Dual booting using Clover on a real Mac

[Mulder]

Hi all,

I have a question that has been bugging me for quite some time now and I can't seem to find an answer to it. I really like the Clover bootloader and since I want to dual boot Windows and OSX on my real Mac, I was wondering if I could use Clover for this. Since Clover has a lot of extra files and features to emulate a real Mac, I guess it has to be altered to work properly. Did anyone maybe try to install Clover on a real Mac?

Cheers

 

[Going Bald]

Hi all,

I have a question that has been bugging me for quite some time now and I can't seem to find an answer to it. I really like the Clover bootloader and since I want to dual boot Windows and OSX on my real Mac, I was wondering if I could use Clover for this. Since Clover has a lot of extra files and features to emulate a real Mac, I guess it has to be altered to work properly. Did anyone maybe try to install Clover on a real Mac?

Cheers

I think you will find Clover will not work on a "real" Mac. This is, I have read, because the EFI implementation Apple uses for its hardware is an older version of UEFI and is heavily modified for Apple hardware. The UEFI implementation in Clover, otoh, is the latest implementation at the time the version of Clover is released and is for standard PC hardware.

I think the closest you will find that boots "real" Macs is rEFIt.

Why not just use the Apple Bootcamp to dual boot with Windows?

 

[Mulder]

I think you will find Clover will not work on a "real" Mac. This is, I have read, because the EFI implementation Apple uses for its hardware is an older version of UEFI and is heavily modified for Apple hardware. The UEFI implementation in Clover, otoh, is the latest implementation at the time the version of Clover is released and is for standard PC hardware.

I think the closest you will find that boots "real" Macs is rEFIt.

Why not just use the Apple Bootcamp to dual boot with Windows?

Thanks for your detailed reply. I thought I read that somewhere too. I think I will use Bootcamp instead. I wanted to use Clover, because it looks so nice

 

[RehabMan]

Hi all,

I have a question that has been bugging me for quite some time now and I can't seem to find an answer to it. I really like the Clover bootloader and since I want to dual boot Windows and OSX on my real Mac, I was wondering if I could use Clover for this. Since Clover has a lot of extra files and features to emulate a real Mac, I guess it has to be altered to work properly. Did anyone maybe try to install Clover on a real Mac?

Cheers

I have used Clover UEFI to boot my real Apple MacBookPro6,2.

Basically, you create a Clover configuration that turns all Clover hackintosh features off, put it on USB, and hold down Option to select it. You can use the actual smbios information from your Mac (although I change the serial# from starting with 'C0' to 'G8' just to make it different for this purpose).

There is little reason to start your Mac this way for general use, but if you want to install patched DSDT/SSDTs for some reason (gathering information about how real Macs work), it is handy.

I never tried installing Clover UEFI to the SSD of my MBA... Just did it from USB.

 

[Mulder]

I have used Clover UEFI to boot my real Apple MacBookPro6,2.

Basically, you create a Clover configuration that turns all Clover hackintosh features off, put it on USB, and hold down Option to select it. You can use the actual smbios information from your Mac (although I change the serial# from starting with 'C0' to 'G8' just to make it different for this purpose).

There is little reason to start your Mac this way for general use, but if you want to install patched DSDT/SSDTs for some reason (gathering information about how real Macs work), it is handy.

I never tried installing Clover UEFI to the SSD of my MBA... Just did it from USB.

That sounds interesting! I guess I should try that and see what happens. Is there a possibility that I wreck my Mac? If I understand correctly, Apple uses a custom kind of BIOS, which is why we need Clover. But if I would install Clover to my SSD, would I still be able to boot?

 

[RehabMan]

That sounds interesting! I guess I should try that and see what happens. Is there a possibility that I wreck my Mac? If I understand correctly, Apple uses a custom kind of BIOS, which is why we need Clover. But if I would install Clover to my SSD, would I still be able to boot?

I think if you stick to booting from USB, there is not a possibility to do any damage. And in any case, you can always do a fresh install of OS X if you make a mistake.

Apple's firmware on real Macs can boot OS X directly. PCs don't have this firmware, so we need a bootloader.

I have no idea what would happen if you install Clover to your SSD (never tested it). My guess is that the Apple firmware will ignore it and boot OS X in the normal way. The question is really whether it shows up as a UEFI boot option when you hold down Option during startup.

 

[Asher-]

I'm trying to boot a MacBookPro6,2. Do you possibly have your config file, or would you mind summarizing how you went about creating the file? I am a little unclear on what precisely a config "that turns all Clover hackintosh features off" corresponds to. I tried installing clover on the Yosemite installer USB that I created, but I don't see the EFI option show up, it boots via Apple EFI.

Appreciate any help!

 

[Asher-]

Got it working, including FileVault2. Attached the config.plist that I used.

The only thing I did in addition was to add /System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi to EFI/CLOVER/drivers64.

 

[RehabMan]

Got it working, including FileVault2. Attached the config.plist that I used.

The only thing I did in addition was to add /System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi to EFI/CLOVER/drivers64.

You have some settings not needed on a real Mac...

Not needed (can be removed or set to false):
config.plist/KernelAndKextPatches/AppleRTC
config.plist/Devices/USB/HighCurrent

Also, it is best to create an SMBIOS that matches your real Mac's parameters (including serial#).

 

[FascistPotato]

Hi, I don't know much about this stuff, but I was wondering something. I have a mac mini mid-2011 server with a caldigit thunderbolt dock that has USB3. The firmware of the mac will not allow booting anything off of these USB3 ports.

Is it within the realm of possibility to use Clover with perhaps some sort of EFI driver to recognize my thunderbolt-attached USB3 controller and then boot an OS from it?

The reason I'm asking is my mini has only USB2 ports and of course if I could run an OS from an SSD over USB3 that would be much nicer, for e.g. testing OS X betas and such.

Also I'm sure other old mini owners (and there are a lot of us, post 2012 minis are crap) would be interested in this.

I would also be very happy to write an installer script/app for macs to simplify the process.