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

[NoLemon]

I read the Windows Apendix again, this is pretty much all about the preparing of the USB stick. That basically detours the Installation USB stick through the OC EFI.
From that guide I cant really see, anything which is different from what I have on the Win SSD, except that the during win installation, paths or flags are set which aren´t set now.

The Windows EFI Partition isn´t (was never?) named EFI. its named "WINTOUSB". Could that be the problem ?

to me it looks like its a video driver problem.
the thing is, this installation was actually running on this mac in the first place.
with the same Hardware configuration.


Is it possible to convert the original USB stick, by following the guide,
to make it start over OC to fix Windows ?

 

[Gustav Holdoff]

I've been testing Martin's version of OC 0.9.0 for 4 hours already
everything works well

 

[NoLemon]

Ok now I know more.
I got two SSDs with Windows on it
The one I tried to get to work, which is the older installation, installed with unetbootin.
The other one, is the newer one which killed my EFI chip, and was the installation to get Titan ridge working,
That is seems to be a bootcamp installation, or was made to one, installing the apple boot camp software in Windows.
That one is not seen by OC.

Is there a way to get this one to work ?
With that I could fix the Unetbootin installation.

Thanks alot
NoLemon

 

[PeterHolbrook]

The update to OC 0.9.0 was just fine. No config.plist changes necessary in @cdf's guide (Post #1).

 

[MacNB2]

Success:

Also can be in files .contentDetails or .disk_label.contentDetails .

Thx. Found the culprit using @joevt utilities. See below.
"Macintosh HD" indeed was embedded in the .disk_label & .disk_label_2x files on one of the volumes (which I though I had already checked).

How about changing their labels to tell them apart? See post #12,383.

Thx. Success. Does the trick. I ran:

bless --folder /Volumes/EFI/EFI/BOOT --label OC-Sabrent

and then unmounted that EFI and ran bless on the second mounted EFI:

bless --folder /Volumes/EFI/EFI/BOOT --label OC-P120

See screenshot above.

Then went on to solve the ICON issues with Apple Startup Manager:

Download DiskUtil.sh and VolumeIconUtil.sh and joevt-osxiconutils. Build osxiconutils using Xcode and update the aliases of icns2icns, icns2image, image2icns at the top of VolumeIconUtil.sh.

Thanks. I have used your great utils in the past.
There's a problem with osxiconutils.
It builds fine but does not produce icns2icn command.
So I edited build.sh and added:

strip -x "${BUILD_DIR}/icns2icns"

xcodebuild  -parallelizeTargets \
-project "${XCODE_PROJ}" \
-target "icns2icns" \
-configuration "Release" \
CONFIGURATION_BUILD_DIR="${BUILD_DIR}" \
clean \
build

strip -x "${BUILD_DIR}/icns2icns"

The downloadable binaries on your GitHub also do not have the icns2icn command.

Use Terminal.app to execute commands from those scripts.

# First load the commands:
source DiskUtil.sh
source VolumeIconUtil.sh

# Then mount all your partitions so they can be examined:
mountEFIpartitions
mountRecoveryHDpartitions
mountRecoveryPartitions
mountPrebootPartitions

# Use mount to determine which volumes belong to what partitions:
mount

# Check disk labels. Use a text editor like BBEdit.app to view the results. Search for something that looks like
# "Macintosh HD" in the results.
dumpAllDiskLabels > ~/AllDiskLabels0.txt
BBEdit ~/AllDiskLabels0.txt file to find "Macintosh HD". It indeed was in the .disk_label & .disk_label_2x files.

Anyway it's built and I ran the above commands
There were some errors "malformed JSON string" produced (however I did not investigate them) but looked at the ~/AllDiskLabels0.txt and found the "Macintosh HD". It indeed was in the .disk_label & .disk_label_2x files on one of the volumes.
The errors were:

MacNB@MacPro-01 testing % dumpAllDiskLabels > ~/AllDiskLabels0.txt
The container for this APFS volume doesn't appear to have a preboot volume
malformed JSON string, neither array, object, number, string or atom, at character offset 0 (before "<stdin>: Property Li...") at -e line 2.
The container for this APFS volume doesn't appear to have a preboot volume
malformed JSON string, neither array, object, number, string or atom, at character offset 0 (before "<stdin>: Property Li...") at -e line 2.
mount_apfs: volume could not be mounted: Permission denied
mount: /private/var/folders/_8/zrn3k87x3h5fbf8fh58jngpc0000gn/T/bless.aJCR failed with 66
/sbin/mount returned non-0 exit status
Couldn't mount preboot volume /dev/disk5s2
MacNB@MacPro-01 testing %

# Check icon compatibility. This doesn't modify anything. It creates a numbered folder like ~/VolumeIcons1 which
# contains a folder for each volume. The folder contains the original icon and a modified icon if it needs changes.
# It also includes a text dump of the icon types in each icns file.
checkiconcompatibility

# For each icon that needs updating, a cp command is output which you can copy and paste into Terminal.app
# After fixing all the icons, run checkiconcompatibility again to see if anything still needs fixing.
checkiconcompatibility

# Each call to checkiconcompatibility creates a new ~/VolumeIcons* folder with a different number.[/code]

I already had .VolumeIcon.icns files in the root of both EFI volumes which I had create a loooong time ago on one of my hacks.

checkiconcompatibility found there were not compatible and used the cp -p ... commands to modify them and ran the checkiconcompatibility again. But for one it produced another incompatibility:

MacNB@MacPro-01 JoeVT % checkiconcompatibility                                                                                        
#•••••/Volumes/EFI/.VolumeIcon.icns
# No icon at disk0s1:/Volumes/EFI
#•••••/Volumes/EFI1/.VolumeIcon.icns
# Found it32 at icon at disk1s1:/Volumes/EFI1
#icon at 0008292E is too large
bbedit "VolumeIcons2/EFI1/EFI1.txt"
makeicon "VolumeIcons2/EFI1/EFI1.icns" 00000078 000002B1 000003B9 00000A2F 00000E37 00005A39 00009A41 00017B03 00045791 00045EB1 0004734E 00055058 > "VolumeIcons2/EFI1/EFI1_reduced.icns"
cp -p "VolumeIcons2/EFI1/EFI1_reduced.icns" "/Volumes/EFI1/.VolumeIcon.icns"
#•••••/Volumes/Spare/.VolumeIcon.icns
# No icon at disk2s1:/Volumes/Spare
...
...

So I ran the makeicon and cp commands above and all was fine.

Many thanks for the great utils.

 

[OldMacPro2]

I just swapped out my RX460 2GB for an RX570 8GB.

Using Martin Lo's Open Core package to run Big Sur.

For some reason, the Open Core boot screen no longer displays.

If I wait long enough, the system will go ahead and boot Big Sur and it seems to be fine, but why did the boot screen disappear?

Thanks!

 

[motiontrack]

Hi, I just upgraded my cMP 5,1 wifi/BT to the BCM94360CD combo card so i can get it running using ML's OC 0.8.8 package I've been able to get both BT and Wifi working on OS Monterey, but Bluetooth shows as unavailable on my Mojave drive. I've tried 4X pram/nvram reset but no sucess for Mojave. Has anyone encountered this issue and is there a solution? Thanks as always for any insight.

Attached two pics of Mojave drive with no BT working. And photos of the Monterey drive BT working for refernece.

 

[MacNB2]

I just swapped out my RX460 2GB for an RX570 8GB.

Using Martin Lo's Open Core package to run Big Sur.

For some reason, the Open Core boot screen no longer displays.

If I wait long enough, the system will go ahead and boot Big Sur and it seems to be fine, but why did the boot screen disappear?

Thanks!

Try one of different port on the RX570.

 

[OldMacPro2]

Try one of different port on the RX570.

Tried the HDMI ports and neither were different. Will have to find a display port cable, I think I have one laying around somewhere.

Is there a setting in the OC config file that I might be able to change?

 

[MacNB2]

Tried the HDMI ports and neither were different. Will have to find a display port cable, I think I have one laying around somewhere.

Is there a setting in the OC config file that I might be able to change?

Yes try DP cable.

If you have used MartinLo's package then one of the boot-args agdpmod=pikera should already be set. Check that.

What make and model is your RX570 ?
Was is it an ex-miner card by any chance ?

EDIT: Set DirectGopRendering = false

 

[flang]

I'm using a NVidia GTX 680 Mac Edition.

was the graphics card necessary or just a nice change?
I'm hoping my Emby server will follow the change up.

 

[joevt]

was the graphics card necessary or just a nice change?
I'm hoping my Emby server will follow the change up.

I've been using the GTX 680 for a very long time (since it was new). OCLP has patches to give Monterey and Ventura Nvidia Kepler support. Read more at https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore...ALL.html#applying-post-install-volume-patches . This is an Open Core thread, so any questions about OCLP should be posted elsewhere.

 

[flang]

thanks. Your post was the only "related"post that spoke of graphics card, so I figured I'd ask.
Thanks for the link

 

[misizeji]

i just follow the native boot screen support that quiet usefull guide. now i am face the NVRAM reset problem, after some search i think it would be solved, mainly problem is i don't know my keyboard would work though the front USB port, let see if I solved then share my experience.

 

[tsialex]

i want to know how should i do after this,

First thing, this is the completely wrong thread for this.

Anyway, if you still have the secondary VSS store broken after a series of continuous NVRAM resets, the deep NVRAM reset, you will gonna need a BootROM reconstruction service and fast, since your Mac Pro will most probably fail/brick soon.

cause the Bios chip is MX25L3205D

The SPI model from your backplane is not meaningful for the diagnostic process, you only need to know it to select the correct model when flashing a cleaned/reconstructed image via ROMTool.

 

[misizeji]

First thing, this is the completely wrong thread for this.

Anyway, if you still have the secondary VSS store broken after a series of continuous NVRAM resets, the deep NVRAM reset, you will gonna need a BootROM reconstruction service and fast, since your Mac Pro will most probably fail/brick soon.

Ok, i will delete my reply, thanks a lot.

 

[ZNDK]

Tell me about enablegop.
I have installed enablegop. And I can see the boot screen. When the boot process proceeds and tries to get to the second stage progress bar, I get the OpenCore bootpicker screen. When I proceed to boot, I get a boot failure message in each language, but then the boot succeeds as if nothing happened.
I can boot up my Mac and use my Mac with no problems, is this behavior a bad thing?

I put the enablegop.efi setting in OpenCore's config.plist. Then the enablegop icon appeared by the boot disk. When I select it nothing happens but back to the bootpicker. What is it?

 

[MacNB2]

Tell me about enablegop.
I have installed enablegop. And I can see the boot screen. When the boot process proceeds and tries to get to the second stage progress bar, I get the OpenCore bootpicker screen. When I proceed to boot, I get a boot failure message in each language, but then the boot succeeds as if nothing happened.
I can boot up my Mac and use my Mac with no problems, is this behavior a bad thing?

I put the enablegop.efi setting in OpenCore's config.plist. Then the enablegop icon appeared by the boot disk. When I select it nothing happens but back to the bootpicker. What is it?

I think you need to read this thread first. In particular a quick explanation further down.
What you are doing is incorrect. Enablegop.efi is not meant to be installed in OpenCore but into the GPU's firmware.

 

[ZNDK]

I think you need to read this thread first. In particular a quick explanation further down.
What you are doing is incorrect. Enablegop.efi is not meant to be installed in OpenCore but into the GPU's firmware.

Go to Apple boot screen -> boot disk selection -> first progress bar -> second progress bar. OpenCore BootPicker screen at this stage. I put it in to see if enablegop.efi had anything to do with this behavior, but that was pointless. As it turns out, the behavior hasn't changed, so I know it's not a solution.

Naturally, there is no problem if the Mac is booted with 'EFI Boot' selected on the enablegop boot picker. The only way I can boot my Mac from the enablegop boot picker is "EFI Boot".
When I select other disks, such as a Mojave or Monterey installation USB stick, the OpenCore bootpicker appears after the "Mac have a problem" text in each language. (At any point in time) OpenCore's BootPicker can boot the Mac on any media.

Is my condition a failure to install enablegop?

 

[MacNB2]

Go to Apple boot screen -> boot disk selection -> first progress bar -> second progress bar. OpenCore BootPicker screen at this stage. I put it in to see if enablegop.efi had anything to do with this behavior, but that was pointless. As it turns out, the behavior hasn't changed, so I know it's not a solution.

Naturally, there is no problem if the Mac is booted with 'EFI Boot' selected on the enablegop boot picker. The only way I can boot my Mac from the enablegop boot picker is "EFI Boot".
When I select other disks, such as a Mojave or Monterey installation USB stick, the OpenCore bootpicker appears after the "Mac have a problem" text in each language. (At any point in time) OpenCore's BootPicker can boot the Mac on any media.

Is my condition a failure to install enablegop?

Did you flash the MacPro BootROM with EnableGop ?

 

[ZNDK]

Did you flash from MacPro BootROM with EnableGop ?

Sorry. I may be wrong in my understanding, so I will write my act. I used "RomDump Macschrauber" to dump my Mac ROM. Then I created the GopFirmware with DXEInject command using OC0.9.0's EnableGop.ffs. Then I flashed it with ROMtool.

on test_nvram:

Firmware 144.0.0.0 (latest)
EnableGop EFI module identified
CRC32 checksums: ok
Assumed crossflash 4.1->5.1
base_20 hardware descriptor
Boot0001 is EFI\OC\OpenCore.efi (LauncherOption: Full)
0 (0 active) + 0 Memory Configs g (ok)
0 (0 active) + 0 Memory Configs h (ok)
0 (0 active) + 0 Memory Configs i (ok)
0 (0 active) + 0 Memory Configs j (ok)
1 (0 active) + 1 Kernel Panic dumps type A: Pointer type
0 + 0 Microsoft certificates (ok)
bytes free space of 65464 (caution)

 

[MacNB2]

Sorry. I may be wrong in my understanding, so I will write my act. I used "RomDump Macschrauber" to dump my Mac ROM. Then I created the GopFirmware with DXEInject command using OC0.9.0's EnableGop.ffs. Then I flashed it with ROMtool.

OK. You dumped your BootROM, then added the EnableGop.ffs and flashed the resulting file back to the BootROM.
That bit is correct. After flashing, OpenCore will no longer be the default boot loader but the native Apple Startup Manager.

So it looks like you did not complete the last instructions in the 1st Post...which is "To re-enable OpenCore, see Basic setup > First boot."

BTW, the terminology "enablegop boot picker" is incorrect as there's no such thing. I think you meant "Apple Startup Manager".

EnableGop.efi is NOT for use with OpenCore config but it is used for flashing the VBIOS of a GPU. Do not configure that file into OpenCore.

You cannot boot Monterey without OpenCore on MacPro5,1. So what is happening is that the Mac is booting it by default and is crashing then rebooting. Maybe the reboot is booting into next default boot which happens to be OpenCore.

Now, you need to make OpenCore your default boot loader (see 1st Post Basic setup > First boot for details).
Basically do:

1. reboot into Recovery Mode
2. Start terminal
3. Mount the EFI drive that has OpenCore installed
4. Bless OpenCore using bless --mount /Volumes/EFI --setBoot --file /Volumes/EFI/EFI/BOOT/BOOTx64.efi command

EDIT:
EnableGop firmware feature is helpful for native boot screen on non-native GPU's on supported macOS for MacPro4/5,1. For unsupported macOS, OpenCore is required not only to display the boot screen but to enable the unsupported macOS to boot.

 

[Macschrauber]

double post

 

[Macschrauber]

Sorry. I may be wrong in my understanding, so I will write my act. I used "RomDump Macschrauber" to dump my Mac ROM. Then I created the GopFirmware with DXEInject command using OC0.9.0's EnableGop.ffs. Then I flashed it with ROMtool.

on test_nvram:

Firmware 144.0.0.0 (latest)
EnableGop EFI module identified
CRC32 checksums: ok
Assumed crossflash 4.1->5.1
base_20 hardware descriptor
Boot0001 is EFI\OC\OpenCore.efi (LauncherOption: Full)
0 (0 active) + 0 Memory Configs g (ok)
0 (0 active) + 0 Memory Configs h (ok)
0 (0 active) + 0 Memory Configs i (ok)
0 (0 active) + 0 Memory Configs j (ok)
1 (0 active) + 1 Kernel Panic dumps type A: Pointer type
0 + 0 Microsoft certificates (ok)
bytes free space of 65464 (caution)

There must be more wrong. Why is the dumper telling there are no Memory Configs?

Edit: guess you are running the test_nvram shell script what you found in the dumper.app, this is not supposed to run allone, if so you need to copy scanvss and uefiextract to /usr/local/bin if you want to run the shell script allone.


I just tested it (version 11-3-2023), the shell script allone works if you cd into the .app and use it like

cd /Volumes/Macschrauber\'s\ CMP\ Rom\ Dump/RomDump\ Macschrauber.app/Contents/Resources


Mac-Pro-3:Resources username$ ./test_nvram /Users/username/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com\~apple\~CloudDocs/Firmware/Dumps/CK12\ MP5.1\ username/CK12_B00_MX25L3205D_25.11.2022_20-18-37.bin
Serial from firmware: CK12
Firmware MP51.0089.B00
CRC32 checksums: ok
Old bootblock of MP51.007F.B03
base_21 hardware descriptor
Assumed 2 boots since last garbage collection
3 (1 active) + 1 Memory Configs g (ok)
3 (1 active) + 1 Memory Configs h (ok)
1 (1 active) + 1 Memory Configs i (ok)
1 (1 active) + 1 Memory Configs j (ok)
1 + 1 iCloud tokens (ok)
0 + 0 Microsoft certificates (ok)
1 (1 active) + 1 BluetoothActiveControllerInfos (ok)
1 (1 active) + 1 BluetoothInternalControllerInfos (ok)
1 (0 active) + 0 AAPL Path Properties (ok)
40716 bytes free space of 65464
VSS1 (Formatted) (Healthy)
VSS2 (Formatted) (Healthy)

Edit2: if one injects enable gop into a dump he has just took there is no need to re-bless or re-set anything. The NVRAM volume is not touched by injecting enable gop.

If you inject it into a rebuilt firmware (what is the cleaner option of course) you need to re-bless OpenCore if the ESP with OC on it is not the first one the Mac finds when booting with a never booted firmware image.

 

[h9826790]

OK. You dumped your BootROM, then added the EnableGop.ffs and flashed the resulting file back to the BootROM.
That bit is correct. After flashing, OpenCore will no longer be the default boot loader but the native Apple Startup Manager.

So it looks like you did not complete the last instructions in the 1st Post...which is "To re-enable OpenCore, see Basic setup > First boot."

BTW, the terminology "enablegop boot picker" is incorrect as there's no such thing. I think you meant "Apple Startup Manager".

EnableGop.efi is NOT for use with OpenCore config but it is used for flashing the VBIOS of a GPU. Do not configure that file into OpenCore.

You cannot boot Monterey without OpenCore on MacPro5,1. So what is happening is that the Mac is booting it by default and is crashing then rebooting. Maybe the reboot is booting into next default boot which happens to be OpenCore.

Now, you need to make OpenCore your default boot loader (see 1st Post Basic setup > First boot for details).
Basically do:

1. reboot into Recovery Mode
2. Start terminal
3. Mount the EFI drive that has OpenCore installed
4. Bless OpenCore using bless --mount /Volumes/EFI --setBoot --file /Volumes/EFI/EFI/BOOT/BOOTx64.efi command

EDIT:
EnableGop firmware feature is helpful for native boot screen on non-native GPU's on supported macOS for MacPro4/5,1. For unsupported macOS, OpenCore is required not only to display the boot screen but to enable the unsupported macOS to boot.

For info, with the native Apple Startup Manager, there is no need to use Recovery mode etc to bless OpenCore.

All he need to do is just hold Option to boot, at the Apple Startup Manager, select the OpenCore EFI entry, then press Control + Enter to select it. This will bless that EFI entry (which should be OpenCore).

This method is OS version indepedent, therefore, works better for cMP that only has natively unsupported macOS installed.