Clover General discussion

[apianti]

39 minutes ago, telepati said:

 

Actually MacOptimizer always worked for me on Catalina before this OC setup. I don't know but it doesn't work now. Something crash this app but I don't know what that it is.

 

 

Yes, I have a working NVRAM thanks to @MaLd0n he is implemented in custom DSDT. I checked to drive btw you mention in the earlier post with "bcfg boot dump" and just my boot drive is showing. I also soft Reset with R on the clover boot screen. Ahh, I have forgotten I am made a couple of times CMOS reset on this process. Now everything looks working.

 

But just one thing missing no Time Machine drive on Clover Boot screen. I checked with F3 for hiding drive but No Time Machine drive. I totally lost Time Machine Drive from the boot screen but its working in the system.

 

What do you mean Time Machine drive? Why would you boot from time machine? That's a backup system, do you mean recovery? Also the command for drivers is "bcfg driver dump". I assume that since the file is no longer there the firmware removed the entry itself though. I don't know why you wouldn't see recovery unless you have some how hidden.

[nmano]

Thanks for new update OpenCore-0.5.5-RELEASE

CleanNvram.efi

CleanNvram.efi limited use or regular use?

[Slice]

9 minutes ago, nmano said:

Thanks for new update OpenCore-0.5.5-RELEASE

CleanNvram.efi

CleanNvram.efi limited use or regular use?

F11 in Clover

[telepati]

36 minutes ago, apianti said:

 

What do you mean Time Machine drive? Why would you boot from time machine? That's a backup system, do you mean recovery? Also the command for drivers is "bcfg driver dump". I assume that since the file is no longer there the firmware removed the entry itself though. I don't know why you wouldn't see recovery unless you have some how hidden.

Normally at least on my setup clover always shows these three-drivers on the boot screen. Time Machine, Recovery and Main Boot drive (Catalina etc.) But now I can see just 2 drive recovery and Main boot drive (Catalina). Anyway, actually it's not important. But why this drive suddenly disappeared from the boot screen I don't get it that's all. If I can boot with USB installer I can see the Time Machine Drive on boot screen this also weird.

 

I always used "bcfg boot dump" and for removing "bcfg boot rm drive number" and this command still working.

Edited January 30, 2020 by telepati

[freakermonguer]

3 hours ago, apianti said:

 

You have a class 2 firmware. It is capable of both UEFI and CSM legacy boot (make sure you have newest version). You can UEFI boot, it will just take more effort to configure compared to legacy. Also, if you continue to legacy boot, I was referring to the same thing as slice said, he just said it better. Only boot clover from the first device and remove it from the other devices.

 

EDIT: I meant compared to legacy booting not other UEFI, they all suck, lol.

 

 

 

 

Ok.... came home, moved drives in the sata ports as somebody suggested my issue might be related to the order of the drives.

 

Discovered in the meantime that I've been using my boot drives in the SATA3 ports instead of the SATA6 (WTF).

 

I updated the clover boot on the new drive to UEFI as I was using legacy. My mobo is UEFI . It has to boot UEFI.

 

Ok. I put my 1Tb drive on Sata 1, and my 500Gb old ssd in Sata2 (last port just to be sure it's not prioritized)

And here is where more bizarre booting behaviour happens.

 

I set up the system to boot from 1Tb drive. It boots. It stalls with a cursor on screen. Bummer. It seems that it doesn't like UEFI boot. I don't understand why as the usb I created has a UEFI boot and I can see it on the BIOS. I don't understand.

 

So as I can't boot from the drive I decide to boot from my older drive. It starts booting. I see the usual string of Clover r3423 on screen. And when the r3423 has to kick in... NO ITS the 1Tb Clover r5102 booting. WTF.

 

So this is what happens with my mobo right now:

• Boot Clover r5102 UEFI. Freezes with cursor on screen.
• Boot Clover r3423 -> boots -> jumps to UEFI r5102 and it boots it. I can't boot clover r3423 now.

 

This doesn't make much sense to me. But there has to be some. Now, because I'm booting from clover r5102 I have no sound... don't know if I should fix it now or after I upgrade to Mojave.

Can someone explain it to me?

 

I'm planning to change this mobo soon as from what it seems support from now on will end with Mojave.

[brousseau6933]

4 hours ago, telepati said:

@apianti now I can boot with Clover without any problem. But I am trying to clean nvram with sudo nvram -c command it doesnt work. I also tried Reset NVRAM and Rebuild caches with @Cyberdevs MacOptimizer.app but it always giving this error. Never finish the operation. 

 

Sorry, but where is this firmware menu?

 

In my case, I always boot to recovery and issue "nvram -c" in the terminal and reboot. 

[apianti]

8 hours ago, telepati said:

Normally at least on my setup clover always shows these three-drivers on the boot screen. Time Machine, Recovery and Main Boot drive (Catalina etc.) But now I can see just 2 drive recovery and Main boot drive (Catalina). Anyway, actually it's not important. But why this drive suddenly disappeared from the boot screen I don't get it that's all. If I can boot with USB installer I can see the Time Machine Drive on boot screen this also weird.

 

I don't know, I am unsure because that seems weird unless there is some sort of boot process on the drive. Maybe old legacy booter? 

 

8 hours ago, telepati said:

I always used "bcfg boot dump" and for removing "bcfg boot rm drive number" and this command still working.

 

"bcfg driver dump" and "bcfg boot dump" do different things. Drivers are loaded by the firmware at boot as if they were part of the firmware. Boot entries are what you select to boot to go to an OS.

 

8 hours ago, freakermonguer said:

 

Ok.... came home, moved drives in the sata ports as somebody suggested my issue might be related to the order of the drives.

 

Discovered in the meantime that I've been using my boot drives in the SATA3 ports instead of the SATA6 (WTF).

 

I updated the clover boot on the new drive to UEFI as I was using legacy. My mobo is UEFI . It has to boot UEFI.

 

Ok. I put my 1Tb drive on Sata 1, and my 500Gb old ssd in Sata2 (last port just to be sure it's not prioritized)

And here is where more bizarre booting behaviour happens.

 

I set up the system to boot from 1Tb drive. It boots. It stalls with a cursor on screen. Bummer. It seems that it doesn't like UEFI boot. I don't understand why as the usb I created has a UEFI boot and I can see it on the BIOS. I don't understand.

 

So as I can't boot from the drive I decide to boot from my older drive. It starts booting. I see the usual string of Clover r3423 on screen. And when the r3423 has to kick in... NO ITS the 1Tb Clover r5102 booting. WTF.

 

So this is what happens with my mobo right now:

• Boot Clover r5102 UEFI. Freezes with cursor on screen.
• Boot Clover r3423 -> boots -> jumps to UEFI r5102 and it boots it. I can't boot clover r3423 now.

 

This doesn't make much sense to me. But there has to be some. Now, because I'm booting from clover r5102 I have no sound... don't know if I should fix it now or after I upgrade to Mojave.

Can someone explain it to me?

 

I'm planning to change this mobo soon as from what it seems support from now on will end with Mojave.

 

You need to adjust your settings for UEFI boot. Enable Boot/Debug in your configuration and inspect \EFI\CLOVER\misc\debug.log to figure out what is going on. Don't forget to disable it once you get booting. You can only have one version of legacy, you should only have one boot drive because then you should use clover to emulate UEFI and install your OSes like that to use UEFI. You should try to get UEFI boot working, it is much better to directly use the firmware.

[freakermonguer]

I noticed something on my system

If I prepare a UEFI install USB for OSx it's shown on the BIOS Boot menu as UEFI USB

If I install Clover on any drive as UEFI boot it doesn't detect it. It only boots Clover if I install the legacy version.

 

My drive is formatted as GPT using the Disk Utility. And made the main partitions using this tool.

 

Is there something missing in the GPT format I did so the computer doesn't detects the EUFI partition as such?

 

[bronxteck]

i am having un reliable boots as well. so far from what i have found is that there are hidden copies of the files being made like ._config.plist which have to be removed in terminal. you have to use ls -a command to see them and use rm -R ._* to get rid of them... also the EFI volume should never allow indexing. i remember we had a similar issue years ago with chameleon boot loader that writing hidden files to efi would tend to corrupt boot. my guess something changed or broke clover when they added the drive boot detection using the hidden .plist

[vector sigma]

1 hour ago, bronxteck said:

i am having un reliable boots as well. so far from what i have found is that there are hidden copies of the files being made like ._config.plist which have to be removed in terminal. you have to use ls -a command to see them and use rm -R ._* to get rid of them... also the EFI volume should never allow indexing

Then this is your fault. Temporary files can only be written by you or by third party applications.

[joevt]

5 hours ago, bronxteck said:

i am having un reliable boots as well. so far from what i have found is that there are hidden copies of the files being made like ._config.plist which have to be removed in terminal. you have to use ls -a command to see them and use rm -R ._* to get rid of them... also the EFI volume should never allow indexing. i remember we had a similar issue years ago with chameleon boot loader that writing hidden files to efi would tend to corrupt boot. my guess something changed or broke clover when they added the drive boot detection using the hidden .plist

Maybe this will help?

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/136248/disable-storage-of-invisible-files-on-my-cfs-or-smb-network-storage

 

[apianti]

6 hours ago, bronxteck said:

i am having un reliable boots as well. so far from what i have found is that there are hidden copies of the files being made like ._config.plist which have to be removed in terminal. you have to use ls -a command to see them and use rm -R ._* to get rid of them... also the EFI volume should never allow indexing. i remember we had a similar issue years ago with chameleon boot loader that writing hidden files to efi would tend to corrupt boot. my guess something changed or broke clover when they added the drive boot detection using the hidden .plist

 

Very much doubt that hidden files have anything to do with anything, they are still named correctly, and the file would not even be used. You can't add the hidden attribute to a file in FAT32 volume because it does not exists. Your volume must also be FAT32, if it is of a small size, you must ensure that it is created as a FAT32 in macOS by making sure the number of clusters will result in a FAT32 cluster table, instead of FAT16. Some firmware drivers do not work correctly with the other variants of VFAT.

 

4 hours ago, vector sigma said:

Then this is your fault. Temporary files can only be written by you or by third party applications.

 

macOS creates hidden metadata files for almost everything, just looking at a folder in finder creates hidden files.

 

1 hour ago, joevt said:

Maybe this will help?

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/136248/disable-storage-of-invisible-files-on-my-cfs-or-smb-network-storage

 

 

Yeah, dot_clean.

[apianti]

I don't know why but my comments to you two were removed when I submitted my last post....

 

On 2/1/2020 at 9:43 AM, meaganmargaret said:

Last few versions of Clover, on my X299 system have been very unreliable, (5101 5103) causing boot panics pretty regularly.  Opencore, however, boots reliably all the time.  All the same .aml files, kext files, and .efi files (with the exception FWruntime.....).  I'm running the released version of 10.15.3, but 10.15.2 was no better when it related to this problem on Clover.

 

But I'm not ready to get rid of Clover, as it's better in a multiboot environment than OC, by a long shot.

 

In examining the cpu panic log, it appears that BCMWLAN is almost always involved, which is strange because I've never had to do anything with my Broadcom card before, no additional drivers or kexts were ever required.   And, clearly, OC doesn't need them, because OC boots and these Clover versions only boot sometimes and other times a CPU panic is caused.  That's never happened with OC.

 

So, has anyone else experienced this issue?

 

NOTE:  I am on an Asus Sage X299 with a 7980xe CPU, 64GB of RAM and a Radeon VII

 

There appears to be some issues with multibooting both booters. I've been seeing several problems, I'm not sure that both aren't trying to put different values in some places. It would have been nice to have a full dump before, during, and after using OC the first time. Are you using OcQuirks and FwRuntimeServices with Clover? Because you probably want to use those instead of the previous fixes, and then I'm thinking you might not have the issues.

 

EDIT: Also make sure you don't have any fixes enabled (some are automatically enabled) that may change your ACPI tables if you have already manually edited them to be correct.

 

On 2/1/2020 at 10:31 AM, freakermonguer said:

I noticed something on my system

If I prepare a UEFI install USB for OSx it's shown on the BIOS Boot menu as UEFI USB

If I install Clover on any drive as UEFI boot it doesn't detect it. It only boots Clover if I install the legacy version.

 

My drive is formatted as GPT using the Disk Utility. And made the main partitions using this tool.

 

Is there something missing in the GPT format I did so the computer doesn't detects the EUFI partition as such?

 

Please read my previous post to bronxtech that was supposed to be combined response to you. But for some reason quoting didn't work correctly. Please make sure your EFI partition is properly formatted and you have the correct files in the correct places. Make sure you choose the option that says "UEFI:" in front of your device.

 

EDIT: You are also better off using two USB sticks, one with the installer, and one formatted as an MBR FAT32 with clover. That will work because your stick will be large enough it will be forced to use FAT32. Most firmwares don't need a drive to be GPT for it to recognize it as a bootable disk.

Edited February 2, 2020 by apianti

[bronxteck]

so is Mac OS Catalina now using Fat16 for EFI? because I have never had an issue letting OS X create my guide drives then installing clover to it? originally I think clover installer used to set a flag during install to keep OS X from writing meta to it. does the new clover app also have this?

[vector sigma]

25 minutes ago, bronxteck said:

so is Mac OS Catalina now using Fat16 for EFI? because I have never had an issue letting OS X create my guide drives then installing clover to it? originally I think clover installer used to set a flag during install to keep OS X from writing meta to it. does the new clover app also have this?

Clover.app doesn't allow to select partitions other than ExFat, Fat32 and HFS, so the problem will not show up as you cannot select Fat16 partitions. if you refear to disable spotlight and metadata indexing (which is different from creating them), yes.

Edited February 2, 2020 by vector sigma

[bronxteck]

ok good to know then it is not a fat 16 partition issue. so can the app perform a dot_clean or would that interfere with the un needed efi identifier update

Edited February 3, 2020 by bronxteck

[vector sigma]

28 minutes ago, bronxteck said:

ok good to know then it is not a fat 16 partition issue. so can the app perform a dot_clean or would that interfere with the un needed efi identifier update

no no, the app delete only .Spotlight-V100 and write .metadata_never_index:

func disableInsexing(for volume: String) {
  if fm.fileExists(atPath: volume) {
    var file = volume.addPath(".metadata_never_index")
    if !fm.fileExists(atPath: file) {
      try? "".write(toFile: file, atomically: false, encoding: .utf8)
    }
    
    file = volume.addPath(".Spotlight-V100")
    if fm.fileExists(atPath: volume.addPath("")) {
      try? fm.removeItem(atPath: file)
    }
  }
}

By the way.. what is "the un needed efi identifier update"?

[apianti]

8 hours ago, vector sigma said:

Clover.app doesn't allow to select partitions other than ExFat, Fat32 and HFS, so the problem will not show up as you cannot select Fat16 partitions. if you refear to disable spotlight and metadata indexing (which is different from creating them), yes.

 

What? macOS refers to all VFAT variants as msdos, it also creates a FAT16 volume if the disk can't hold enough clusters, like if the partition is less than 2GB, try formatting one. In fact, very often, the EFI partition is created as FAT16 because it is unused for booting a mac. If you've ever had to make a bootcamp USB on a mac, it does not get recognized in a PC but windows installer created on a PC is recognized by a mac. The specification for FAT volumes gives the method for determining which size the cluster indices are by how many clusters are in the partition. I don't know where you got the idea that you can't create a FAT16 partition and it won't be seen by macOS, it will and it will appear as msdos the same as a FAT32 partition.

 

4 hours ago, bronxteck said:

ok good to know then it is not a fat 16 partition issue. so can the app perform a dot_clean or would that interfere with the un needed efi identifier update

 

No clue how you ruled that out without inspecting the volume partition itself. dot_clean removes all files starting with ._ by macOS. There are different ways it does this so you probably want to read the manual page. You may want to get a better inspection tool in linux and see what the actual volume identifier says the volume is and make sure it is correctly identified as the ESP.

 

EDIT: Also, unsure where the previous information about what dot_clean does came from but https://ss64.com/osx/dot_clean.html. It does not touch either of those files, it removes metadata files (._*), these contain attributes for the operating system to apply to the files.

 

EDIT2: Add .metadata_never_index after you clean the volume with dot_clean. Then it won't get reindexed.

Edited February 3, 2020 by apianti

[vector sigma]

10 hours ago, apianti said:

I don't know where you got the idea that you can't create a FAT16 partition and it won't be seen by macOS

I'm pretty sure I haven't seen boot sectors in the source code to load a Fat16 partition. Is not?

Didn't say macOS can't see fat16 partitions, only that the program I made did not allow to select them, right or wrong it is.

10 hours ago, apianti said:

In fact, very often, the EFI partition is created as FAT16 because

Well, GPT formatted disk <= 2GB doesn't even create the EFI partition in macOS (if I'm not mistaken). So for this I can't image why Fat16 should be involved at all.  Had to say that I don't know if some other OS create the ESP in f16 which eventually can make sense for UEFI loading.

Edited February 3, 2020 by vector sigma

[bronxteck]

my drive is a 1 terabyte Samsung ssd with 4k offset the other one is a 256gb M.2 with 512k offset just incase I should have specified.

10 hours ago, apianti said:

EDIT2: Add .metadata_never_index after you clean the volume with dot_clean. Then it won't get reindexed.

so can we add that to the clover app. or does Catalina disregard it?

EDIT: after mounting EFI i did a dot_clean -m /volumes/EFI then a sudo mdutil -i off /volumes/EFI lets see how that holds up had to manually remove some of the left over .files

Edited February 3, 2020 by bronxteck

[Slice]

Legacy boot is not possible from fat16 because of fat structure.

And I am not sure if UEFI boot is possible.

 

On 2/1/2020 at 6:31 PM, freakermonguer said:

I noticed something on my system

If I prepare a UEFI install USB for OSx it's shown on the BIOS Boot menu as UEFI USB

If I install Clover on any drive as UEFI boot it doesn't detect it. It only boots Clover if I install the legacy version.

 

My drive is formatted as GPT using the Disk Utility. And made the main partitions using this tool.

 

Is there something missing in the GPT format I did so the computer doesn't detects the EUFI partition as such?

 

I also may suppose that UEFI BIOS exists which allows UEFI boot only from USB not from SATA.

[apianti]

On 2/3/2020 at 7:16 AM, vector sigma said:

I'm pretty sure I haven't seen boot sectors in the source code to load a Fat16 partition. Is not?

Didn't say macOS can't see fat16 partitions, only that the program I made did not allow to select them, right or wrong it is.

Well, GPT formatted disk <= 2GB doesn't even create the EFI partition in macOS (if I'm not mistaken). So for this I can't image why Fat16 should be involved at all.  Had to say that I don't know if some other OS create the ESP in f16 which eventually can make sense for UEFI loading.

 

Booting is entirely different, that was written to load the next stage from the ESP. The ESP is supposed to be FAT32, that does not mean it is, the partition could be formatted to any file system. The reason there is a problem with not explicitly forcing FAT32 is because the specification for FAT specifies the amount of clusters that a specific variant can use. Please see here, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table#Nomenclature.

 

On 2/3/2020 at 10:12 AM, bronxteck said:

my drive is a 1 terabyte Samsung ssd with 4k offset the other one is a 256gb M.2 with 512k offset just incase I should have specified.

so can we add that to the clover app. or does Catalina disregard it?

EDIT: after mounting EFI i did a dot_clean -m /volumes/EFI then a sudo mdutil -i off /volumes/EFI lets see how that holds up had to manually remove some of the left over .files

 

The dot_clean only operates on files beginning with both a dot and an underscore, metadata, any other file beginning with dot were created for some other reason.

[apianti]

13 hours ago, Slice said:

Legacy boot is not possible from fat16 because of fat structure.

And I am not sure if UEFI boot is possible.

 

Depends on whether the FAT file system driver only supports FAT32 or detects and supports any variant.

 

13 hours ago, Slice said:

I also may suppose that UEFI BIOS exists which allows UEFI boot only from USB not from SATA.

 

Sometimes, if the disk is internal and it has the legacy boot active flag in the MBR then it will not check for UEFI, I used to have a gigabyte mobo that did this. If you remove the flag by zeroing the last two bytes of the MBR, then the disk will be recognized as GPT and offer the UEFI: option, also \EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.efi has to exist, obviously or there is nothing to boot. You need to make a boot entry for \EFI\CLOVER\CLOVERX64.efi.

 

EDIT: Slice, that was weirdly a response to you and the person you responded to, lol.

Edited February 4, 2020 by apianti

[vector sigma]

47 minutes ago, apianti said:

The ESP is supposed to be FAT32, that does not mean it is, the partition could be formatted to any file system

Exatly. Why only hfs, Fat32 and ExFat are supported by the new program: users cant install on it...so users will not ask why Clover wont boot.

 

e.g. (for the pkg) "I installed Clover... and doesn't work! why? is SIP or Catalina..it's a bug?" ...but:

if [[ -n $(cat /tmp/origbs | grep FAT16) ]]; then
      echo "boot volume format is FAT16" >> "$tmp_log"
      echo "No Stage1 was written" >> "$tmp_log"
    else

Lol

Edited February 4, 2020 by vector sigma

[apianti]

5 hours ago, vector sigma said:

Exatly. Why only hfs, Fat32 and ExFat are supported by the new program: users cant install on it...so users will not ask why Clover wont boot.

 

e.g. (for the pkg) "I installed Clover... and doesn't work! why? is SIP or Catalina..it's a bug?" ...but:

if [[ -n $(cat /tmp/origbs | grep FAT16) ]]; then
      echo "boot volume format is FAT16" >> "$tmp_log"
      echo "No Stage1 was written" >> "$tmp_log"
    else

Lol

 

Except he is UEFI booting, so why does legacy booting have anything to do with whether or not his ESP is formatted FAT32 correctly? So, yeah... lol.

 

EDIT: Or that you don't need to use the package at all to install...

Edited February 4, 2020 by apianti