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<< Solved >> Trouble booting with OC...

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Yes, you need a new Serial Number, MLB and System UUID if you change the PlatformInfo in the config.plist. The ROM can remain the same.

You can choose to carry on using your current 18.3 SMBIOS data, if you have everything connected using your previous Serial etc. Using the iMac19,1 SMBIOS is recommended, it's not compulsory.
 
Sorry, unchanged. Still reboots after OS selection :(
 
Do you have your Bios set to run macOS? These are the settings you need.

Disable
  • Fast Boot
  • Secure Boot
  • Serial/COM Port/Super IO port
  • Parallel Port
  • VT-d
  • CSM
  • Thunderbolt
  • Intel SGX
  • Intel Platform Trust
  • CFG Lock (MSR 0xE2 write protection)
Enable
  • VT-x
  • Above 4G decoding
  • Hyper-Threading
  • Execute Disable Bit
  • EHCI/XHCI Hand-off
  • OS type: Windows 8.1/10 UEFI Mode
  • DVMT Pre-Allocated(iGPU Memory): 128MB
  • SATA Mode: AHCI
Your system may not have all these settings, some may be hidden within other settings, CSM and UEFI booting being the ones to spring to mind.

You will also need to make sure your Graphics options are set correctly, i.e. Intel graphics enabled, and PEG or External set as default, so your RX570 is priority graphics option.
 
The one thing I was not able to identify is DVMT Pre-Allocated Memory; this is not the same as shared memory (now set to 128M, previously was at 64M)?

Everything else was either not present or already set "properly". Booting with Clover works fine, so generally the system seems to be able to "work" with MacOS.

I have not yet removed all files mentioned in the transition guide from Clover to OC; but seeing as the SMC/NVM startup script will only load (and possibly fail loading) later in the boot process, this doesn't seem to be a factor this early.

Again, booting the vanilla Mojave recovery works fine; so might there be something else "in" my system which differs from the recovery and might foul the OC boot?
 
Booting the vanilla Mojave recovery from Clover works fine, I assume, not booting from OC.

Do you have any third-party kexts in your /Library/Extensions folder or /System/Library/Extensions folder, i.e. kexts that you have installed to either folder, not the normal kexts that Apple provide with the OS?

Which text name (partition) are you selecting when you boot from the OC Picker List? Are you selecting the Mojave macOS drive or the Catalina or Big Sur USB installer drive?

Have you reset or cleared Nvram from the Picker list after switching to OC?
 
Booting the vanilla Mojave recovery from Clover works fine, I assume, not booting from OC.
No, on the 2nd partition on the USB drive is a "fresh" Mojave recovery file (2 files, recoveryimage.dmg and recoveryimage.chunklist) as described in Dortania "Legacy macOS: Online method". This is booted by OC from the stick if I don't "interfere" the boot by pressing keys, as the boot selection in OC doesn't come up by default.

It is definitely not booted by/via Clover. (I can boot the installed "Mojave Recovery <drive designator>" via Clover, which works and is quite fast, so I still assume the above way does not boot from SSD but from USB)

Do you have any third-party kexts in your /Library/Extensions folder or /System/Library/Extensions folder, i.e. kexts that you have installed to either folder, not the normal kexts that Apple provide with the OS?

Yes. Some application-related (LittleSnitch, 360Controller, BJUSBLoad) as well as the "old" kexts needed by Clover. As I mentioned, I had removed them earlier, but the system didn't boot, so I put them back to be able to boot via Clover. I assume they are not loaded "before" visible kernel messages show, so boot might stall/fail later?

Which text name (partition) are you selecting when you boot from the OC Picker List? Are you selecting the Mojave macOS drive or the Catalina or Big Sur USB installer drive?

"Mojave". Catalina/Big Sur are not present, neither installed nor as installer.

Have you reset or cleared Nvram from the Picker list after switching to OC?
Yes. Multiple times, and before every boot attempt.
 
Ok, by the sounds of thing you have a USB 'installer' that boots to the Recovery partition so you can download macOS Mojave on to your machine, so it can be installed as part of the boot process.

You may be better served downloading the macOS Mojave installer application to your Mac or another Hack and creating a 'FULL' macOS installer, which doesn't need to boot in to the Recovery partition as the files are already present on the USB drive.

The macOS Mojave installer application would need to be saved in the Applications folder on the Mac or other Hack.

You would need to use the 'CreateInstallMedia' terminal command to create the full installer.
  1. You would need an 16GB USB drive, formatted as HFS+ and named Untitled
  2. You would need to use the following CreateInstallMedia terminal command to restore macOS Mojave application to the USB:
    • sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Mojave.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled
  3. Once the Terminal command has completed you would need to copy your OpenCore EFI folder to the EFI partition on the USB installer.
You should then be ready to boot the USB installer. Booting to the OpenCore Picker List and then selecting 'Install macOS Mojave' drive not the Recovery Partition.

You need to make sure your config.plist is set to show the Picker List, with a reasonable Timeout of at least 5 seconds, so you can select the correct boot option on the list. This will also give you time to select the ClearNvram option, which you should do before you boot the new USB installer.

If you provide a copy of your current/revised OpenCore EFI folder, I can run my eye over the settings/contents to see if anything needs attention.

Just remember to delete/redact your Serial Number, MLB, ROM and SystemUUID from your config.plist before you post a copy of your config.plist.
 
I'm really grateful for your continuing support! :) but I guess we don't get each other quite completely ;)

I have a working Mojave installation on my PC (in fact, I'm writing from/on it now) which boots fine with Clover 5122.

I wanted to try booting via OC, because updating Clover often has meant copious work till the boot works again, so I installed OC on the EFI partition and (for good measure) the Mojave recovery ("online installer") on the second partition, I do not really need this.

I try booting the already installed Mojave via OC instead of Clover. NVRAM is being reset before each try, kexts have been removed (and put back later) from /L/E and /S/L/E and the Clover NVRAM/SMC startup scripts are in place for the time being.

The boot of Mojave fails (reboots) so early that I doubt that the "spare" kexts from Clover are being loaded at all (actually, without them the same rebooting problem existed).

I don't want or need to install anything (except for OC) ;)

You need to make sure your config.plist is set to show the Picker List, with a reasonable Timeout of at least 5 seconds, so you can select the correct boot option on the list. This will also give you time to select the ClearNvram option, which you should do before you boot the new USB installer.

The options for OC are "show picker" and "timeout 0 = disabled, wait forever". Nonetheless, without interaction the picker is not shown and it directly boots the abovementioned spare recovery system from USB. Only frantically hitting any keys after selecting "UEFI USB partition 1" in the boot menu gets me to the picker.
I made sure to be working on the "right" configuration file by changing picker colors (which is applied), but the "stay on picker" option apparently is ignored.


If you provide a copy of your current/revised OpenCore EFI folder, I can run my eye over the settings/contents to see if anything needs attention.

I use the EFI folder you already checked and modified, but to be extra sure, I'll upload it again with all current changes. I kept your changes regarding Coffee Lake configuration, but because the installed Mojave is working fine with iMessage et al, for the time being I kept the iMac18,3 system definition with respective serial/MLB/UUID...

Thanks again!
 

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  • EFI.zip
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... Only frantically hitting any keys after selecting "UEFI USB partition 1" in the boot menu gets me to the picker.

Hi there.

This seems to imply that you have other bootable drives in your system. For sure the Recovery partition shouldn't be first in your OC Picker choices. That sounds more like a BIOS Boot selector? If you have any other bootable drives on earlier SATA connectors they may appear earlier in the boot order unless over-ridden in the BIOS

Clover and OpenCore use the asme kexts and only the fact that you need to positively point-to enable a kext in OpenCore is different.

No hackintosh-specific kext should be in S/L/E these days, especially from Mojave onwards. Third-party kexts can go in L/E. This was added by Apple to keep modifications separate from the system-necessary files.

Your config.plist looks good to go. The only thing I would change is in the Misc section / SecurityBootModel. I would go for "Disabled" rather than "Default". For iMac18,3 and Mojave this will help.

:)
 
Yeah, primary setting in BIOS is UEFI Clover from SSD, secondary is UEFI Windows from HD; if USB is inserted, this has another UEFI bootloader (OC).

The sorting (and collected entries) of the OC picker are not of interest to me as long as OC doesn't boot my system. When I can safely and repetitively boot Mojave via OC, I can tend to the picker list ;)

In S/L/E there is only one kext, 360Controller (though I'm not sure if this is current... ). Hackintosh kexts are all in L/E (and should be removed for OC booting according to Dortanias transition guide).

I'll try the SecurityBootModel option.

Any ideas why the picker isn't displayed by default? As far as I can see, the options should be correct...
 
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