used to have Sonoma on it for the last year, because Sequoia was kind of a risk in the beginning when it came out. Because Apple always tries to screw with your MacOS system with involuntary updates in the queue, I was forced to update to Sequoia because I could not run the root patcher in OCLP. This was two days ago and I have to be honest, I am still surprised how smooth Sequoia runs on the MP 5.1
I really should have installed Sequoia a lot sooner. So as many YT in the net, I can state Sequoia runs really great. The times are over in which you have to run Sonoma and wait for a proper fixed Sequoia. The time is now. Go full on Sequoia, its save to go for it. - And Apple TV App finally works as well..

 

[thibsweb]

Thanks @AlexMaximus and @reader50 for your replies. I just took the plunge and upgraded to Sequoia 15.7.7 a few hours ago. Installation went smoothly from USB key. OCLP displayed that I had already all root patches but graphics seemed a bit slow. I also had some issues with Safari not loading some random websites correctly.

I installed root patches again and I was right to do so because it is now definitely much snappier. Safari also loads all websites correctly now.

I also noticed (after root patches reinstall) that under google chrome, some small graphics are not rendered correctly, they are not smoothed. I tryed disabling graphics acceleration in Chrome settings and this solved the issue. This setting does not seem to slow graphics rendering/display so I'll keep it like this untilI find a proper explanation (?).

I also noticed my fans blowing when the Mail app is launched. In fact, I have a icloudmailagent process eating up 500-600% CPU time since a few hours. I understand that this is a normal process used to reindex all the mail database. Since mine is 50k messages, I'll leave it do its job and hope it finishes in the next couple of days.

Although I have BCM943602CDP bluetooth 4.2 card, BT works flawlessly, including Continuity. I checked with OpenCore configurator and I saw that OCLP did not install the spoof driver for older BT cards, so I did not have to remove it.

I was also happy to see that my shell configuration and settings did not change in any way, with crontab and other things untouched.

EDIT : icloudmailagent process lasted the whole day yesterday, (and the room was well heated!) but when I woke up this morning, it was finished hopefully.

 

[thibsweb]

Just a heads up, everything still working fine but Safari ; it is sometimes slow, sometimes audio stops working when using YouTube, and some website pages (amazon) do not load correctly (recurring problem...). My guess is it is because I installed the latest Safari update (26.5) which contains AVX2 instructions not cleared by OCLP. Now the question is... can I go back to the Safari version shipped with MacOS 15.7.7 ?

EDIT : after some research, while waiting for a new version of OCLP, I found that this could solve the issue : https://ptrix01.github.io/