Mojave -> Catalina upgrade - "Macintosh HD - Data" partition?

[Jamesbond007]

How did you make your "clone"?

There are various ways this can break macOS due to Catalina APFS installs having been migrated to the Sealed System Volume, which places the installation in an APFS container and divides the installation into a pair of partitions: "Macintosh HD" and "Macintosh HD - Data". The first one is the SSV, a crypto sealed form of the stuff (roughly) thought of as protected by SIP, but this isn't controlled by SIP; it can't be changed outside of a process running code that is authenticated all the way to Apple certificates. The "Data" part is where Apple apps that can be updated incrementally go, plus all the user data, and 3rd party apps. These two area are combined using black-magic of APFS firm-links, which present a namespace that looks like a single volume.

These two parts have to stay in sync or trouble ensues. A special Apple tool called APFS Replicator can clone the whole shebang, and as long as no Apple updates are applied. APFS Replicator requires erasing the target drive.

For a source and a backup at a given fixed version of macOS, the source Data part can be incrementally updated and copied to the matching backup drive, and the backup will work. But if any system SW update is applied the the source drive, this resets the seal and the only way to update the full system backup is using APFS Replicator, which necessitates erasing the backup. If only the Data partition is cloned to the backup, the linkage between the Data part and the clone SSV ends up out of sync and trouble ensues.

For these reasons and more, traditional incremental cloning can't work. A full block-level copy of the entire drive can work because it doesn't disturb the crypto seal. — I am massively waving my hands here; I'm not an expert and I may be wrong on this last point because Apple has been doing a lot of work on this over the last year, but you get the gist. WARNING: When using a block-level clone, I have seen Disk Utility get wildly confused about which part goes with which drive's macOS container volume, presumably because UUIDs are being reused... Fair warning about data loss due to such a mess.

This is why a recommended approach to system maintenance is to install macOS then use Migration Assistant to merge your data.

I don't think the SSV was introduced in Catalina. It was introduced in Big Sur.

Catalina splits the boot volume into two, but the system volume was not sealed like in Big Sur and Monterey.

 

[c-o-pr]

IIRC It was during Catalina midlife that Apple shifted to the APFS SSV.

Maybe someone has a better memory and can chime in?

For a while around Mojave, if you kept a volume HFS+ macOS would demure from the new partitioning, but pushed towards converting to APFS. Then after that, during Catalina one of the updates converted to APFS SSV and the new era began.

This became a bugaboo for Carbon Copy Cloner because the whole value premise of the product is bootable backup. This is no longer viable in simple terms.

It was through CCC that I learned about APFS Replicator, via CCC "Legacy Backup Assistant."

One of the pitfalls of APFS Replicator is that the copy cannot tolerate any IO error because it destroys the integrity of the SSV. The replicator just quits with a cryptic msg if there's a transient drive problem.

So everything about the CCC approach has to be adjusted to deal only with the Data volume, as you can see from recent CCC releases.

You can still use APFS Replicator any time to make a bootable clone and update the Data volume incrementally using CCC, but if you update macOS, you've got to re-replicate as any subsequent Data part updates are bound to the updated SSV.

For hackintosh user, once you find a solid configuration you tend to want to stick with it and there are many other factors to deal with re updates, so maybe not a super big deal.

 

[SAC12345]

IIRC It was during Catalina midlife that Apple shifted to the APFS SSV.

Maybe someone has a better memory and can chime in?

For a while around Mojave, if you kept a volume HFS+ macOS would demure from the new partitioning, but pushed towards converting to APFS. Then after that, during Catalina one of the updates converted to APFS SSV and the new era began.

This became a bugaboo for Carbon Copy Cloner because the whole value premise of the product is bootable backup. This is no longer viable in simple terms.

​

I can do better than memories, my system must be unique in the Apple world then, I run Catalina fully up to date with the recent 2021-008 security update installed. Carbon Copy Cloner works perfectly fine producing bootable backups. More than a few times I have deleted and formatted the install to get rid of the garbage that Apple keeps around in those partitions taking up my space. In short I see nothing to indicate what you say is true, I see the same behaviour that has always been possible, fire up the CCC make my clone and boot it, wipe my install drive clone it back to recover the wasted space and go on my merry way same as I have always done.

 

[stevej]

That was interesting. I was able to do a successful clean install of Catalina to the newly-initialized volume. I booted into Catalina and used Migration Assistant to move my primary account from the Mojave drive to the new Catalina volume. As soon as it completed and I rebooted, pffft. The crashing behavior returned. It reaches a certain point in the boot process and the screen goes blank but the machine is still running.

It was booting fine into Catalina before transferring the user account, so this suggests there's something about the user account that's been screwing me up all along. Maybe if I can identify and fix the problem, then my clone upgrade will also work.

Possibly user kexts? I don't know where to start to troubleshoot this. Remove all the user kexts from /Library/Extensions on the data partition and reboot to see if it's better?

I took a movie of the boot process in verbose mode with kext debug on. This is the last item displayed before the screen goes blank. (The movie is 130 MB, too big to upload here?)

 

[c-o-pr]

I can do better than memories, my system must be unique in the Apple world then, I run Catalina fully up to date with the recent 2021-008 security update installed. Carbon Copy Cloner works perfectly fine producing bootable backups. More than a few times I have deleted and formatted the install to get rid of the garbage that Apple keeps around in those partitions taking up my space. In short I see nothing to indicate what you say is true, I see the same behaviour that has always been possible, fire up the CCC make my clone and boot it, wipe my install drive clone it back to recover the wasted space and go on my merry way same as I have always done.

Take a look at CCC website, I'm sure you will see this has been a significant support issue.

Just for curiosity, do you happen to know if your install drive is an APFS container volume with a SSV and Data partition?

If you are running APFS without the new container layout, then my previous writeup doesn't apply and old ways still are useful. I predict this as a likely explanation, because CCC will warn you about a need to change approach if using the new layout. unless you are not updating CCC.

As I am wont to repeat in the last couple months, at this point in world of hackintosh for any user to say that the state of the union is generally fine because they haven't seen a problem is absurd. First because of the obvious dictum that you can only prove the presence of bugs, not their absence, but moreso with latest macOS moving away from Intel, anecdotal success is meaningless as its becoming ever more likely that the seniment "my rig works great" is converging with "my rig hasn't broken, yet".

For example, in my case, I am using a Samsung 980 Pro with Monterey with no problem. A couple weeks ago Samsung released a firmware update, which I applied, as I have previously. Now my system suffers from the Samsung boot delay where the system gets distracted doing something with Trim for 5 minutes at every boot. But I still seem to have all my data. At least I haven't noticed any missing, yet.

The reason I mention all this APFS detail is to explain that as macOS is changing the concern is growing that you can apply an update and wake up the next day to backups that no longer work as expected.

OTOH, if you have a working system and not changing anything, fine. But then why be on the boards? Just to tell others not to worry 'cause you're having no problems? — Sry, grouch alert!

Idk what exactly causes macOS to change drive layout, but if you continue on from Catalina to later macOS, it will become difficult (impossible) to avoid the layout change. So reckon as ye may.

If you are content with one version of macOS on your rig and it works as you like, fair enough. But never confuse that with everything must be fine for everyone else because you've seen no trouble.

Happy new year to you, and the forums!

 

[SAC12345]

All my software is up to date I just went through all my paid programs and updated them a few weeks ago when the already mentioned security update was brought to my attention and I installed it. Well all but Pathfinder their nagware has put me off paying them another cent of my money, Apple is close to that category even for free. New format no clue on that all I know is I clone my install boot from it format my partition apfs clone it back. This gets rid of the junk Apple likes to infest my partition with and I get back over half the space used by it. A simple procedure I have done for years with the CCC and continues to work without failing. If it works for me it works for others I do nothing special to maintain this method of doing it.

 

[stevej]

Last night I moved all my user kexts to /Library/Extensions-Disabled but made no difference. Since the clean install of Catalina worked and then it started failing after I migrated the user account, it seems highly likely there's something amiss in the user data. Any thoughts on how to troubleshoot this?

Here's one more screenshot - this is with user kexts disabled, verbose, no kext debugging.

"apfs_keybag_init:1503: failed to initialize volume keybag, err = 2"

 

[Feartech]

Last night I moved all my user kexts to /Library/Extensions-Disabled but made no difference. Since the clean install of Catalina worked and then it started failing after I migrated the user account, it seems highly likely there's something amiss in the user data. Any thoughts on how to troubleshoot this?

Here's one more screenshot - this is with user kexts disabled, verbose, no kext debugging.

"apfs_keybag_init:1503: failed to initialize volume keybag, err = 2"

View attachment 538285

best to just keep your kexts in your EFI

 

[stevej]

best to just keep your kexts in your EFI

And that's fine, I can move them from the data partition to EFI, once I figure out why it's no longer booting after migrating user data.

 

[Feartech]

And that's fine, I can move them from the data partition to EFI, once I figure out why it's no longer booting after migrating user data.

in terminal:

sudo kextcache -i /

and copy and paste the results here