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

[UtterDisbelief]

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

Well, if the OC picker doesn't come up first then the BIOS has a different Boot Priority drive to your Mojave one. You can change the default in the Boot menu of the BIOS.

Once you are at OpenCore by default you might have more success using OpenCanopy GUI. Here you can Ctrl+Click on the default boot-drive icon and it will stick.

 

[Edhawk]

Yes the settings you are using in the config.plist should be correct for the OC Picker to show.

I have taken the liberty of changing the attached EFI folder to use the External OC GUI, see if that helps.

 

[Morg42]

I don't get it...

@Edhawk, with your EFI folder, the picker now comes up properly - but the "wrong" one, the builtin (I added the PlatformData entries to config.plist)

@UtterDisbelief: I meant that after choosing the EFI partition on the USB drive from the boot menu selection, the picker doesn't come up by default, but it directly boots the recovery partition, (it seems to be listed first).

Now... with SecureBootModel set to Disabled, I was able to boot from USB OC to Mojave. As far as I can see, the system worked as usual - so far, so good. Now I replaced the EFI folder on my system EFI partition with the one from the USB drive (and moved away the old EFI folder as well as the Clover nvram.plist file, not sure if Clover needs this), so the system EFI partition had a 5122.EFI folder (Clover) and a EFI folder (OC, as booted before).

Zilch. First time, it stopped on an OC message concerning RNG. Second time, it halted with an (early) kernel panic after (while?) loading lilu. Third time, it started booting, had 2 or 3 points at which it kept waiting a while (20-30 secs each), and finally hung on showing a line describing the Mojave boot volume (like a mount entry). After 2 minutes of no activity on screen or on disk activity LED, I booted Clover from USB drive, easy as always.

I don't know what is / might be different when the whole EFI folder was copied 1:1. Even did another NVRAM reset...

 

[UtterDisbelief]

... so the system EFI partition had a 5122.EFI folder (Clover) and a EFI folder (OC, as booted before).

If I understand this correctly ...

You should ONLY have the OC EFI folder in the EFI partition.

By all means back-up the Clover one somewhere safe, but do not leave it it the active partition.

 

[Morg42]

Done, no change.

Always stops at: (see image)

Update: now also panics from USB. Not sure which change caused that. Removed spare folders in EFI partition. Nothing else really comes to mind...

 

[UtterDisbelief]

Done, no change.

Always stops at: (see image)

Update: now also panics from USB. Not sure which change caused that. Removed spare folders in EFI partition. Nothing else really comes to mind...

That looks like a good, solid crash after the SSDTs have loaded and before anything further.

So .. things to try:

1) Enable these three Quirks:

EnableSafeModeSlide = Yes

ProvideCustomSlide = Yes

ProtectUefiServices = Yes

2) Remove/Disable the "CtlnaAHCIPort.kext". Looks like a Catalina kext and you are running Mojave (?)

 

[Edhawk]

That screenshot suggests to me that the kernel panic is because you have Lilu.kext and VirtualSMC.kext in your Bootloader, do you have another older version of these two kexts in your /L/E folder? If yes they they would be part of the kernel cache and the newer versions may be causing macOS to KP.

Have you tried booting without any kexts in the /OC/Kexts folder, if you already have copies of these third-party kexts installed to your /L/E folder?

 

[Morg42]

@UtterDisbelief: The CtlnaAHCIPort.kext was recommended in #9, apparently I don't need it, but - up to now - it didn't cause any harm...

@Edhawk: I feel so stupid now - earlier in this thread I learned that Clover doesn't need kexts in /L/E, so I moved them to the Clover EFI drive, which worked fine. However, I forgot to clear the kext cache, so OC was actually competing with the cached kext info. kextcache -i / solved my problem just fine...

Now it's working, I switched from debug to release and installed OC in the system EFI. After disabling all debug options, even the recovery is not shown anymore, so it defaults to booting Mojave, just as planned.

Thanks a lot for your patience and keen eyes We might meet again if I ever upgrade from Mojave...

 

[UtterDisbelief]

@UtterDisbelief: The CtlnaAHCIPort.kext was recommended in #9, apparently I don't need it, but - up to now - it didn't cause any harm...

@Edhawk: I feel so stupid now - earlier in this thread I learned that Clover doesn't need kexts in /L/E, so I moved them to the Clover EFI drive, which worked fine. However, I forgot to clear the kext cache, so OC was actually competing with the cached kext info. kextcache -i / solved my problem just fine...

Now it's working, I switched from debug to release and installed OC in the system EFI. After disabling all debug options, even the recovery is not shown anymore, so it defaults to booting Mojave, just as planned.

Thanks a lot for your patience and keen eyes We might meet again if I ever upgrade from Mojave...

Good news. Glad it's sorted now.

Props and +1 to @Edhawk.