El Cap to High Sierra firmware update question...

[Upgrader]

Hi

I'm updating from El Capitan to High Sierra.

Doing so forces a firmware update.

Will this update prevent me from restoring my OS drive to back to El Capitan via Time Machine or a CCC clone??

Thanks.

 

[chrfr]

Hi

I'm updating from El Capitan to High Sierra.

Doing so forces a firmware update.

Will this update prevent me from restoring my OS drive to back to El Capitan via Time Machine or a CCC clone??

Thanks.

No, it will not.

 

[Upgrader]

No, it will not.

Thanks.

 

[treekram]

Hi

I'm updating from El Capitan to High Sierra.

Doing so forces a firmware update.

Will this update prevent me from restoring my OS drive to back to El Capitan via Time Machine or a CCC clone??

Thanks.

If you're upgrading the MacPro5,1, which is in your signature, the EFI upgrade is different than other Macs.

According to "The Apple of Your EFI" by Duo Labs,
"Apple implemented the required manual update for the MacPro5,1 through a plugin for the macOS InstallAssistant which is the executable that runs after the user downloads and runs “Install macOS High Sierra” from the Mac App Store. During the program flow, InstallAssistant performs the following calls and branches on any MacPro5,1 that requires the EFI update:
...

We performed a brief comparative analysis of the updated MacPro5,1 rmware and determined that outside of the ApfsJumpStart and PchResetRuntime DXE code additions, no other changes were present. This implies that Apple did not include any of the security patches that were released for other Mac models and only included the EFI functionality necessary to boot from an APFS volume."

If correct, then the only change in this EFI update is for APFS booting.

 

[chrfr]

If you're upgrading the MacPro5,1, which is in your signature, the EFI upgrade is different than other Macs.

According to "The Apple of Your EFI" by Duo Labs,
"Apple implemented the required manual update for the MacPro5,1 through a plugin for the macOS InstallAssistant which is the executable that runs after the user downloads and runs “Install macOS High Sierra” from the Mac App Store. During the program flow, InstallAssistant performs the following calls and branches on any MacPro5,1 that requires the EFI update:
...

We performed a brief comparative analysis of the updated MacPro5,1 rmware and determined that outside of the ApfsJumpStart and PchResetRuntime DXE code additions, no other changes were present. This implies that Apple did not include any of the security patches that were released for other Mac models and only included the EFI functionality necessary to boot from an APFS volume."

If correct, then the only change in this EFI update is for APFS booting.

The Duo Labs article is a bit out of date. The firmware updater included in the 10.13.6 installer updates CPU microcode to help mitigate against Spectre/Meltdown vulnerabilities.

 

[treekram]

The Duo Labs article is a bit out of date. The firmware updater included in the 10.13.6 installer updates CPU microcode to help mitigate against Spectre/Meltdown vulnerabilities.

Yeah, the article came out last year and up until that time, the Duo Labs article implied that the APFS EFI firmware update for the MacPro5,1 was the first one in a while. That EFI, MP51.0083.00B, was only for APFS but since then there have been further updates, up to MP51.0089.B00 (as of the last wave of updates, July 9, 2018). My assumption then that only APFS booting is involved if you update was incorrect. There's a long thread on the latest update in the Mac Pro forum.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mp51-0089-b00-the-return-of-microcodes.2126752/

For the OP, based on how many responses this thread got (11 pages), you might want to ask your question in that forum. There is one poster who had TM problems after an update but this poster seems to have TM problems after any update so it wouldn't appear to be firmware-related (post #243 of the above linked thread).

 

[Upgrader]

Yeah, the article came out last year and up until that time, the Duo Labs article implied that the APFS EFI firmware update for the MacPro5,1 was the first one in a while. That EFI, MP51.0083.00B, was only for APFS but since then there have been further updates, up to MP51.0089.B00 (as of the last wave of updates, July 9, 2018). My assumption then that only APFS booting is involved if you update was incorrect. There's a long thread on the latest update in the Mac Pro forum.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mp51-0089-b00-the-return-of-microcodes.2126752/

For the OP, based on how many responses this thread got (11 pages), you might want to ask your question in that forum. There is one poster who had TM problems after an update but this poster seems to have TM problems after any update so it wouldn't appear to be firmware-related (post #243 of the above linked thread).

Thank you all again. I’ll take a look through that thread.

Also, I should add that my machine is a 2009 4,1 that I manually flashed to a 5,1 to allow a processor upgrade.

I’ve now upgraded to High Sierra and all seems well so far but I’m yet to attempt a downgrade should I need to.

Any opinions on the potential for the flashed firmware to cause issues?

 

[treekram]

Thank you all again. I’ll take a look through that thread.

Also, I should add that my machine is a 2009 4,1 that I manually flashed to a 5,1 to allow a processor upgrade.

I’ve now upgraded to High Sierra and all seems well so far but I’m yet to attempt a downgrade should I need to.

Any opinions on the potential for the flashed firmware to cause issues?

It appears that being an original 4,1 flashed to 5,1 doesn't pose a problem for the EFI firmware update (and it appears that it didn't for you - how did the firmware update go?).
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...in-high-sierra-for-cmp.2060505/#post-24874046
See posts #4 and #23 - there's probably more.

You really should go to the Mac Pro forum. The threads dealing with the issue of High Sierra, APFS and the recent firmware updates get a lot of responses (at least those that I've seen). This linked thread has 15 pages of responses.

 

[Upgrader]

It appears that being an original 4,1 flashed to 5,1 doesn't pose a problem for the EFI firmware update (and it appears that it didn't for you - how did the firmware update go?).
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...in-high-sierra-for-cmp.2060505/#post-24874046
See posts #4 and #23 - there's probably more.

You really should go to the Mac Pro forum. The threads dealing with the issue of High Sierra, APFS and the recent firmware updates get a lot of responses (at least those that I've seen). This linked thread has 15 pages of responses.

Will do. Cheers.