OpenCore 0.8.5/Asus Z490 - No MacOS Install Option

[malibyte]

Hi all -

I have two older Hacks, both 4th-gen i7s, maxed out at 10.15.7.

I needed a faster machine for tasks like photo and video editing, so have put together a new machine with a Z490 Asus ProArt Creator 10G (Comet Lake), i9-10850K, and a Radeon rx580 (very similar to Stork's build). Linux and Windows are already up and running on one SSD drive; the Mac install will be on the other.

I have gone through Dortania's procedure for building the USB installer with OpenCore 0.8.5. I am at the point of starting the install, but when I boot it, I only get one option: "Windows". Nothing about installing MacOS, or OpenShell, or NVRAM. I have checked and double-checked that everything is in the right place per the instructions.

Have run ocvalidate and it comes up with four errors. There is nothing in the instructions about changing the <Patch> entries. Each of these refers to a line where the value is blank. There is nothing in the instructions about what should be in these fields.

ocvalidate config.plist

OCS: Missing key Limit, context <Patch>!
OCS: Missing key Mask, context <Patch>!
OCS: Missing key ReplaceMask, context <Patch>!
OCS: Missing key Skip, context <Patch>!
Serialisation returns 4 errors!

Completed validating config.plist in 6 ms. Found 4 issues requiring attention.

Can someone point me in the right direction?

I have attached a ZIP file containing my EFI directory, and also my config.plist.

Thanks in advance!

 

[P1LGRIM]

Please read and comply with the forum rules, in particular the one regarding profiles.

Link to profile - Just three items - Motherboard (or prebuilt system), Processor (CPU) and Graphics.

 

[P1LGRIM]

Can someone point me in the right direction?

Errors can usually be corrected by comparison with the sample.plist that comes with each OpenCore update.
Easiest fix is to simply delete the two ACPI patches from your config.plist, they are not enabled anyway.

Missing SSDT-EC-USBX.aml - See :

Desktop Comet Lake | OpenCore Install Guide

May or may not be required.

 

[malibyte]

Thanks for the reply.

Fixed original post and updated profile.

Added SSDT-EC-USBX-DESKTOP.aml (I went ahead and used their pre-built .aml files this time). Went through the rest of the "setting up config.plist" instructions again. Same result - I still only get "Windows" as an option; nothing else.

Deleting those two patches didn't help; ocvalidate still finds the same four errors (there are other strings with blank data in the sample.plist and the actual config.plist; I'm guessing they are the reason for this). I have used ProperTree as suggested. Supposedly, ProperTree automatically orders the kexts correctly now - right?

There is now only an old HPFS (data) partition at the end of the target drive, with plenty of contiguous room if front of it for the install. No EFI partition yet, no APFS boot partition. Do I need to create an EFI partition myself first? I got the impression that the installer does that.

 

[trs96]

Linux and Windows are already up and running on one SSD drive; the Mac install will be on the other.

It's always best to disconnect the drives that have Windows/Linux installed when trying to install macOS. Have only your target SSD connected. You might even pre-format the future macOS SSD in a Mac or another working hack too. To remove anything left over on it.

 

[Middleman]

Thanks for the reply.

Fixed original post and updated profile.

Added SSDT-EC-USBX-DESKTOP.aml (I went ahead and used their pre-built .aml files this time). Went through the rest of the "setting up config.plist" instructions again. Same result - I still only get "Windows" as an option; nothing else.

Deleting those two patches didn't help; ocvalidate still finds the same four errors (there are other strings with blank data in the sample.plist and the actual config.plist; I'm guessing they are the reason for this). I have used ProperTree as suggested. Supposedly, ProperTree automatically orders the kexts correctly now - right?

There is now only an old HPFS (data) partition at the end of the target drive, with plenty of contiguous room if front of it for the install. No EFI partition yet, no APFS boot partition. Do I need to creat an EFI partition myself first? I got the impression that the installer does that.

Hi there,

First of all congrats on the new build. If you're looking for a working solution on the Z490 I actually have a build for it here fully working on Monterey which you could check out here > https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...-aorus-xtreme-core-i5-10500-i9-10900k.317244/

With regards to the EFI, yes normally the installer should be able to create an EFI partition - but only if the drive has been formatted using GUID partition format. Otherwise it may be under ExFAT/Fat32, and this would render the drive/installer unreadable under macOS. You need to check if that is the case.

With regards to APFS - you may have misunderstood it, but APFS is not a boot partition but a completely new format and approach to how data is stored by macOS. It is firstly an alternative more secure data format to HFS+, and second it no longer identifies the macOS main boot drive as one partition, but rather as a series of partitions, separated into system AND user protected sections of Macintosh HD known as Containers. It was done in such a way by Apple that stops users from 'tampering' with the system files. Because of this new format and inclusion of Containers, it is harder for users under Big Sur/Monterey to clone/duplicate good working copies or backups of their drive using say Superduper or Carbon Copy Cloner. We have to use Clonezilla instead (for hackintosh users) to do so.

Give my EFI a try first and see how it works for you. It is already set for AMD dGPU support.

 

[malibyte]

It's always best to disconnect the drives that have Windows/Linux installed when trying to install macOS. Have only your target SSD connected. You might even pre-format the future macOS SSD in a Mac or another working hack too. To remove anything left over on it.

Yes, ideally so, but it's an NVMe SSD which is installed under the slot that the graphics card is in. Can I remove it? Yeah, but it's a pain and makes it pretty tough to do any work on the machine! I did clone the drive, so if anything gets b0rked, it's easy enough to restore it.

Unfortunately, my older Hacks (Z97X motherboards) don't have on-board NVMe capability.

Hi there,

First of all congrats on the new build. If you're looking for a working solution on the Z490 I actually have a build for it here fully working on Monterey which you could check out here > https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...-aorus-xtreme-core-i5-10500-i9-10900k.317244/

With regards to the EFI, yes normally the installer should be able to create an EFI partition - but only if the drive has been formatted using GUID partition format. Otherwise it may be under ExFAT/Fat32, and this would render the drive/installer unreadable under macOS. You need to check if that is the case.

With regards to APFS - you may have misunderstood it, but APFS is not a boot partition but a completely new format and approach to how data is stored by macOS. It is firstly an alternative more secure data format to HFS+, and second it no longer identifies the macOS main boot drive as one partition, but rather as a series of partitions, separated into system AND user protected sections of Macintosh HD known as Containers. It was done in such a way by Apple that stops users from 'tampering' with the system files. Because of this new format and inclusion of Containers, it is harder for users under Big Sur/Monterey to clone/duplicate good working copies or backups of their drive using say Superduper or Carbon Copy Cloner. We have to use Clonezilla instead (for hackintosh users) to do so.

Give my EFI a try first and see how it works for you. It is already set for AMD dGPU support.

Middleman - thanks VERY much. I gave it a look, installed it on the flash drive. It still didn't boot (it got about four lines deep before it froze - I know that I will need to make some changes to make it work on this machine; you have a lot more kexts in yours that the OC 0.8.5 guide calls for) - however, at least it gave me the option to install MacOS, along with the other options (Shell, NVRAM). That alone tells me something. When I get some time later in the week, I'll go at this again; I've spent way too much time on it today.

The target drive for the install IS formatted using the GUID PT format.

I am aware about APFS...I resisted the switch to it as the file system on my older Hacks' OS partitions until I didn't have a choice any longer (mainly because Linux utilities at the time could work with HFS+ partitions but not APFS yet). I just use dd under Linux to clone drives, as it's just a bitwise copy and doesn't have to be able to read/write the filesystems themselves.

Thanks again very much for making this available. Much appreciated!

 

[Middleman]

Yes, ideally so, but it's an NVMe SSD which is installed under the slot that the graphics card is in. Can I remove it? Yeah, but it's a pain and makes it pretty tough to do any work on the machine! I did clone the drive, so if anything gets b0rked, it's easy enough to restore it.




Middleman - thanks VERY much. I gave it a look, installed it on the flash drive. It still didn't boot (it got about four lines deep before it froze - I know that I will need to make some changes to make it work on this machine; you have a lot more kexts in yours that the OC 0.8.5 guide calls for) - however, at least it gave me the option to install MacOS, along with the other options (Shell, NVRAM). That alone tells me something. When I get some time later in the week, I'll go at this again; I've spent way too much time on it today.

The target drive for the install IS formatted using the GUID PT format.

I am aware about APFS...I resisted the switch to it as the file system on my older Hacks' OS partitions until I didn't have a choice any longer (mainly because Linux utilities at the time could work with HFS+ partitions but not APFS yet). I just use dd under Linux to clone drives, as it's just a bitwise copy and doesn't have to be able to read/write the filesystems themselves.

Thanks again very much for making this available. Much appreciated!

Right. At least you're getting somewhere!

The drive selector driver is OpenCanopy.efi. It is found under UEFI > Drivers on the config,plist. If you're not seeing any drives appear it usually means either your BootX64.efi or Opencore.efi is outdated OR you don't have the right .efi drivers installed (likely OpenHFS.efi and OpenRuntime.efi under the EFI/OC/Drivers folder).

With Opencore you have to be very specific and exact with the updates. Files from the Opencore X64 folder has to go into their appropriate (named) spots such as EFI/BOOT/BootX64.efi, EFI/OC/Opencore.efi EFI/OC/Drivers and EFI/OC/Tools. The Lilu, VirtualSMC, AppleALC and Whatevergreen kexts must also be downloaded from the same release dates.

If you are booting 4 lines in and it is not booting up fully, check if your Intel IGPU device settings are correct. They must match the values found for your CPU under Intel's ARK specs page. Now it should be 00009BC5 for the AAPL,ig-platform-id if you're using an i9-10850K and you will also need a device-id of 9BC50000. Check if that works first if not you may need to resort to Coffee Lake IGPU values instead (a quirk I found with my Z490 i9-10900K when running with Monterey).

You're welcome!

 

[P1LGRIM]

Deleting those two patches didn't help; ocvalidate still finds the same four errors

You didn't do it correctly then.
I deleted the two patches in the config.plist that you uploaded and ocvalidate showed no errors afterwards.

 

[malibyte]

You didn't do it correctly then.
I deleted the two patches in the config.plist that you uploaded and ocvalidate showed no errors afterwards.

Hmmmm. That's interesting. I deleted them, saved the file, then opened it again, and they were gone.
I have another copy of my original file, will try it again when I get a chance.