macOS 10.14 Mojave on Unsupported Macs Thread

[RK78]

is there a new permission or security setting or certificate i need?

Sorry, all I can say is haven't needed to do anything special to make Brave work. That it works in Safe Mode might be a clue.

 

[nospamboz]

Does web browsers like Brave-Opera-Yandex etc. operate in Mojave 10.14.6 anymore?
after a security update during this early summer, the MacBook air won't show these browsers
only in safe mode, and allowing these apps to control my computer in accessories did not help.

You may want to try the workaround from a few pages back in this thread. It worked for me on Chromium.

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...unsupported-macs-thread.2121473/post-30134479

 

[MBAir2010]

You may want to try the workaround from a few pages back in this thread. It worked for me on Chromium.

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...unsupported-macs-thread.2121473/post-30134479

thank you for this information, since sarafi works i will stick with that then risk ruining the macbook
there are too many graphic designs and art compared last month i won't risk losing over a web browser.
we need to remember these are not our laptops anymore, they are under apple's control

 

[guig]

believe or not, there's a youtube video on this topic that i used as a guide.
here's the page the youtube video points to. read the comments by jon at the bottom
for tips on streamlining the process

Boot Failures After Converting MacOS SSD To APFS - TeckLyfe

After converting your MacOS hard disk to APFS, you could run into a situation where your Mac is no longer bootable and you get errors like "Building boot

www.tecklyfe.com

Thanks for the reply, Icubed ! I didnt had the opportunity to try that method so far but I will soon.

 

[dhns]

looking for help installing Mojve on an iMac8,1 (having El Capitan on an internal disk) using http://dosdude1.com/mojave/

Creating an USB drive with the patcher (latest available version), booting from the USB drive, formatting a big enough second external USB disk (either HFS or APFS), installing Mojave and finally applying patches seems to be ok.
But the result fails to boot.
Choosing the EFI boot option I get a list of messages from the "custom booting method" (different ones for HFS or APFS) which look similar as those shown in [MEDIA] but it does not find a bootable system.
In best case the system starts over and boots El Capitan from the internal disk.

Any suggestions?

Anyone with a suggestion what I could do or try differently? My main reason to try to upgrade from 10.11.6 to 10.14 is that Apple Mail needs a more modern version of TLS as requested by the ISP.

 

[internetzel]

I wonder whether Mojave is effectively out of security support now - it didn't get a security update for that zero-day exploit (yet), while all other supported Apple OSes did.
And zero-day means that all versions of macOS until now did have that security hole.

 

[internetzel]

I wonder whether Mojave is effectively out of security support now - it didn't get a security update for that zero-day exploit (yet), while all other supported Apple OSes did.
And zero-day means that all versions of macOS until now did have that security hole.

Here a german article about the missing 10.14 security update.

 

[KeesMacPro]

I wonder whether Mojave is effectively out of security support now - it didn't get a security update for that zero-day exploit

There was a Safari update 2 days ago .

 

[internetzel]

There was a Safari update 2 days ago .

Yes, but that's for a different issue.
The NSO Pegasus spyware uses a zero-day security exploit in the CoreGraphics framework - without that exploit fixed further daily online use should be avoided.

 

[RK78]

Possible, but unlikely that Mac will be targeted

See

Pegasus

Hi Thomas, Wondering if Malwarebytes will be covering Pegasus as on-access (as a zero-click would assume not) or even for a post infection scan. Seeing that the Mac sec update is only available for Big Sur, nothing even for Catalina. As I'm restricted to HS or Mojave, would be nice to know if Mal...

forums.malwarebytes.com

We're actually not aware of any current Pegasus malware for macOS. Keep in mind that the vulnerability affected both iOS and macOS, but the only known exploits are on iOS (where, of course, nobody can do anything), and not on macOS.
That's not to say a Mac Pegasus implant can't exist, but no security researchers to my knowledge have found it. Either it exists, but is used so cautiously that nobody's managed to find it, or NSO is only focused on mobile.

Besides that, unlikely that the average user, even mobile, will be targeted. Seems to be aimed mostly at human rights activist, journalists, dissidents, etc. by despotic governments. For more on that see

FORCEDENTRY: NSO Group iMessage Zero-Click Exploit Captured in the Wild - The Citizen Lab

While analyzing the phone of a Saudi activist infected with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, we discovered a zero-day zero-click exploit against iMessage. The exploit, which we call FORCEDENTRY, targets Apple’s image rendering library, and was effective against Apple iOS, MacOS and WatchOS devices.

citizenlab.ca

 

[chevyboy60013]

I am wondering if it would be worth doing this to my late 2011 13 inch MacBook Pro, it has a 2.4 i5, 8gb ram and a 500g hd. It works so good on high Sierra, and don't want to ruin it.

 

[nospamboz]

I am wondering if it would be worth doing this to my late 2011 13 inch MacBook Pro....
It works so good on high Sierra, and don't want to ruin it.

Just my opinion, but at this late date, I'm not sure it matters.

Mojave will soon (if not already) be in the same "unsupported" boat as HS, with no more security updates, so the main reason most people upgrade is gone. There might be a Mojave feature (like Dark Mode) which might prompt the upgrade for you, or some software that forces it, but know that there can be a LOT of issues on Mojave. If it's working, don't fix it.

(In my own case, it was only recently that I was able to figure out a lot of unnecessary services I could disable and reduce the boot time to usability from 15 minutes to less than 5. I was very close to rolling back to HS, but changed my mind once I fixed the system.)

(Also in my own case, I've successfully got Debian Linux working on its own partition, and will switch over to that as my primary OS once the EOL becomes official with Monterey's release, running MacOS and Windows 10 [also on its own partition] in VMware Player VMs, which works surprisingly well, or booting them directly as necessary.)

One thing's for sure. Don't go to Catalina or beyond. Definitely too much trouble.

 

[RK78]

(In my own case, it was only recently that I was able to figure out a lot of unnecessary services I could disable and reduce the boot time to usability from 15 minutes to less than 5. I was very close to rolling back to HS, but changed my mind once I fixed the system.)

Can you perhaps explain just what the "unnecessary services" were?

 

[nospamboz]

Can you perhaps explain just what the "unnecessary services" were?

Well, there are plenty of features in Mojave that I have no need for, but the daemons still run, no matter what you have in Settings. Things like sharingd, suggestd, routined, studentd, touristd, passd. It goes on and on. Just look at their man pages, what little there are. Those processes and their ilk take up heaps of CPU during boot, before they finally decide "Oh, I'm not necessary!"

It's just Apple being lazy and trying to treat my Macbook like an iPhone. "Build the garden wall higher, so they never want to leave, and give all their money to us." Bah. That's why I'm shifting to Debian.

 

[RK78]

Well, there are plenty of features in Mojave that I have no need for, but the daemons still run, no matter what you have in Settings. Things like sharingd, suggestd, routined, studentd, touristd, passd. It goes on and on. Just look at their man pages, what little there are. Those processes and their ilk take up heaps of CPU during boot, before they finally decide "Oh, I'm not necessary!"

It's just Apple being lazy and trying to treat my Macbook like an iPhone. "Build the garden wall higher, so they never want to leave, and give all their money to us." Bah. That's why I'm shifting to Debian.

Thanks for that. Was preoccupied or would have replied sooner. Wonder if there is a complete list somewhere of all those unnecessary 10.14 daemons, so I can launchctl unload the crap out of all of them.

 

[nospamboz]

Wonder if there is a complete list somewhere of all those unnecessary 10.14 daemons, so I can launchctl unload the crap out of all of them.

Well, if you do a Google Verbatim search for all the daemons I listed, it takes you to:

https://gist.github.com/pwnsdx/1217727ca57de2dd2a372afdd7a0fc21

I certainly consulted that list during my research, but it warns against simply using it without thinking. "launchctl dumpstate" also helped.

Mostly I monitored the processes in a Terminal with "top -o cpu -n 14 -s 5 -i 5 ", at least as well as I could, because often I couldn't get a terminal going, the CPU was so busy. Disabling the daemons I listed is a good start. Have at it.

 

[RK78]

Thanks again. Tried unloading just the 6 you mention beginning with sharind on iMac, which isn't where the real issue with Mojave patcher has been. So not seeing all that much difference there. Next, will unload those 6 at the Mini, with a slower CPU and less RAM, where the problems running Mojave have always been, especially constant beachballing (but not at all certain that those unnecessary processes are responsible - though worth a try.)

After reading the comments at the github script page, realized that that isn't something I'm quite ready to wade into. Although might try some of those individually, selectively, as you suggest.

Think I will have similar difficulty at the Mini getting into Terminal to have a look at top to see what processes are running at bootup. But will give it a try. Once the boot is finished, and things have settled down (which can take quite a while) might try looking at inactive processes in Activity Monitor to see which of those are mentioned at the github page, and unload just those.

 

[nospamboz]

Think I will have similar difficulty at the Mini getting into Terminal to have a look at top to see what processes are running at bootup.

You probably already know this, but on the Mini you can activate System Preferences>Sharing>Remote Login and ssh in from Terminal on the iMac.

 

[RK78]

You probably already know this, but on the Mini you can activate System Preferences>Sharing>Remote Login and ssh in from Terminal on the iMac.

Know about that, but have never enabled it. But don't understand how that would allow me to see the boot processes at the Mini from the iMac, thereby avoiding the slow boot time there, in order to run top at Terminal? Btw, both Mini/iMac on same LAN/Ethernet.

 

[nospamboz]

don't understand how that would allow me to see the boot processes at the Mini from the iMac, thereby avoiding the slow boot time there, in order to run top

Using ssh to start a command shell takes up far fewer resources than opening a Terminal app. It's like:

iMac-prompt-in-Terminal$ ssh Mini
Mini-prompt$ command-to-run-on-Mini

It's not something I had to try in my case, but it's what I'd try if I were in yours. My guess is that the ssh server daemon on the Mini would be available well before you are even able to login normally there.

It's worth a try. Trust my 40 years of Unix shell experience.

 

[MBAir2010]

I am wondering if it would be worth doing this to my late 2011 13 inch MacBook Pro, it has a 2.4 i5, 8gb ram and a 500g hd. It works so good on high Sierra, and don't want to ruin it.

I upgraded my MacBook Air 2010 4GB with Catalina Wednesday, and the OS X is very responsive and stable.
everything works to my amazement and Safari 15 is a breath of fresh air.

 

[joshuafried]

Apologies if I'm doing this post wrong. I seem to have successfully installed DosDude's latest Mojave patcher, on MacPro3,1 with NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 512MB (which was native on the next model, MacPro4,1), on an erased APFS SSD. I had no problem running the post-install patches, and did

I get the scrolling text from his boot process. Then a very un-Mojave looking grey sprocket; startup finishes and I'm dumped into Finder on another startup disk (natively-supported 10.7.5 in another drive bay). I can repeat this at will by selecting "EFI Boot" in startup manager.

I redid the process on HFS+, with success!

I thought the OfficialAPFSFWUpdate BootROM patcher was only for machines that DO support High Sierra. Did I get that backwards, and if I run this scary .pkg I might have success with APFS? Updating firmware on the MacPro3,1? I don't want to lose my ability to run older OSes, El Cap and lower.

 

[Hackintosh HD]

How to re-enable Instant GPU Switching / GPU Switching on the fly on MacBook Pro Mid 2009 (MacBookPro5,2)​

​

Background: As you may know, the classic first real "unibody" MacBook Pro Early/Mid 2009 (MacBookPro5,2) came with an integrated and a discrete graphics card, a nVidia GeForce 9400M (integrated) and a more capable nVidia GeForce 9600M GT. While both GPU hardwares are capable of instantly switching from one to the other, subsequently called "Instand GPU Switching" or "GPU Switching on the fly", Apple never integrated it into their OS releases before declaring the MacBookPro5,2 EoL. The feature was however implemented by third-party applications like gfxCardStatus, gSwitch, gpu-switch, until Apple broke the underlying OS mechanism in macOS 10.13.0 High Sierra. For more details, I'd like to refer to a 2019 macrumors post of mine.

After quite some research, I think I have now managed to reenable the MacBook Pro's "Instant GPU Switching" ability by a few rather simple steps at least on High Sierra and Mojave and I would like to share the following info with you.

Tested on: macOS 10.13 High Sierra, macOS 10.14 Mojave, macOS 12 Monterey (1)
Yet to be tested on (volunteers welcome! @hvds , @jackluke ?): macOS 10.15 Catalina, macOS 11 Big Sur
Works with: gfxCardStatus 2.5 by Cody Krieger (although the author, obviously unaware of this hack, lists the MacBook Pro 2010 series as his application's minimum requirement), gfxCardStatus 2.4.x (fork by Steve Schow)
Please note: In the following steps, I've used a High Sierra / Mojave installation stick generated by @dosdude1's High Sierra Patcher / Mojave Patcher to boot from to cleanly rebuild the system partition's kext cache. If you follow these steps, you also need to prepare one in advance!

Steps:

1. Download Apple's last security update for macOS 10.12.6 Sierra, Security Update 2019-005:
   

   wget https://swcdn.apple.com/content/downloads/55/63/061-41803-A_87X0EHD65R/gt50wt0ye0twqkj227l9g7vw2ok4nl72a6/SecUpd2019-005Sierra.pkg -O /tmp/SecUpd2019-005Sierra.pkg

2. Expand the downloaded Security Update 2019-005 via the undocumented pkgutil switch "--expand-full":
   

   pkgutil --expand-full "/tmp/SecUpd2019-005Sierra.pkg" "/tmp/SecUpd2019-005Sierra"

3. Backup your current system's /System/Library/Extensions/AppleGraphicsControl.kext/Content/PlugIns/AppleMuxControl.kext to a safe location.​
4. Delete your current system's /System/Library/Extensions/AppleGraphicsControl.kext/Content/PlugIns/AppleMuxControl.kext (before doing that, please make absolutely sure you have a working High Sierra / Mojave installation stick generated by dosdude1's High Sierra Patcher / Mojave Patcher to reboot from):
   

   sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/AppleGraphicsControl.kext/Content/PlugIns/AppleMuxControl.kext

   (do not touch AppleMuxControl2.kext, which exists since macOS 10.13.3 and is - to the best of my knowledge - not relevant here)​
5. Copy AppleMuxControl.kext version 3.14.52b52 from Sierra's Security Update 2019-005 to /S/L/E/AppleGraphicsControl.kext/Contents/PlugIns (in other words to the place where you've just deleted your system's current AppleMuxControl.kext):
   

   sudo cp -p -R /tmp/SecUpd2019-005Sierra/Payload/System/Library/Extensions/AppleGraphicsControl.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleMuxControl.kext /System/Library/Extensions/AppleGraphicsControl.kext/Contents/PlugIns/

6. Shutdown your system, reboot from your High Sierra / Mojave installation stick generated by dosdude1's High Sierra Patcher / Mojave Patcher (depending on whether you have High Sierra or Mojave, of course).​
7. Once you've booted into your installation stick's installer, launch dosdude1's macOS Post Install from the Utilities window.​
8. In the launched macOS Post Install utility, select "MacBookPro5,2" as your Mac model and your system partition under "Select Volume:", deselect all patches / patch options for your MacBookPro5,2, as we don't want to overwrite our modified AppleMuxControl.kext (this is important!). Select "Force Cache Rebuild" and click on Reboot.​
9. On reboot, reset your MacBook Pro's NVRAM by using CMD + Shift + P + R (this is also important!).​
10. After the NVRAM reset's reboot, log into High Sierra / Mojave, launch gfxCardStatus and now switch instantly between your nVidia GeForce 9400M and 9600M GT again!​

Please note: In my experience, Instant GPU Switching can be blocked by either specific applications creating dependencies to the discrete GPU (specifically QT-based applications like Nextcloud Client …) or broken NVRAM settings. If you encounter difficulties with Instant GPU Switching, a reboot + a NVRAM reset is recommended.

Any feedback would be highly appreciated, of course!

 

[chevyboy60013]

I upgraded my MacBook Air 2010 4GB with Catalina Wednesday, and the OS X is very responsive and stable.
everything works to my amazement and Safari 15 is a breath of fresh air.

maybe I will have to get a usb drive and go for Catalina.

 

[MBAir2010]

maybe I will have to get a usb drive and go for Catalina.

catalina was very responsive and quicker internet to my surprise!
mojave was better, but catalina did the job!

and now apple is letting me download BigSur……all-of the sudden?
i have 21 minutes left to go