MP 1,1-5,1 How do I bless the opencore legacy patcher USB installer?

[sirroderick]

Maybe try a manual basic setup of OpenCore:

OpenCore on the Mac Pro

This guide explains how to use the excellent OpenCore boot loader to install, run, and update the latest version of macOS on the MacPro5,1, resulting in a clean, unaltered operating system just like on a supported Mac.

forums.macrumors.com

Well that seemed to go perfectly until 'first boot' restart. Before I could move my mouse to click on 'EFI Boot' the Startup manager screen disappeared and High Sierra launched. I restarted in Mojave and it was literally like going back in time before I started (no EFI folder). Hostile!

 

[sirroderick]

Well that seemed to go perfectly until 'first boot' restart. Before I could move my mouse to click on 'EFI Boot' the Startup manager screen disappeared and High Sierra launched. I restarted in Mojave and it was literally like going back in time before I started (no EFI folder). Hostile!

Tried again this time completed to this point....

---------------------------------------------------------------------
If your Mac has native boot-screen support

➊ Reboot and hold Option to enter Startup Manager.
➋ Use the arrow keys to select "EFI Boot", then holding Control, press Enter.

OpenCore will start and is selected for booting automatically.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

and was not taken to OpenCore but to this screen and back to square 1...

 

[cdf]

and was not taken to OpenCore but to this screen and back to square 1...

Actually, that screen is the OpenCore boot picker.

 

[sirroderick]

Who da thunk it!

 

[sirroderick]

Actually, that screen is the OpenCore boot picker.

and since it doesn't contain the drive I put the ESP on do I assume it should have gone on a system drive?

 

[cdf]

and since it doesn't contain the drive I put the ESP on do I assume it should have gone on a system drive?

The location of the ESP shouldn't matter. OC should automatically detect all healthy macOS installations—patched (dosdude1) installations being problematic.

 

[sirroderick]

Actually, that screen is the OpenCore boot picker.

Just to be clear: I should be selecting Recovery 10.4.6. even though it''s not the disk I created in the ESP on, yes?
And do I need to go through the whole procedure a third time or is the ESP still there but just not visible?

 

[cdf]

Just to be clear: I should be selecting Recovery 10.4.6. even though it''s not the disk I created in the ESP on, yes?
And do I need to go through the whole procedure a third time or is the ESP still there but just not visible?

As described in the guide, if you've set LauncherOption=Full, then OC will automatically be blessed after starting at least once. So no need to enter Recovery to bless it if that's the case.

However, if you haven't set LauncherOption=Full, then you'll still need to bless OC, but you can't do it from an OC booted system (with RequestBootVarRouting=true): you'll need to do it from a natively booted installation of Mojave. See Maintenance > Disabling OpenCore in the guide.

To answer your questions:

1. It doesn't matter that your Mojave installation is not on the same disk as your ESP. You can still use its Recovery environment (booted natively) to bless OC.
2. Unlike the native boot picker, the OC boot picker will not show the ESP on which it is installed.

 

[Macsonic]

Well this morning 'Install macOS' actually DID do something. I haven't a clue what changed overnight but that's what happened. So now I'm running High Sierra and I've put the GTX 680 back in. I assume I need to do this as Mojave requires Metal GPU support. I tried the Mojave bootable install disk I made yesterday but that wouldn't work (back to the ''Install macOS' doesn't do anything' thing again. This is a legit upgrade now so I'd have thought it would possible to install it from the desktop but it seems no you just get the dreaded beach ball of death.

On Nvidia cards not being recognized by the Mojave installer is a known bug. This was mentioned in the guide created by @tsialex on upgrading to Mojave. It’s an excellent guide posted by Tsialex. The alternate solution mentioned is to use 2 SSD drives to install Mojave. Drive A will have the Mojave installer and Drive B as the target drive for Mojave to be installed. This process worked well for me using Nvidia Kepler GPUs. I removed all other drives before installing. I have Nvidia 680GTX, Quadro K5000 and 770GTX and was able to install Mojave.

MP5,1: What you have to do to upgrade to Mojave (BootROM upgrade instructions thread)

Please fully read this first post, you will probably find that you have one or more problems described into the various notes below. Mojave will only install if you have upgraded your BootROM to the current release and your Mac Pro have a Metal capable GPU*. If you are trying to install Mojave...

forums.macrumors.com

After installing Open Core by Martin Lo, this time I successfully installed Mojave via the flash drive createinstallmedia using Nvidia GPUs. I learned about this from a post in the FB Opencore group. Key is doing extensive research and reading various blogs or other sources about Open Core.

 

[sirroderick]

Thank you so much for your help cdf but having finally read Tsialex's impressively comprehensive but utterly baffling document from start to finish I now strongly suspect that my original 'blessing' issue (that launched me on this path) was probably related to my boot ROM needing to be updated from 140.0.0.0. I think I'm going to have abandon that journey before I embark on it. The instructions tend to assume so much prior familiarity and sadly I just don't have the necessary time to find my way through. Thanks again.

 

[sirroderick]

Thank you so much for your help cdf but having finally read Tsialex's impressively comprehensive but utterly baffling document from start to finish I now strongly suspect that my original 'blessing' issue (that launched me on this path) was probably related to my boot ROM needing to be updated from 140.0.0.0. I think I'm going to have abandon that journey before I embark on it. The instructions tend to assume so much prior familiarity and sadly I just don't have the necessary time to find my way through. Thanks again.

Sorry to bother you again but it occurred to me that the EFI created in the 1st pat of your instructions is probably still there even though it seems to have disappeared. I wondered if that might cause problems if I ever have another attempt at some point in the future. Is just erasing the disk enough to return me to my previous state?

 

[cdf]

Is just erasing the disk enough to return me to my previous state?

Yes, but make sure to erase the entire physical disk (not just individual volumes because otherwise the contents of the EFI partition will remain). In Disk Utility, you need to select View > Show All Devices.

 

[sirroderick]

Oh dear! formatted the entire disk but now can't get into recovery mode. Tried quite a few times. Must be something to do with the EFI. Maybe that first pass I did of your method when I was rebooted automatically to High Sierra did something regarding EFI. Something's has changed that's for sure.

 

[sirroderick]

Yes, but make sure to erase the entire physical disk (not just individual volumes because otherwise the contents of the EFI partition will remain). In Disk Utility, you need to select View > Show All Devices.

Tried everything. Mac Pro refuses to enter recovery mode in High Sierra, Big Sur or Catalina. Won't do Safe Mode or Internet Recovery mode either. I reformatted the SSD I used for your opencore installer as instructed. Maybe I made a mistake with some of the terminal input and it's screwed up my machine, although I did triple check everything before hitting enter.

 

[sfalatko]

Tried everything. Mac Pro refuses to enter recovery mode in High Sierra, Big Sur or Catalina. Won't do Safe Mode or Internet Recovery mode either. I reformatted the SSD I used for your opencore installer as instructed. Maybe I made a mistake with some of the terminal input and it's screwed up my machine, although I did triple check everything before hitting enter.

Check to see if you still have a recovery partition.

 

[sirroderick]

Yes. All 4 drives show a recovery partition in diskutil list. All of different size though.

 

[sfalatko]

Yes. All 4 drives show a recovery partition in diskutil list. All of different size though.

OK. I expected that but thought I would ask.

One thing to try (if you haven't) is to set your startup disk to the drive with the recovery partition you want to boot. I do this to make sure I get the right partition when I boot without OpenCore to dump or load my ROM (to turn of SIP) as I don't have an EFI flashed GPU and don't see the stock Apple Boot Selector Screen.

Also, I you should only have one OpenCore installation in one EFI partition.

 

[sirroderick]

OK. I expected that but thought I would ask.

One thing to try (if you haven't) is to set your startup disk to the drive with the recovery partition you want to boot. I do this to make sure I get the right partition when I boot without OpenCore to dump or load my ROM (to turn of SIP) as I don't have an EFI flashed GPU and don't see the stock Apple Boot Selector Screen.

Also, I you should only have one OpenCore installation in one EFI partition.

I now only have one formatted drive on the machine (the one with Mojave on) the SSD and the other HD have both been fully reformatted (as you described) but I still can't boot in recovery mode. The Mojave drive definitely has a recovery partition so I'm at a loss. BTW the reason I wanted to go into recovery mode was to check if SIP was off because someone suggested it might have been implicated in my original blessing issue.

 

[Alpha Centauri]

{snip} BTW the reason I wanted to go into recovery mode was to check if SIP was off because someone suggested it might have been implicated in my original blessing issue.

You can check if SIP is enabled/ disabled by typing "csrutil status" into Terminal OR go to About This Mac>Overview>System Report>Software

 

[sirroderick]

Ok thanks I'll do that but would it affect recovery mode?

 

[sirroderick]

Well it's enabled so that might explain my issues with OCLP but as things stand it's rather academic, at least as far as this macPro is concerned.

 

[sfalatko]

Ok thanks I'll do that but would it affect recovery mode?

It would not affect recovery mode (SIP status)

Check and see if your recovery partition is empty - you can mount it in terminal and then "open" the volume to see the contents. Maybe your recovery partition got messed up. Otherwise I don't see what would prohibit you from booting into recovery.

You can also look at using Carbon Copy Cloner to recreate/create a recovery partition. There is a free trial. See here - Frequently Asked Questions about cloning Apple's "Recovery HD" partition

Have you also tried using the command "sudo nvram "recovery-boot-mode=unused" && sudo reboot recovery" from terminal?

 

[sirroderick]

It would not affect recovery mode (SIP status)

Check and see if your recovery partition is empty - you can mount it in terminal and then "open" the volume to see the contents. Maybe your recovery partition got messed up. Otherwise I don't see what would prohibit you from booting into recovery.

You can also look at using Carbon Copy Cloner to recreate/create a recovery partition. There is a free trial. See here - Frequently Asked Questions about cloning Apple's "Recovery HD" partition

Have you also tried using the command "sudo nvram "recovery-boot-mode=unused" && sudo reboot recovery" from terminal?

Thanks for those tips I'll give 'em a go. Might not be til tomorrow though now. BTW I've had CCC since the first release years ago so I have clones of Mojave as well as my original OCLP version of Catalina (I must say the process seemed a lot more idiot proof back then).

 

[sfalatko]

Thanks for those tips I'll give 'em a go. Might not be til tomorrow though now. BTW I've had CCC since the first release years ago so I have clones of Mojave as well as my original OCLP version of Catalina (I must say the process seemed a lot more idiot proof back then).

Well good luck. I really am curious as to the cause of all your issues.

I had success quite some time ago recreating a missing recovery partition using CCC though I don't remember the exact process.

 

[sirroderick]

I found the the cause and it's pretty obscure. It's a USB hardware issue and it must have kicked in midway through executing (or attempting to execute) your OCLP instructions. I know this because I used CMD+R and OPT a number of times when I was installing High Sierra and Mojave earlier. To begin let me clarify that the keyboard and mouse seemed to work perfectly. Never a dropout of any kind. But it turns out there is one context in which USB now does NOT work and that is (da-da) during pre boot commands (CMD+R etc). What makes it even weirder is that it only applies to the rear ports, the front 2 are fine. I only found out by accident. I keep all my Mac Pros in a soundproof enclosure. which is air conditioned to stop them overheating. Half an hour ago I had the machine out of the cupboard to reconfigure the disks and needed to boot it to check something so I plugged the keyboard/mouse in the front and on a whim thought I'd try CMD+R for the umpteenth time and eureka! Guess I could get a USB PCI card to fix it.