OS X compatible motherboard -> QUO

[valiant]

Questions:

 

A. Do the values in the KernextPatcher.plist and defaults.plist get written to something?

 

I ask because after I did a clean install of the reference SSD* and rebooted, I disassembled the smaller of my fusion drives into a separate 120GB SSD and 4TB HD**. I then used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the reference SSD to the 4TB HD. Then I removed the 512GB reference SSD and rebooted to the 4TB HD, leaving the 120GB SSD also connected.

 

However, I forgot to copy over the two .plists to either of the new drives. Yet when I then looked at About This Mac, it still identified as a Mid-2012 iMac.

 

The 120 SSD is on SATA0 and has a KernextPatcherLog.txt file, but neither of the .plists.

 

B. Wherever it's getting the info, what is the circumstance that makes it forget?

 

Thanks.

 

*  Yes, I did erase the disk first with Disk Utility to APFS; but I had copied the /Efi/Oz/ folder and put it back before taking it back to the Quo and rebooting

 

** It was still HFS+ Journaled, so was pretty simple to undo using diskutil coreStorage - I don't know how difficult it would be with an APFS fusion drive

Edited February 4, 2020 by valiant
Accidental duplicate

[IronManJFF]

Defaults.plist are read from SATA0,0 (if a drive is connected there..that is why i always recommend using this connector to make it predictable) and stored in NVRAM until NVRAM is cleared (flashing firmware, Command-Option-P-R).

KernextPatcher.plist are read from the disk that contains the kernel you are booting if present, else it is read from the one i built into the firmware. KernextPatcher.plist is read at every boot.

[valiant]

9 minutes ago, IronManJFF said:

Defaults.plist are read from SATA0,0 (if a drive is connected there..that is why i always recommend using this connector to make it predictable) and stored in NVRAM until NVRAM is cleared (flashing firmware, Command-Option-P-R).

 

Good to know, thanks.

 

9 minutes ago, IronManJFF said:

KernextPatcher.plist are read from the disk that contains the kernel you are booting if present, else it is read from the one i built into the firmware. KernextPatcher.plist is read at every boot.

 

So this structure provides a fallback in the firmware, but allows running updates.

 

Is there a difference between the KernextPatcher in firmware and the .plist version at the moment? 

 

And, not that I'm likely to update to Catalina any time soon, is there a difference between KernextPatcher for Mojave and for Catalina?

[valiant]

Sidebar

 

I found out why my QUO wouldn't boot with the 6.12TB fusion drive connected.

 

The 120GB SSD failed in service.

 

I could boot with just the HD portion connected, but as soon as I connected the SSD the QUO wouldn't even post.

 

Fortunately I had just (just!!) dismantled my 4.12TB fusion drive, so I had a spare 120GB SSD on hand. I also have a backup of that volume.

 

I was able to create a new fusion drive.

 

For the record I found it easiest to format both the 6TB HD and the 120GB SSD as HFS+, then combine them into a fusion drive, then convert that to APFS. The whole process took about half an hour, including googling how-to's.

 

Of course doing a Carbon Copy restoration of 6TB will take much longer....

[IronManJFF]

44 minutes ago, valiant said:

And, not that I'm likely to update to Catalina any time soon, is there a difference between KernextPatcher for Mojave and for Catalina?

Yes KernextPatcher (the software) was updated for Catalina..the version that is in the XMAX-E firmware is the version that was available at the time (so Mojave).. but yes a KernextPatcher.plist in /EFI will override the one in firmware

 

The Catalina-friendly firmware assembled by ElvieJoe is better suited for Catalina but sometimes (well often enough to be annoying) fails to boot Mojave (at least in a multi-boot setup)

 

If I have enough free time (and can get off pager duty) I might try to assemble a firmware that would be compatible with OpenCore (but not reverting to the stock firmware).. not sure there would be a high demand for it

Edited February 4, 2020 by IronManJFF

[valiant]

2 minutes ago, IronManJFF said:

The Catalina-friendly firmware assembled by ElvieJoe is better suited for Catalina but sometimes (well often enough to be annoying) fails to boot Mojave (at least in a multi-boot setup)

 

OK. Thanks.

 

I'll stick with the .plist I have right now - it seems to work fine for me, and I don't intend to move to Catalina for quite a while. I have too much software that's still 32bit.

[valiant]

Recommendation?

 

I have a fresh empty drive and a backup of the content of that drive that was giving me grief because it was Mojave installed over Yosemite, and there was lots of stuff going on that didn't work correctly as a result. (HDMI sound, video display weirdness, not recognizing full 4k resolution, not playing online videos, perhaps others).

 

These are some options:

 

1. Boot from another drive and use CCC to clone restore the backup and trouble-shoot the resulting install

2. Put a fresh install of Mojave on the empty drive, then boot into it and use Apple's Migration Tool to restore the users

3. As above, but instead use CCC's 'restore to boot drive from backup' feature (which doesn't overwrite System files).

 

My goal is to end up with an install that has all my registered software working without having to go through reentering all the license information, and all my personal customizations working, and my symlinks, sound, video, etc. all working correctly.

 

Any idea which of these would be most effective for getting to the end goal?

 

Thanks.

[valiant]

28 minutes ago, IronManJFF said:

The Catalina-friendly firmware assembled by ElvieJoe is better suited for Catalina but sometimes (well often enough to be annoying) fails to boot Mojave (at least in a multi-boot setup)

 

I did not know there was someone else working on QUO firmware. That's kind of cool for such an old motherboard.

[IronManJFF]

1 hour ago, valiant said:

Recommendation?

 

I have a fresh empty drive and a backup of the content of that drive that was giving me grief because it was Mojave installed over Yosemite, and there was lots of stuff going on that didn't work correctly as a result. (HDMI sound, video display weirdness, not recognizing full 4k resolution, not playing online videos, perhaps others).

 

These are some options:

 

1. Boot from another drive and use CCC to clone restore the backup and trouble-shoot the resulting install

2. Put a fresh install of Mojave on the empty drive, then boot into it and use Apple's Migration Tool to restore the users

3. As above, but instead use CCC's 'restore to boot drive from backup' feature (which doesn't overwrite System files).

 

My goal is to end up with an install that has all my registered software working without having to go through reentering all the license information, and all my personal customizations working, and my symlinks, sound, video, etc. all working correctly.

 

Any idea which of these would be most effective for getting to the end goal?

 

Thanks.

 

2. Put a fresh install of Mojave on the empty drive, then boot into it and use Apple's Migration Tool to restore the users

 

That is the most likely way to not import too many problems.. and it is the only way to get a clean system. So any issue would be in 'user space'

Edited February 4, 2020 by IronManJFF

[valiant]

3 hours ago, IronManJFF said:

If I have enough free time (and can get off pager duty) I might try to assemble a firmware that would be compatible with OpenCore (but not reverting to the stock firmware).. not sure there would be a high demand for it

I saw an offhand reference to OpenCore several pages back, but I don’t know anything about it. What does it offer compared to Ozmosis?

[valiant]

5 hours ago, IronManJFF said:

 

2. Put a fresh install of Mojave on the empty drive, then boot into it and use Apple's Migration Tool to restore the users

 

That is the most likely way to not import too many problems.. and it is the only way to get a clean system. So any issue would be in 'user space'

Migration Assistant running - estimated time 38 hours. 

[IronManJFF]

I saw an offhand reference to OpenCore several pages back, but I don’t know anything about it. What does it offer compared to Ozmosis?

 

At the moment, it is quite equivalent to Ozmosis (for our board) but OpenCore has active development while Oz dev has stalled a couple of years ago even tough it was successfully patched by people more saavy than me to allow it to boot the latest macOS; Catalina might be the end of the road for Ozmosis or it might not.

 

The future of Hackintosh is OpenCore.

[valiant]

8 hours ago, IronManJFF said:

 

At the moment, it is quite equivalent to Ozmosis (for our board) but OpenCore has active development while Oz dev has stalled a couple of years ago even tough it was successfully patched by people more saavy than me to allow it to boot the latest macOS; Catalina might be the end of the road for Ozmosis or it might not.

 

The future of Hackintosh is OpenCore.

 

Good to know, thanks. I'll keep an eye on developments, especially if I want to upgrade beyond Catalina later. I don't know how many QUO users out there would want to do that, but I assume there would at least be some. Your work on the ROM to date has been epic, it might be cool to see if it's possible to transition to OpenCore.

 

In the meantime, Migration Assistant says estimated time remaining 13 hours...

[valiant]

I keep checking on Migration Assistant and I’ve noticed the progress text says file transfer is somewhere between 40 and 60 MB/s. 
 

I’ve also come across posts talking about macOS USB port limits and speed, but didn’t pay attention at the time. 
 

I’ve got a usb 3 drive plugged into one of the usb 3 ports on the back of the mobo. 
 

Is 60 MB/s a typical transfer speed to expect from a spinny HD? Or is it possible I have the USB 3 ports not configured properly for full speed? How would I test that?

 

Thanks. 
 

EDIT: Well, I’ve seen speed announcements as low as 11 MB/s and as high as 87 MB/s, so I think it’s the software not the port speed. 

Edited February 6, 2020 by valiant
Update

[valiant]

Well, this is frustrating.

 

When I went to bed Migration Assistant said "7 hours left at 38 MB/s." When I woke up it said "15 hours left at 18 MB/s." 

 

Argh. It's been running for over 48 hours now. Maybe I would have been better off trying to triage the screwed up Mojave-over-Yosemite installation after all...

[IronManJFF]

Let it run its course ..cancelling it will not make it faster.
Just make sure it is still active.

[IronManJFF]

Argh. It's been running for over 48 hours now. Maybe I would have been better off trying to triage the screwed up Mojave-over-Yosemite installation after all...

You will get more problems down the road if you go that route...

[valiant]

1 hour ago, IronManJFF said:

Let it run its course ..cancelling it will not make it faster.
Just make sure it is still active.

 

In for a penny,  in for a pound. At this point I'm going to let it keep going. I look in on it every couple of hours. This morning it said 15 hours, but I looked just now and it said 1 hour 21 minutes at 11 MB/s, so I've pretty much stopped believing the predictions and will just wait it out.

 

Thanks for you advice, by the way. I took it when you made it, but I had also reached out to Bombich Software (makers of Carbon Copy Cloner) and they got back to me more slowly than you, but with the same advice.

[valiant]

Ah well.

 

Better part of 48 hours, it finally completed with the innocuous remark that there were some errors and some.files were not copied over.

 

The reality is most files were not copied. The backup drive has 5.7 TB of data on it. 0.4 copied over. 48 hours and less than 10% success rate.

 

Very frustrating. I don't know where to try next.

 

 

[IronManJFF]

Mike Bombich is a real nice guy. His software has saved my bacon so many times ...

 

Just to be clear .. you were using Migration Assistant to restore from a Time Machine Backup  ? or from a CCC backup ?

[valiant]

7 hours ago, IronManJFF said:

Mike Bombich is a real nice guy. His software has saved my bacon so many times ...

 

Just to be clear .. you were using Migration Assistant to restore from a Time Machine Backup  ? or from a CCC backup ?

 

I was using Migration Assistant to restore from a CCC bootable backup of Mojave-over-Yosemite.

 

In my experience Time Machine restores are even slower, and 48 hours was already really long. And Time Machine backups are not bootable...

 

Right now I am doing a "live" CCC restore from the same backup. CCC has a feature where you can restore to the boot drive and it'll restore everything except for system files.

 

I started that last night, and it looks like it'll be running until about midnight today (provided there's no weirdness with speeding up and slowing down). Although that's 24 hours, it's still twice as fast as Migration Assistant, and I'm more confident it will actually transfer over data.

 

Yeah, I have been using CCC since before OSX, I think.

 

I am resigned to having to set some things up from scratch: hopefully the software registrations will "take", otherwise I'll have to dig out all the old license codes and re-register stuff.

Edited February 7, 2020 by valiant
Clarity

[valiant]

So...

 

While I'm waiting for the restore to finish, a couple of questions.

 

As i understand it, the Macs that were built using the Core i7-37XX series CPUs were the imac13,2,  the macmini6,2 and the macbookpro10,1.

 

Is there a difference or advantage of declaring one over another in the defaults.plist? What about declaring as a macpro5,1? They're all dated 2012. Does the OS default to different functionality depending on the one you choose? Or does it just affect the model number in About This Mac?

 

Also, I have been running pretty much a QUO-AOS vanilla install, with just the Kernext and default .plists.

 

Is there an advantage or improved functionality by running Lilu and Whatevergreen? I understand that Lilu is kind of a plugin framework that doesn’t really do anything on its own without plugins, and that Whatevergreen is a common plugin used with it, however I'm not quite certain of what Whatevergreen actually does.

 

Thanks.

 

 

[IronManJFF]

It is mostly about power management policies ... and cpu generation 

iMac13,2 is better suited if your have a dedicated GPU

MacMini6,2 when using iGPU only

You dont want to be a laptop

 

Most of the stuff is loaded based on the hardware that is found but there are a couple of weirdness... imho stick with imac13,2 or macmini6,2 ... proven record

 

WhateverGreen fixes thing like  black screen on boot. It relates to the GPU

[valiant]

49 minutes ago, IronManJFF said:

WhateverGreen fixes thing like  black screen on boot. It relates to the GPU

 

Hmm. There's a company that offers to flash my Vega 56 for US$175 to make it a "real" Mac GPU. 

 

Right now I'm booting in verbose mode, which is occasionally entertaining (there's a line that includes the phrase "relaxed DAD" for instance). but I would eventually like to turn that off.

 

The flashing service doesn't do a very good job of explaining why I would want to flash my card, and at that price, once I factor in shipping, tariffs and exchange, it's nearly as much as I paid for it.

 

Does Whatevergreen address the same problem, but in plugin software rather than at the GPU level?

Edited February 7, 2020 by valiant
OCD

[TimeLord04]

1 hour ago, valiant said:

 

Hmm. There's a company that offers to flash my Vega 56 for US$175 to make it a "real" Mac GPU. 

 

Right now I'm booting in verbose mode, which is occasionally entertaining (there's a line that includes the phrase "relaxed DAD" for instance). but I would eventually like to turn that off.

 

The flashing service doesn't do a very good job of explaining why I would want to flash my card, and at that price, once I factor in shipping, tariffs and exchange, it's nearly as much as I paid for it.

 

Does Whatevergreen address the same problem, but in plugin software rather than at the GPU level?

IF you choose to have your GPU Flashed, look ONLY into MacVidCards.com.  I DOUBT they would charge you that much; but it could be over $100.

I bought my GTX-1070 8GB GDDR5 VRAM GPU from them - Pre-Flashed.  I paid $555 + $14 for Shipping.  Mac Flashed Cards that are Pre-Flashed

command a MUCH HIGHER price than off the shelf GPUs.  So, IF you got your GPU for a decent price, another $100+ isn't that bad to have

the GPU Flashed by MacVidCards.

 

(IMHO.)

 

 

TimeLord04

 

[EDIT:]

 

Well, just checked your Link and it is the Flashing Service for

Radeon by MacVidCards.  I'm quite shocked that it's $175.

I've looked into their Flashing Services in the past for NVIDIA,

I've always remembered about $105 for Flashing most NVIDIA

Cards.  WOW what a price shock!

 

 

TimeLord04

Edited February 8, 2020 by TimeLord04