Contribute
Register

Upgrading from Sierra with old Clover and IONVMeFamily Patches

Status
Not open for further replies.
Joined
Oct 25, 2011
Messages
26
Motherboard
ASRock B760M
CPU
i7-13700F
Graphics
RX 5700 XT
Classic Mac
  1. iBook
  2. Power Mac
  3. Quadra
  4. SE
Mobile Phone
  1. iOS
I wonder if anyone has previously encountered or solved this very specific problem. I'm currently on macos Sierra (10.12.6) using Clover r4173. I want to upgrade Clover to a newer version (r5138) so that I can upgrade to Big Sur. The problem is that I have a B250 chipset and an m.2 NVME SSD -- under Sierra, this means that I need the IONVMeFamily Pike R. Alpha Patches to allow booting. With my ancient version of Clover, I've been using <KextsToPatch> to install the patches, and it's worked great for years. When I try to upgrade my Clover to r5138 it seems that those patches either aren't effective or fail, and I end up with the "Apple NVME assert failed" ... IONVMEBlockStorageDevice::start failed with status 0xe00002c7 error which is expected for non-patched Sierra.

I'll probably end up taking an extra step and upgrading to either High Sierra or Mojave as a way to bootstrap Big Sur. Hopefully that way I won't need the IONVMeFamily patches, and I can get a working r5126+ clover, and after that I can install Big Sur. But it's a bit disappointing that for all the work that's gone into making in-place upgrades "just work", I can't seem drop in a new Clover without simultaneously making a coordinated upgrade to the OS. Has anyone found a way to run new Clover with Sierra and an SSD that needs the IONVMeFamily patches?
 
I assume you know your Nvidia GTX 970 is not supported beyond macOS High Sierra, as the DGPU requires the Nvidia Web Drivers and there are no Nvidia drivers for your card for Mojave, Catalina or Big Sur.

The NVME patches were dropped with the release of Mojave, as they were no longer needed for most people using this type of drive in macOS.

As you have found, they no longer work when injected via Clover. So they should be removed from the config.plist.

You may need to add NVMeFix.kext to the /CLOVER/kexts/Other folder, copy attached.
 

Attachments

  • NVMeFix.kext.zip
    17.5 KB · Views: 102
Thanks, will check out NVMeFix.kext, which had not been on my radar until just now.

The nvidia GTX 970 is actually the main reason why I am so far behind on macos updates (combined with pandemic pricing for decent GPUs). I only just recently managed to pick up a Radeon RX 5700 XT, which I will swap in once I have Big Sur booting (and of course I'll update my profile once I do).
 
Thanks, will check out NVMeFix.kext, which had not been on my radar until just now.

The nvidia GTX 970 is actually the main reason why I am so far behind on macos updates (combined with pandemic pricing for decent GPUs). I only just recently managed to pick up a Radeon RX 5700 XT, which I will swap in once I have Big Sur booting (and of course I'll update my profile once I do).
maybe install it now so macOS will actually work properly.....
 
RX 5700 XT support requires at least macOS Catalina 10.15.1, and either Catalina or Big Sur will require newer Clover. In the interim I can use the built-in Intel HD 630 graphics to complete the install. So it seems the simplest (and recommended) thing is to upgrade Clover first, which is where I'm stuck.

I'm currently trying to install either High Sierra or Mojave on a separate HDD using a UniBeast USB drive, but the macos install is failing part way through for reasons I don't yet understand (but that will be a problem for a separate thread).
 
If you are trying to install macOS on a separate Hard Disk Drive instead of the NVME drive, why are you looking to find a solution to the non-functioning patches?

You need to remove the NVME card while installing the new version of macOS.
 
I would like to end up with an install of Big Sur on the NVME SSD. I'm attempting to install macos on the separate HDD only as a workaround because I can't get a new Clover to work with Sierra and the SSD (if I could I wouldn't bother with the HDD at all). Physically removing the NVME card while installing macos on the HDD could be a last resort I suppose. I did manage to install Sierra directly on the SSD (using UniBeast) way back in 2017 so at least it *was* possible.
 
Your Samsung 860 EVO NVME drive should work in High Sierra and Mojave without the need for the IONVMeFamily Patches you were previously using. There is no 'Fix', new set of patches or anything other than the NvmeFix.kext I provided previously, when using a non-Apple NVME drive.

Have you tried adding the kext to your /CLOVER/kexts/Other folder, with the old obsolete NVME patches disabled or deleted from your config.plist?
 
Just to update my progress here: I still haven't found a way to get a r5126+ clover to boot Sierra on my machine. I did discover that I can get Clover r5102 (the version from unibeast 9.3) to boot Sierra if I manually add in the NVME patches, which is a minor incremental step.

Thanks for the tip about removing the NVME card while installing Mojave onto the HDD -- the macos installer wants to upgrade all the drives (not just the install target) to APFS, and I think it gets super confused about having other drives present. I normally have 2 HFS+ HDDs, 1 HFS+ nvme SSD, and 1 windows 10 SSD, and it all works great, but I guess it's too much for the macos installer.

For the record I have confirmed that injecting NvmeFix.kext via clover and disabling the old NVME patches doesn't work to let me boot Sierra. I have confirmed that with Mojave I can mount (but not yet boot from) a working NVME drive even without either NvmeFix.kext or the NVME patches.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top