[GUIDE] Dell XPS 15 (9550) Mojave 10.14 / 10.15 Quick Installation

[Krim404]

ESP is your EFI Partition, it just has the wrong name. ESP = Efi System Partition.

 

This has been created by Windows instead of the OSX Installer. It contains the Windows Bootfiles. So it seems like you didn't follow the tutorial.

 

I dunno if it still valid with APFS, but with HFS this setup would be unbootable.

Edited October 25, 2018 by wmchris

[dcarozza6]

30 minutes ago, Mr.C said:

 

hmmm... interesting. So after you choose ESP option, can you select your OS partition with the "Change Install location" button?

pic

 

You followed the tutorial correctly right? Especially this part:

"If you want to multiboot with Windows 10, then you'll have to create a second partition, too (also HFS! Dont use FAT or it will not boot! You have to reformat it when installing Windows)."

When I got to that part, I partitioned the Windows part as "MacOS Extended (Journaled)", which I thought was the equivalent as HFS (which wasn't an option). I've attached my Clover installer screen, you can see where I am choosing to install on "OSX", not "Windows".

[Krim404]

You didnt partition the SD, you just reformatted the existing partition.

Redo the installation, and re-partition the whole drive.

Edited October 25, 2018 by wmchris

[dcarozza6]

Just now, wmchris said:

You didnt partition the SD, you just reformatted the existing partition.

Redo the installation.

Ok, thank you! So when I redo it, where did I go wrong? When I opened Disk Utility before the installer, I reformatted the drive to "MacOS Extended (Journaled)" I believe, and then made 2 partitions and named it OSX and Windows, both MacOS Ext. Journaled.

[Krim404]

http://bfy.tw/KXtJ

There it is explained...

Edited October 25, 2018 by wmchris

[dcarozza6]

5 hours ago, wmchris said:

http://bfy.tw/KXtJ

There it is explained...

Thanks for your help, I got it working! It's really awesome to see you helping all these people throughout the years you've worked on this!

[blazinsmokey]

wmchris, just wanted to drop by and say thanks a bunch. After reviewing your files and making some adjustments to work for my 9560, it is near perfect.

One issue I had was with voodoops2. On a cold boot, the keyboard didn't work until another restart. Trackpad and even brightness keys worked but no key input so couldn't log in till a restart. After restart then keys worked fine. I solved it by installing voodoops2 into LE. No no more problems. Would have rather not have to install it but other than that things have been great.

[alex.daoud]

Apologies if this has been answered before but I couldn't find anything after searching: does anyone experience severe battery drain with the 9550? The battery probably lasts only about an hour on my machine. Moreover, the battery percentage only ever reaches 62%.

[reece394]

43 minutes ago, alex.daoud said:

Apologies if this has been answered before but I couldn't find anything after searching: does anyone experience severe battery drain with the 9550? The battery probably lasts only about an hour on my machine. Moreover, the battery percentage only ever reaches 62%.

Not that bad but when I had my SD card slot enabled in BIOS it drained faster. I already had my touch screen disabled so can't comment based on that. I am using basically the same configuration as this guide. I have had weird issues of when unplugging the power cable and plugging it back in it taking a while to start recognising it is charging. The .1 update is out now BTW so I am holding off until tomorrow to test it as I need my computer working tomorrow. 

[alex.daoud]

16 minutes ago, reece394 said:

Not that bad but when I had my SD card slot enabled in BIOS it drained faster. I already had my touch screen disabled so can't comment based on that. I am using basically the same configuration as this guide. I have had weird issues of when unplugging the power cable and plugging it back in it taking a while to start recognising it is charging. The .1 update is out now BTW so I am holding off until tomorrow to test it as I need my computer working tomorrow. 

Thanks for the tip re: SD card, I've disabled it to see if it makes much of a difference. I wonder if a proper driver for it would fix it...

[Krim404]

4 minutes ago, alex.daoud said:

Thanks for the tip re: SD card, I've disabled it to see if it makes much of a difference. I wonder if a proper driver for it would fix it...

SD card makes a huge difference, but not the amount you've reported.

My 9550 is running 2-3h ... with a heavily broken battery (<60% of the normal Ah)

It seems more like your GPU is enabled, SD Cardreader (btw there is a driver, but its very buggy) active + inel speedstep disabled + a worn out battery. Otherwise 1h would be practically impossible.

Edited October 30, 2018 by wmchris

[alex.daoud]

1 hour ago, wmchris said:

SD card makes a huge difference, but not the amount you've reported.

My 9550 is running 2-3h ... with a heavily broken battery (<60% of the normal Ah)

 It seems more like your GPU is enabled, SD Cardreader (btw there is a driver, but its very buggy) active + inel speedstep disabled + a worn out battery. Otherwise 1h would be practically impossible.

Unfortunately GPU and SD card reader are disabled and speedstep is enabled. Battery drain is still pretty bad and I only charge up to 62%. It's looking more like a worn out battery rather than any bug with macOS at this point. It's probably from abusing it from the last two years of VoodooI2C dev :p

[Mr.C]

There is a security update for 12.6, 13.6, 14 rolling out today. Some changes that can harm the update process:

Quote

EFI

Available for: macOS High Sierra 10.13.6

Impact: Systems with microprocessors utilizing speculative execution and speculative execution of memory reads before the addresses of all prior memory writes are known may allow unauthorized disclosure of information to an attacker with local user access via a side-channel analysis

Description: An information disclosure issue was addressed with a microcode update. This ensures that older data read from recently-written-to addresses cannot be read via a speculative side-channel.

CVE-2018-3639: Jann Horn (@tehjh) of Google Project Zero (GPZ), Ken Johnson of the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC)

EFI

Available for: macOS High Sierra 10.13.6, macOS Mojave 10.14

Impact: A local user may be able to modify protected parts of the file system

Description: A configuration issue was addressed with additional restrictions.

CVE-2018-4342: Timothy Perfitt of Twocanoes Software

IOHIDFamily

Available for: macOS Sierra 10.12.6, macOS High Sierra 10.13.6

Impact: A malicious application may be able to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges

Description: A memory corruption issue was addressed with improved input validation

CVE-2018-4408: Ian Beer of Google Project Zero

 

 

source: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209193 
 

if you're brave enough, try it 

[Krim404]

13 hours ago, alex.daoud said:

Unfortunately GPU and SD card reader are disabled and speedstep is enabled. Battery drain is still pretty bad and I only charge up to 62%. It's looking more like a worn out battery rather than any bug with macOS at this point. It's probably from abusing it from the last two years of VoodooI2C dev :p

you can boot into the Dell Hardware Checkup and test your battery. It sometimes happens, that OSX will report a wrong power charge value (eg. displaying 90% and not charging, unplugging will immediately let it jump to 100%), but this is only occasionally on a worn battery. Maybe there is another culprit...

2 hours ago, Mr.C said:

There is a security update for 12.6, 13.6, 14 rolling out today. Some changes that can harm the update process:

 

source: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209193 
 

if you're brave enough, try it 

normally EFI related updates will only prevent the update to happen (failure -> abort), but will not result in an unbootable system. I'll give it a hit when i'm back from work tonight.

Edited October 31, 2018 by wmchris

[phaberest]

It seems like 10.14.1 is out, I'll try to update in the weekend if I find the time

[Krim404]

first test with 10.14.1 without any problem. seems safe.

[Mr.C]

2 hours ago, wmchris said:

first test with 10.14.1 without any problem. seems safe.

 

Hope the new 1.9.0 System BIOS won't break it

[reece394]

3 hours ago, wmchris said:

first test with 10.14.1 without any problem. seems safe.

I concur with that. Had to reinstall AppleBacklightInjector to Library/Extensions and fight though a few unable to allocate errors with the memory fix. I updated clover, Lilu and WhatEverGreen to their latest versions before updating to be on the safe side

55 minutes ago, Mr.C said:

 

Hope the new 1.9.0 System BIOS won't break it

No fixes I am concerned with on that BIOS. You should only update BIOS if there are major security fixes or you are having issues. I don't use those features so I will stay on 1.8.0. Also Dell have a tendency to break things with BIOS updates

 

[reece394]

Just something I discovered there now. I found out if you want the bigger Apple logo on you 4K screen there is a plist config option in clover. I used clover configurator and went into the boot graphics section and enabled EFILoginHiDPI by putting 1 and setting UIScale to 2. Makes it look nicer. Just a cosmetic thing but maybe you could put it in your guide as a post install fix.

[Krim404]

12 hours ago, Mr.C said:

 

Hope the new 1.9.0 System BIOS won't break it

works fine.

9 hours ago, reece394 said:

Just something I discovered there now. I found out if you want the bigger Apple logo on you 4K screen there is a plist config option in clover. I used clover configurator and went into the boot graphics section and enabled EFILoginHiDPI by putting 1 and setting UIScale to 2. Makes it look nicer. Just a cosmetic thing but maybe you could put it in your guide as a post install fix.

as you said - just a cosmetic thing and will look strange on non 4k displays. I already added the GUIScale var before, so changing it is only a minor adaptation.

Edited November 1, 2018 by wmchris

[pingram]

Hi ya'll,

9550 i7 16g 4k 512 w/ existing W10 and Linux os's already installed using grub boot loader

Having some trouble getting the installation going.  I have the PC300 NVMe Hynix 512 and was getting page allocation errors so I followed the slide tutorial and reviewed many times how to calculate just to be sure and first available space calculated to slide=146.  Using this I would get another kernel cache error:

ERROR!!! Load prelinked kernel with status 0x800...9
Error loading kernel cache (0x9)

So I tried all variants of OsxAptioFixDrv V1, V2, V3, LowMemFix and free2000 each with and without using the slide value and/or slide=0 but couldn't get past this until I went w/ V1 - OsxAptioFixDrv-64.efi + AllocFix.efi + no slide value.

I get past the kernel cache even though there is what looks like an error:

Start ProcessOptions

AWF: Only 141/256 slide values are usable! Booting may fail!
Valid slides are 0-140
End ProcessOptions

Then continues on with boot routines until:

Start FinalizeBootStruct
Start RandomSeed
End RandomSeed
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This is where it hangs. Any help greatly appreciated.

p.s. forgot to mention I also have the IONVMeFamily Preferred Block Size and Hynix SSD patches in my config.plist (my sector size is not converted to 4k, not sure if this matters):
 

<dict>
  <key>Comment</key>
  <string>IONVMeFamily Preferred Block Size 0x10 -> 0x02, credit RehabMan based on 10.12 patch, (c) Pike R. Alpha </string>
  <key>Disabled</key>
  <true/>
  <key>Name</key>
  <string>com.apple.iokit.IONVMeFamily</string>
  <key>Find</key>
  <data>9sEQD4VBAQAA</data>
  <key>Replace</key>
  <data>9sECD4VBAQAA</data>
</dict>
<dict>
  <key>Comment</key>
  <string>IONVMeFamily Pike R. Alpha Hynix SSD patch</string>
  <key>Disabled</key>
  <false/>
  <key>Find</key>
  <data>9sEQD4UcAQAA</data>
  <key>Name</key>
  <string>IONVMeFamily</string>
  <key>Replace</key>
  <data>9sECD4UcAQAA</data>
</dict>

 

Edited November 4, 2018 by pingram
extra info

[nabeelmoeen]

11 hours ago, pingram said:

Hi ya'll,

9550 i7 16g 4k 512 w/ existing W10 and Linux os's already installed using grub boot loader

Having some trouble getting the installation going.  I have the PC300 NVMe Hynix 512 and was getting page allocation errors so I followed the slide tutorial and reviewed many times how to calculate just to be sure and first available space calculated to slide=146.  Using this I would get another kernel cache error:

ERROR!!! Load prelinked kernel with status 0x800...9
Error loading kernel cache (0x9)

So I tried all variants of OsxAptioFixDrv V1, V2, V3, LowMemFix and free2000 each with and without using the slide value and/or slide=0 but couldn't get past this until I went w/ V1 - OsxAptioFixDrv-64.efi + AllocFix.efi + no slide value.

I get past the kernel cache even though there is what looks like an error:

Start ProcessOptions

AWF: Only 141/256 slide values are usable! Booting may fail!
Valid slides are 0-140
End ProcessOptions

Then continues on with boot routines until:

Start FinalizeBootStruct
Start RandomSeed
End RandomSeed
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This is where it hangs. Any help greatly appreciated.

p.s. forgot to mention I also have the IONVMeFamily Preferred Block Size and Hynix SSD patches in my config.plist (my sector size is not converted to 4k, not sure if this matters):
 

<dict>
  <key>Comment</key>
  <string>IONVMeFamily Preferred Block Size 0x10 -> 0x02, credit RehabMan based on 10.12 patch, (c) Pike R. Alpha </string>
  <key>Disabled</key>
  <true/>
  <key>Name</key>
  <string>com.apple.iokit.IONVMeFamily</string>
  <key>Find</key>
  <data>9sEQD4VBAQAA</data>
  <key>Replace</key>
  <data>9sECD4VBAQAA</data>
</dict>
<dict>
  <key>Comment</key>
  <string>IONVMeFamily Pike R. Alpha Hynix SSD patch</string>
  <key>Disabled</key>
  <false/>
  <key>Find</key>
  <data>9sEQD4UcAQAA</data>
  <key>Name</key>
  <string>IONVMeFamily</string>
  <key>Replace</key>
  <data>9sECD4UcAQAA</data>
</dict>

 

Which version are you trying to install?

 

I have the Hynix NVMe too, and the boot errors have nothing to do with the SSD. 

I had Sierra working fine without the 4K patch, but couldn't get High Sierra to recognize the SSD (or install to it..cant recall its been a while). I think you'll have to convert to 4K sector size if you want to install 10.13 or later.

 

I know this doesn't address the issue youre facing, buy thought id share this just so you can prepare for losing the existing windows and Linux partitions (i was in a similar situation) :(

[pingram]

11 hours ago, nabeelmoeen said:

Which version are you trying to install?

 

I have the Hynix NVMe too, and the boot errors have nothing to do with the SSD. 

I had Sierra working fine without the 4K patch, but couldn't get High Sierra to recognize the SSD (or install to it..cant recall its been a while). I think you'll have to convert to 4K sector size if you want to install 10.13 or later.

 

I know this doesn't address the issue youre facing, buy thought id share this just so you can prepare for losing the existing windows and Linux partitions (i was in a similar situation)

Hi @nabeelmoeen

 

I'm trying to install 10.14.  The Arch Linux distro is my daily driver and I only have W10 left over from OEM just in case it's ever needed.

My workstation daily driver however is 10.12 which will get some attention soon.  I tried grabbing a 10.12 install from the App store but I have nothing in my purchase history.  I have the original .raw file I used so I might give 10.12 a shot if I can't get this working.

 

Quote

I think you'll have to convert to 4K sector size if you want to install 10.13 or later.

Can anyone confirm this?  It sounds like others have Hynix NVMe's too, anyone w/ 512 sector and working?

[Krim404]

1 hour ago, pingram said:

Hi @nabeelmoeen

 

I'm trying to install 10.14.  The Arch Linux distro is my daily driver and I only have W10 left over from OEM just in case it's ever needed.

My workstation daily driver however is 10.12 which will get some attention soon.  I tried grabbing a 10.12 install from the App store but I have nothing in my purchase history.  I have the original .raw file I used so I might give 10.12 a shot if I can't get this working.

 

Can anyone confirm this?  It sounds like others have Hynix NVMe's too, anyone w/ 512 sector and working? 

hynix is incompatible with 4k, but is installable with the supplied patches. Still your error has nothing to do with the SSD, your memory is fragmented. If you cant get it to work with the supplied files and tutorials, chances are slim to impossible to get it in a running state. Try calculating the slide value, if this doesnt work either then OSX is not suitable for your device.

Edited November 6, 2018 by wmchris

[alex.daoud]

On 10/30/2018 at 9:10 PM, alex.daoud said:

Unfortunately GPU and SD card reader are disabled and speedstep is enabled. Battery drain is still pretty bad and I only charge up to 62%. It's looking more like a worn out battery rather than any bug with macOS at this point. It's probably from abusing it from the last two years of VoodooI2C dev :p

Just a followup on this issue. Turns out I was running a really old BIOS with known battery status issues. I upgraded to the latest BIOS and had some issues with the "could not allocate resources" issue but adding in "FixAlloc.efi" worked a treat! My battery now charges properly.