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Mavericks Forever

Wowfunhappy said:
Hi, see attached!

Disclaimer for posterity, I don't intend to keep this updated, so if I make changes to the script in the future the attached version will be out of date. The "right" way to get it would be to manually copy the relevant portion out of https://mavericksforever.com/get.sh
Click to expand...
Understood - and thank you for helping correction of a mistake of my own making.

I have good news: That worked !!
ie - found the USB stick and made it a bootable Mavericks install USB stick. (No Disk Utility required.)

Same computer: iMac 10,1
..only difference I am aware of:
Last time - running Snow Leopard
this time - running Mavericks.
..and different stick.

I expect its unlikely there'd be someone going from 10.6 to 10.9 again, so hopefully this problem wont re-occur.

Thank you lots Wow - for your time and patience !!
..and the extra learning I gained along the way.
 
fractalus said:
Installed the font fix, but it looks like it screwed up at least one font. For some reason a word with "t" followed by a letter in an italic font ends up looking like a "d" merged with an "f". Strangely, words ending with "t" aren't screwed up. The same page on Sequoia is perfectly fine.

I'll take a screenshot if you're interested. (...if not, I wont ;))
Click to expand...
Which font? Are you absolutely sure it wasn't like that on Mavericks without the patch?
 
Wowfunhappy said:
Which font? Are you absolutely sure it wasn't like that on Mavericks without the patch?
Click to expand...
I’d say I’m about 83.5% sure. I’ve been to that page before on Mavericks and I would have noticed. The thing is that I’m also using the updated browser so it could be that too.

saywhat.png


I haven’t seen any other font screwups, so I guess it doesn’t matter. If I find it screwed up anywhere else, I’ll let you know.
 
Thanks. What is the name of this font? I need to know so I can try to replicate the problem.
 
Linik Sans? Also at least on chrome I don't think it even uses coretext for font rendering, it uses harfbuzz. Not sure about firefox.
 
Yeah, sorry I can't replicate this. Also, the font used for italic text on noscript.net/faq looks nothing like your screenshot. I was kind of hoping we'd found some really weird font that actually uses fnt_adjust for something.
 
Wowfunhappy said:
Yeah, sorry I can't replicate this. Also, the font used for italic text on noscript.net/faq looks nothing like your screenshot. I was kind of hoping we'd found some really weird font that actually uses fnt_adjust for something.
Click to expand...
I figured out why you can't see it. You need to have javascript off. The script changes the font.
 
unable to reproduce it, even with javascript disabled. And it still shouldn't matter since to my knowledge firefox similar to chrome uses harfbuzz for web fonts.
 
Funny... I feel it happening. With Apple Silicon well established, nostalgia is starting to settle in for early Intel Macs... they are bordering on becoming "vintage"!

With this in mind, I have a 2011 iMac 27" running Mavericks and consistent with @Wowfunhappy's thinking, I have no plans to upgrade it - Mavericks was brilliant, the ideal compliment to an incredible chunk of hardware. Every now and then the stars align and Apple brings out a "perfect" product. The 2011 iMac 27 was such a product. Honestly, after that, it was all the way out to the M1 Max Mac Studio before they did it again.

I love my Power Macs, but eventually the time will come when even they won't be able to "cut it" anymore. My 2011 iMac will be waiting for me when that day arrives. Until then, Tiger/Leopard/Sorbet Leopard and Snow Leopard PPC are where I will continue to focus.
 
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Macbook Pro 2012 Retina here. Am enjoying the Mavericks nostalgia, but have one glitch that is saddening me…hibernation. After doing “pmset hibernatemode 25” so I can stop battery drain when the lid is closed (or when entering hibernation without closing the lid), I get a “Your system has restarted because of a problem” when powering back on.

I am willing to do whatever troubleshooting tips are recommended to narrow down root cause, if anybody would care to share.

Thank you, Wowfunhappy, for allowing us to share this Mavericks journey with you. It’s a geeky thrill to see just how far old hardware and software can be pushed when the right amount of developer love is applied to it 🤓

—

Full disclosure: The HD Mavericks is installed on also has an APFS partition for booting unsupported Monterey through Open Core legacy patcher, not to mention a BOOTCAMP partition for the odd need to game / max out the old GeForce GT 650M’s capabilities. So it’s possible that Mavericks ain’t happy with some foreign partitioning scheme going on elsewhere on the internal drive.
 
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Can you share the kernel panic log? I always forget where these are stored, but I’m pretty sure the “Your system has restarted because of a problem” dialog will have a "Report” option which leads to a log you can attach.

But:
imercado said:
The HD Mavericks is installed on also has an APFS partition for booting unsupported Monterey through Open Core legacy patcher
Click to expand...
I can’t be sure, but my guess is that this is the problem.
 
I am glad you asked that question, sir. Because the very act of digging for the panic logs caused me to recognize there were several Chromium crash logs and some "insert_dylib” crash logs that were stored right around the same time I was trying to resume from hibernation. Which also explains a bit why I was able to hibernate and resume from hibernate just fine this afternoon BEFORE I started up Chromium.

However, I didn’t install Chromium until today, so I think the "insert_dylib” crash logs are something different. Another theory is that some crashes might be related to Tuxera NTFS actually having an NTFS BOOTCAMP partition to mount.

I’ve zipped up and attached the crash logs from today in ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports in the event they show something of interest. Happy for now that you’ve helped prove that this is related to certain software being loaded, which means a workaround can be in the works.

TY for your rapid response, Wowfunhappy. I am getting happier by the moment :)
 

Attachments

  • imercado_s Diag_Reports - 20250917.zip
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The crash log with _VTIsHardwareDecodeSupported is a Chromium Legacy bug. The insert_dylib stuff is probably the fault of my Chromium Legacy PrefPane, which at one point I would have wanted to investigate—but I'm not developing that any more (which is why it's not on Mavericks Forever).

I have enormous respect for all the work Bluebox did to get Chromium Legacy working, and I hope he will return to the project some day, but at this point in time I really recommend using Firefox Dynasty instead. It's still being updated and it's much more stable than Chromium Legacy ever was.

You still didn't attatch a kernel panic log though! It should be in /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/ (note, the Library folder on the root of your startup disk, not in your user folder) and will start with "Kernel".
 
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Hehe. Well, this mystery gets a little stranger. After letting my Macbook sleep itself in 10 minutes, having gone to dinner / choir practice / bed, I come back this morning and press a key on the keyboard and am greeted to it waking from some unknown mode. First it was a black screen (no Apple logo boot) then it was an fresh desktop that is clearly NOT a resumed from hibernation desktop since the apps were reloading themselves as if it had been resuming from a system crash. However, *no* "Your system has restarted because of a problem” error message this go 'round…even though it seems pretty clear that it *did* restart because of a problem.

Looking at some of the logs (attached), it seems that it woke itself up twice for "maintenance” before I woke it up this morning. So something squirrely is still going on here with hibernation, haha. My recollection from the olden days was that OS X would show you this nice spinning wheel with a progress bar while it was resuming from hibernation, but that might have been a Snow Leopard thing that got trounced with subsequent OS X releases.

Agree with the Chromium Legacy being a sub-par experience compared to Firefox Dynasty. I suppose I would be better off REMOVING variables from this equation, not adding them :)
 

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  • Selections from private_var_log - 20250918.zip
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Hibernate is a known issue that can result in behavior like that fwiw, there's some thread about 3rd party SSDs that documents this.
 
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Yup. The kernel panic logs disappeared and instead were replaced with non-kernel panic system restarts every time I resumed from sleep, even after I went back to normal sleep "hibernatemode 0”. Sadly, I was also getting beach ball of death issues when trying to run the old copy of Office 2011 for Mac, so I had to jettison my efforts to get this ol’ Retina 2012 to be a Mavericks Forever modern computing environment. Now it has become (not too much of a leap)…

…Mojave Forever! Hehe. And I am pleased to report that Wowfunhappy’s preference pane for installing Firefox Dynasty works just great in Mojave. I’m only on my first few hours of use, but so far so good, and no more crashing when resuming from hibernation, even with "hibernatemode 25.” Woot!

@Wowfunhappy I am indebted to your efforts and commitment to keeping the uncluttered computing experience alive, even though I did have to pollute my internal SSD with more non-useful Apple warez than originally expected. You would probably laugh if you saw how many other near-vintage devices I have running modern computing tasks in my lair (the 2007 Mac Pro being another personal fave).

Hope to catch y'all on another "keepin' the dream alive" forum thread. God bless!
 
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ok - heres my current Mavericks Forever adventure:
17inch iMac 5,1

I had Mavericks (unsupported) on it but with mucking about, it was untidy and due for a fresh complete install.

Erased the HD
Use an old usb with Mavericks install for unsupported hardware..Id got from somewhere in here years back.
Though could then use wows mavericks to update - but:

wows Mavericks gets block at the install cos a link is required to see if the hardware is supported - its not.

Using Finder opened up both versions - mine on the HD, wows on the usb stick.
..couldn’t do a straight replace - 'files required by system’ but a couple individual files could be copied over - Safari being one.

Which enabled me to get to wows 'MavericksForever.com’ and follow the steps from 'Initial Setup’.
Completed up to 'XipQT’ to see wot works. I like Quicktime too, but usually video files I convert to something that works so didn’t really need those file abilities.

One snag I hit - in both sarfari n firefire was screen flicker -

Firefox - Go to Settings -> General -> Performance, uncheck "Use recommended performance settings," and then uncheck "Use hardware acceleration when available," and restart Firefox.
 

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  • Screen Shot 2025-09-26 at 8.06.42 pm.png
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I guess I'll post major updates in this thread? I eventually need to set up a changelog page with an RSS feed, but no idea when that will happen. It took me five years to make the website.

I've added a new item to the "Security Patches" section, "OpenSSH Update". In addition to being a good idea from a security perspective, this will make it easier to log in to/from modern computers, as it supports modern key exchange algorithms.
 
Wowfunhappy said:
I've added a new item to the "Security Patches" section, "OpenSSH Update". In addition to being a good idea from a security perspective, this will make it easier to log in to/from modern computers, as it supports modern key exchange algorithms.
Click to expand...

Thank you, sir! Blew the dust off my wife’s old 3,1 Mac Mini and installed the SSH patch on my Mav4ever USB install (made on the Retina MBP).

However, I tried to SSH to my wife's current 2018 T2 Mac Mini running Sequoia, but it wouldn't connect after adding the key. It just hangs and never asks for the password. Any suggestions?

—

Attempted SSH terminal session (IP address redacted):
Bash: 
~$ ssh -l imercado 192.168.xx.xxx
The authenticity of host '192.168.xx.xxx (192.168.xx.xxx)' can't be established.
ED25519 key fingerprint is SHA256:5tg5gRtOUj8kJUfaorkIMbNS72NOmcc3HvKgZ+8YDIE.
This key is not known by any other names.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])? yes
Warning: Permanently added '192.168.xx.xxx' (ED25519) to the list of known hosts.

^C
~$ ssh -l imercado 192.168.xx.xxx
<terminal window hangs here until I press Ctrl-C>^C
~$
 
imercado said:
Thank you, sir! Blew the dust off my wife’s old 3,1 Mac Mini and installed the SSH patch on my Mav4ever USB install (made on the Retina MBP).

However, I tried to SSH to my wife's current 2018 T2 Mac Mini running Sequoia, but it wouldn't connect after adding the key. It just hangs and never asks for the password. Any suggestions?

—

Attempted SSH terminal session (IP address redacted):
Bash: 
~$ ssh -l imercado 192.168.xx.xxx
The authenticity of host '192.168.xx.xxx (192.168.xx.xxx)' can't be established.
ED25519 key fingerprint is SHA256:5tg5gRtOUj8kJUfaorkIMbNS72NOmcc3HvKgZ+8YDIE.
This key is not known by any other names.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])? yes
Warning: Permanently added '192.168.xx.xxx' (ED25519) to the list of known hosts.

^C
~$ ssh -l imercado 192.168.xx.xxx
<terminal window hangs here until I press Ctrl-C>^C
~$
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Darn, there must be something I need to fix. It does work for me to log into Sequoia.

Can you try with the -v flag so we can see exactly where it gets stuck? (ssh -v [...])
 
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