New APFS problems under Mojave

[Mac Hammer Fan]

I boot my Mac Pro 2009 from a Samsung SSD EVO 850 installed in an OWC SATA III pci-card. I checked the SSD with disk utility and the computer locked completely up. Upon restarting, the screen remained black.I booted in the recovery mode and was unable to repair the disk (unable to unmount). I replied the disk booting from another hard disk with Mojave. Then I selected the recovery mode again and tried to reinstall MacOS. A message appears (unable to connect to the internet). Why doesn't the recovery mode work?
In one month APFS I had more problems than ten years HFS+.

 

[ApfelKuchen]

Correlation does not prove causality. Maybe it is due to APFS, maybe not.

If you try to boot to Recovery Mode and the Mac can't locate a bootable Recovery partition (for example, physical failure of the SSD/HDD), then it will try to boot to Internet Recovery. If you don't have an internet connection, then you'll get the "unable to connect to the internet" message. "Unable to connect to the internet" has nothing to do with what file system is in use.

First thing, can the Mac discover a drive with a bootable OS? What happens if you hold Option when starting up? Do you see any startup disks listed in "Choose Startup Disk?" If not, you have to figure out why.

 

[chrfr]

I boot my Mac Pro 2009 from a Samsung SSD EVO 850 installed in an OWC SATA III pci-card. I checked the SSD with disk utility and the computer locked completely up. Upon restarting, the screen remained black.I booted in the recovery mode and was unable to repair the disk (unable to remount). I replied the disk booting from another hard disk with Mojave. Then I selected the recovery mode again and tried to reinstall MacOS. A message appears (unable to connect to the internet). Why doesn't the recovery mode work?
In one month APFS I had more problems than ten years HFS+.

I agree that there's no indication here that the problems you're seeing are related to APFS.

 

[Mac Hammer Fan]

I can't boot my Mac Pro 2009 with option, because my Radeon 580 has no boot screen. I have WIFI. I can boot from a different disk after selecting a different startup disk in the recovery mode.

 

[CoastalOR]

I boot my Mac Pro 2009 from a Samsung SSD EVO 850 installed in an OWC SATA III pci-card. I checked the SSD with disk utility and the computer locked completely up. Upon restarting, the screen remained black.I booted in the recovery mode and was unable to repair the disk (unable to remount). I replied the disk booting from another hard disk with Mojave. Then I selected the recovery mode again and tried to reinstall MacOS. A message appears (unable to connect to the internet). Why doesn't the recovery mode work?
In one month APFS I had more problems than ten years HFS+.

I didn't think that Apple supported Mojave & APFS of a 2009 MP.

If the Recovery Partition is any earlier than High Sierra then it will have problems seeing APFS.

 

[chrfr]

I didn't think that Apple supported Mojave & APFS of a 2009 MP.

If you update the firmware to that of a 2010/2012 Mac Pro, Mojave and APFS work fine.

 

[Mac Hammer Fan]

I have updated the firmware from 4,1 to 5,1 years ago and installed a Hex processor. The Mac worked well under High Sierra HFS+.

 

[chrfr]

I can't boot my Mac Pro 2009 with option, because my Radeon 580 has no boot screen. I have WIFI. I can boot from a different disk after selecting a different startup disk in the recovery mode.

The easiest solution would be to temporarily install a card that supports boot screens.

 

[Mac Hammer Fan]

But why does the recovery partition not work? I can't unmount the startup disk to repair it with disk utility and I can't reinstall the OS because I don't have internet connection despite the fact I have WiFi.

 

[treekram]

In the other thread where your problems were discussed, it was pointed out that an authoritative blogger stated that the PCIe -> SATA3 card you had was "Not APFS compatible". You contacted OWC and they said it was compatible. Other posters said they use APFS with this card. So, if you've accepted that the card works with APFS based on what people have said, you also have accept that APFS works for these people. If it doesn't work then it would be more likely that it would have to be something specific to your setup. Maybe your specific OWC Accelsior card doesn't work with APFS. Maybe something else in your configuration is causing a problem. Maybe something's going on with the SSD. My understanding is that this Mac Pro only does SATA2 speeds with the built-in SATA ports but there's a ton of them. If that's the case, try running it off the SATA2 port for a while. Or get software that will read the SMART attributes of the SSD and see if anything is amiss. Although interpreting the SMART data can be problematical and some SMART software will point have false positives to try to prove their worth.

 

[crjackson2134]

[Deleted]

 

[chrfr]

You may have a faulty SSD, this particular SSD had a lot of problems from the start. Some people had success after multiple firmware updates, others were not so lucky.

I have many SSD's in my system and PRIMARILY use Samsung products. For me, it's worth it to have a legacy windows install, for using Samsung Magician. This has allowed me to update the firmware on various Samsung drives

The 840 Evo was the problematic drive with severe slowdowns. In general the 850 Evo has been pretty reliable.
As far as firmware updates go, it's not necessary to use Windows to update the firmware on Samsung SSDs. Samsung provides bootable images that'll update the firmware without problems on a Mac.

 

[crjackson2134]

[Nevermind]

 

[Mac Hammer Fan]

I checked the SSD S.M.A.R.T status with Drive Genius and it reported "verified". I will wait a couple days to see if the lockups are gone. I will also only use disk utility while booting from another hard disk with Mojave. At this moment everything works again. Fingers crossed.

But why does the recovery partition not work? I can't unmount the startup disk to repair it with disk utility and I can't reinstall the OS because I don't have internet connection despite the fact I have WiFi.

 

[treekram]

I checked the SSD S.M.A.R.T status with Drive Genius and it reported "verified". I will wait a couple days to see if the lockups are gone. I will also only use disk utility while booting from another hard disk with Mojave. At this moment everything works again. Fingers crossed.

But why does the recovery partition not work? I can't unmount the startup disk to repair it with disk utility and I can't reinstall the OS because I don't have internet connection despite the fact I have WiFi.

The Recovery volume only has limited hardware support. If you have a 3rd-party wi-fi card, chances are that it won't work in Recovery (unless it's similar to the hardware Apple used). What wi-fi hardware do you have?

If the Recovery volume on your 850 doesn't work, it could be corrupted. If you re-installed, it may have fixed it. You should try and see if it works if that's the case. If it still doesn't work, there are ways you can try to fix it besides erasing and re-installing but the ways I know about aren't easy to explain. If you use CCC and have a clone, you may be able to try something there.

 

[ApfelKuchen]

I checked the SSD S.M.A.R.T status with Drive Genius and it reported "verified". I will wait a couple days to see if the lockups are gone. I will also only use disk utility while booting from another hard disk with Mojave. At this moment everything works again. Fingers crossed.

But why does the recovery partition not work? I can't unmount the startup disk to repair it with disk utility and I can't reinstall the OS because I don't have internet connection despite the fact I have WiFi.

Simplest way around the wifi issue and to boot Internet Recovery would be an ethernet cable between Mac and router.

As to the wifi issue... Can you access the Internet when you're booted normally? If yes, I think treekram has the right idea

If you have a 3rd-party wi-fi card, chances are that it won't work in Recovery.

If you can't access the Internet when booted normally, check for a self-assigned IP address (169.254.xxx.xx). If so, try Renew DHCP Lease. Though this is a Lion-or-earlier article, this is still a good wifi troubleshooting resource: https://support.apple.com/HT202222. If that doesn't help, run Wireless Diagnostics: https://support.apple.com/HT202663.

As to that apparently-missing Recovery partition? Let's find out if you have a Recovery partition: From Terminal run

diskutil list

. If Recovery is listed, you may have a bad os installation - reinstall macOS ought to fix (once you can get to Internet Recovery). If it's not listed... I'm not sure whether that can be fixed by a reinstall. I'd probably try a reinstall first, and if the partition is still missing, then erase/reinstall.

 

[Mac Hammer Fan]

My WiFi Card has always worked perfect with High Sierra and Mojave, except in the recovery mode.
Software Versions:
CoreWLAN: 13.0 (1375.2)
CoreWLANKit: 13.0 (1375.2)
Menu Extra: 13.0 (1380.2)
System Information: 12.0 (1300.2)
IO80211 Family: 12.0 (1200.12.2)
Diagnostics: 1.0 (805)
AirPort Utility: 6.3.9 (639.9)
Interfaces:
en2:
Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x14E4, 0x8E)
Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.106.98.102.31)
Locale: ETSI
Country Code: EU
Supported PHY Modes: 802.11 a/b/g/n
Supported Channels: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 36, 40, 44, 48
Wake On Wireless: Supported
AirDrop: Supported
Status: Connected

**** terminal: diskutil list gives

/dev/disk7 (synthesized):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: APFS Container Scheme - +499.9 GB disk7
Physical Store disk6s2
1: APFS Volume Macintosh HD 354.0 GB disk7s1
2: APFS Volume Preboot 21.2 MB disk7s2
3: APFS Volume Recovery 519.7 MB disk7s3
4: APFS Volume VM 20.5 KB disk7s4

 

[treekram]

My WiFi Card has always worked perfect with High Sierra and Mojave, except in the recovery mode.
Software Versions:
CoreWLAN: 13.0 (1375.2)
CoreWLANKit: 13.0 (1375.2)
Menu Extra: 13.0 (1380.2)
System Information: 12.0 (1300.2)
IO80211 Family: 12.0 (1200.12.2)
Diagnostics: 1.0 (805)
AirPort Utility: 6.3.9 (639.9)
Interfaces:
en2:
Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x14E4, 0x8E)
Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.106.98.102.31)
Locale: ETSI
Country Code: EU
Supported PHY Modes: 802.11 a/b/g/n
Supported Channels: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 36, 40, 44, 48
Wake On Wireless: Supported
AirDrop: Supported
Status: Connected

**** terminal: diskutil list gives

/dev/disk7 (synthesized):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: APFS Container Scheme - +499.9 GB disk7
Physical Store disk6s2
1: APFS Volume Macintosh HD 354.0 GB disk7s1
2: APFS Volume Preboot 21.2 MB disk7s2
3: APFS Volume Recovery 519.7 MB disk7s3
4: APFS Volume VM 20.5 KB disk7s4

Recovery mode is different - it runs with a stripped down version of everything.

Besides what ApfelKuchen suggested in post #16, there's an article on the web that says:

WPA Enterprise is on the list of wireless security types that you will not be able to connect to a Wi-Fi network with under Internet Recovery Mode. The others are:
WEP
Certificate-based authentication / 802.1x
Proxies (where specific proxy servers must be configured in network preferences)
Captive Wi-Fi networks (where you click an "Agree" button to access the Internet)
PPPoE (where there is no router handling the PPPoE connection)
(whether this list still applies and whether it applies to the Internet connection in Recovery mode, I don't know).

Here's another thing that may be happening. I have a 2012 Mini (High Sierra Recovery), 2014 Mini (Mojave Recovery) and a 2012 MBP (High Sierra Recovery). All of them have Wi-fi which work. In Recovery mode, all of them show that they have a connection to my wireless network but they won't connect to the Internet. My wireless network uses the last model Airport Extreme router and then a second Airport Extreme router (same model) in bridge mode which is closer to the Macs listed above. If I turn off the router which is in bridge mode, the 2012 MBP, going to the other Airport Extreme router, is now able to connect to the Internet. (I did not try this with my Mini's.) My 2018 MBP doesn't have a problem whether or not the bridge router is on. I tried moving the farthest away point in the house to try to assure it was going to use the bridge router but it still worked (traceroute doesn't tell me if it's going thorugh the bridge or not). So if you have bridge setup, something similar may be going on. Even if you don't, it shows that there could be different reasons why your Internet connection doesn't work in Recovery mode.

 

[Mac Hammer Fan]

Thank you for this useful info, Treekram.

 

[Mac Hammer Fan]

Nearly 10 days without problems now. But when I ran disk utility today from the startup drive, it took 15 minutes to check the container superblock. Is this normal?

 

[Honza1]

Nearly 10 days without problems now. But when I ran disk utility today from the startup drive, it took 15 minutes to check the container superblock. Is this normal?

I guess depends. How long it took before?
It will get longer if it has more complicated structure to evaluate at times. If it took before a minute and now 15, seems suspicious. If it took 10 minutes before and now 15, sure, that is easily possible. On my system disk First aid time varies significantly, surely by factor of 2 or more.
You can check once in a while Blackmagic Speed test (or similar) to see if the disk has similar speed as it had early (it will also slow down as structure gets more complex, but again, not much than 20-30%). If speed would drop consistently over time, something is fishy.