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Need help creating a USB Installer to upgrade a Sierra system to Catalina

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Joined
Feb 6, 2013
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21
Motherboard
Dell OptiPlex 9020
CPU
i7-4790/Q87
Graphics
GT 740
Hello. I need a little help. I am presently running MacOS Sierra fine together with an Ubuntu installation on this system. The main OS for the system is Ubuntu, but Sierra is installed on a secondary partition and I use an old UniBeast High Sierra Installer USB that I had created when I thought to upgrade to High Sierra to boot up the MacOS. I am trying to upgrade MacOS to Catalina. I have successfully downloaded the "Install Catalina" app. I have downloaded UniBeast and MultiBeast for Catalina. I created the Catalina Install USB by using DiskUtils to erase a newly purchased 64BG USB Drive and then running UniBeast. I used the Legacy boot option because I have an old system, but for some reason, the USB does not boot. I must admit, I don't quite know what I am doing. All I would like to do at this point is to be able to create the installer USB and see that it does boot on this system. The rest I will try to resolve as I go. Can anyone help me to at least create a functioning bootable installer USB? I would really appreciate it. I really need to upgrade this system at this time.
 
I used the Legacy boot option because I have an old system, but for some reason, the USB does not boot. I must admit, I don't quite know what I am doing. All I would like to do at this point is to be able to create the installer USB and see that it does boot on this system. The rest I will try to resolve as I go. Can anyone help me to at least create a functioning bootable installer USB? I would really appreciate it. I really need to upgrade this system at this time.
You do not mention the motherboard model you are using so we have no idea if your motherboard actually uses Legacy BIOS or UEFI.

But if you are using an i7 4790 CPU as you said, then most likely it is UEFI. In that case you will have to recreate the Unibeast Catalina USB stick by using the UEFI option instead of Legacy.
 
Thanks for replying. I had been using Legacy BIOS for booting because that is how I had installed the Ubuntu system. Just yesterday, I managed to migrate the system to use UEFI for booting successfully. I just tried to recreate the USB installer using the UEFI option, but my system says that the drive is not bootable. I looked at the contents of the drive and there is no EFI directory in it at all. The two attached photos show how I created the install disk and the contents of it. I don’t understand what could be wrong.
 

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Thanks for replying. I had been using Legacy BIOS for booting because that is how I had installed the Ubuntu system. Just yesterday, I managed to migrate the system to use UEFI for booting successfully. I just tried to recreate the USB installer using the UEFI option, but my system says that the drive is not bootable. I looked at the contents of the drive and there is no EFI directory in it at all. The two attached photos show how I created the install disk and the contents of it. I don’t understand what could be wrong.

If no EFI partition is being created on your USB stick when you choose the GUID option, the the likely reason is that the stick has a capacity smaller than 16GB.
 
The USB stick that I am using has a capacity of 64GB. I think it should be something else. Is there any way to check if an EFI partition is being created?
 
You can use a drive with 64GB capacity but you must create a partition of 32GB or less for the installer.


The EFI partition is not 'visible' until it is mounted.
Thanks so much. Using a 32GB partition allowed for the creation of a working install disk for my system. By searching, I found the following page and followed the instructions in it to finish the creation of the USB disk:

Now the installer runs successfully and I can now begin the process of installing Catalina. Thanks so much for the help of all of you.
 
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The install process went very smoothly and the Sierra system was successfully upgraded to Catalina. Thanks once more. I have just two final questions to make sure that I finish the upgrade off correctly. I hope it is possible to get answers here:

1) Should I now install a boot loader using MultiBeast? If so, might it interfere with the Ubuntu installation on this system? (The Ubuntu installation is configured to use UEFI for booting).

2) In the thread that I cited, the author mentions that it is necessary to create an SMUUID with clover. Must I do so now after the upgrade? If so, how might I do so? Is there anything else that I need to do as far as configuring is concerned to make sure that the system runs as it should? I want to make sure that all is okay after the upgrade.

Any help with these questions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much.
 
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I went ahead and installed the boot loader with MultiBeast. What I did is to select the “Quick Start” option in MultiBeast and selected the “UEFI Boot Mode” (as the first attached image shows). I didn’t select any drivers or anything else at all and built the configuration to the system drive by going to the “Build” section by pressing the ”Build” button and then pressing “Install” (as the second attached image shows).

I then backed up the “config.plist” file in the in the EFI/CLOVER/ directory of the system drive, copied the “config.plist” file in the EFI/CLOVER/ directory of the USB Installer to the EFI/CLOVER/ directory of the system drive, edited it and replaced the SMBIOS section with the SMBIOS section of the backed up file using an app called ”PLIST Editor.” I then removed the “VirtualSMC” kext from the EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other/ directory of the system drive and copied all of the kexts in the EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other/ directory of the USB Installer to the EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other/ directory of the system drive.

Afterwards, I rebooted and my system now gives me the option to boot either the Ubuntu system or the MacOS Catalina system and the Catalina system boots just fine. I hope I have done things okay to have a correctly working system. If I have not, I am hoping that any of you reading this post will correct me. I would really appreciate it since I want a system that works correctly. Thanks again for your help.
 

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