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Success: Catalina on Gigabyte GA-Z170X-UD5 TH

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Hi there @rheneas and @carljharris3141 and @maclinuxg4

Yes you can boot Catalina on an external USB drive as long as the USB port is one that is active throughout the boot process. Stay clear of the USB-C ports controlled by Thunderbolt (and the ports controlled by the Genesys hub chip, although these are all internal). This leaves the "TH" motherboard with those 8x Type-A ports on the back-panel. The non-TH motherboard has 5x Intel Type-A ports on the back-panel.

USBInjectAll and the Catalina Port-Limit Removal Patch will make all Intel motherboard ports available, but only once the system has booted.

As for the crashes - even with Catalina installed on an internal drive - check which memory-fix driver you are using. Also check you do not have any duplicated hackintosh-specific kexts in both EFI & Library/Other. If you do it is recommended you remove any from Library/Extensions and rebuild the kext-caches.

Next check if any USB ports are "bridges" to SATA. Use Hackintool and you will see any associations. If there is one (I don't have the motherboard to check) then do not use that USB port.

Finally, if you are using any EVO "Plus" or "Pro" NVME SSDs, just check the forums here for any advice :thumbup:
Many thanks for this guidance. Catalina has been a frustrating experience. I'll work through the above and post my results.
 
Hi there @rheneas and @carljharris3141 and @maclinuxg4

Yes you can boot Catalina on an external USB drive as long as the USB port is one that is active throughout the boot process. Stay clear of the USB-C ports controlled by Thunderbolt (and the ports controlled by the Genesys hub chip, although these are all internal). This leaves the "TH" motherboard with those 8x Type-A ports on the back-panel. The non-TH motherboard has 5x Intel Type-A ports on the back-panel.

USBInjectAll and the Catalina Port-Limit Removal Patch will make all Intel motherboard ports available, but only once the system has booted.

As for the crashes - even with Catalina installed on an internal drive - check which memory-fix driver you are using. Also check you do not have any duplicated hackintosh-specific kexts in both EFI & Library/Other. If you do it is recommended you remove any from Library/Extensions and rebuild the kext-caches.

Next check if any USB ports are "bridges" to SATA. Use Hackintool and you will see any associations. If there is one (I don't have the motherboard to check) then do not use that USB port.

Finally, if you are using any EVO "Plus" or "Pro" NVME SSDs, just check the forums here for any advice :thumbup:

Many thanks for this. I have:

1. Cleaned out an old kext (IntelMausi) which I found in Library/Extensions. Now all texts reside on the EFI\Clover\kexts\10.15 and I have just: AppleALC (1.4.3), FakeSMC (1765), IntelMausi.kext, IntelMausiEthernet.kext (1.0.2), Lilu.kext (1.3.9), USBInjectAll.kext (0.7.1) and WhateverGreen (1.3.4)

2. I have rebuilt the cache by using terminal then sudo kextcache -i /. Ran this three times. First time it showed an error with the permissions of the IntelMausi kext (which was then in Library\Extensions.. after removing it from there the cache rebuilt without error

3. I have only the two kexts patched mentioned above.

4. Checking on Hackintool there do not appear to be any USB ports with SATA linkages. Attached is a screen-shot

Have rebooted.

The machine has been up without crashing.. keeping an eye on it now.. will revert in a bit with an update. Thanks again for the help!
 

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Thanks. What procedure did you use to install Catalina?
I tried both the Update Method (download the App from the AppStore and update the current installation). I also ran that same installer on a clean drive to create a clean install. The crashing issues were existing on both setups.
 
Many thanks for this. I have:

1. Cleaned out an old kext (IntelMausi) which I found in Library/Extensions. Now all texts reside on the EFI\Clover\kexts\10.15 and I have just: AppleALC (1.4.3), FakeSMC (1765), IntelMausi.kext, IntelMausiEthernet.kext (1.0.2), Lilu.kext (1.3.9), USBInjectAll.kext (0.7.1) and WhateverGreen (1.3.4)

2. I have rebuilt the cache by using terminal then sudo kextcache -i /. Ran this three times. First time it showed an error with the permissions of the IntelMausi kext (which was then in Library\Extensions.. after removing it from there the cache rebuilt without error

3. I have only the two kexts patched mentioned above.

4. Checking on Hackintool there do not appear to be any USB ports with SATA linkages. Attached is a screen-shot

Have rebooted.

The machine has been up without crashing.. keeping an eye on it now.. will revert in a bit with an update. Thanks again for the help!
Alas. Unfortunately even with these changes the machine crashed and rebooted after about 40 minutes. Same symptoms as before. This is proving to be extremely difficult to diagnose. Appreciate any thoughts at all: I am at a loss. Attaching snapshots of the EFI folder, the Clover Config pages, L/E and some console output....

cloverACPIconfig.pngcloverkernalsettings.pngCrash reports.pngEFIfolder.pnghackingtoolkextlist.pnghackintool USB view.jpglibraryextensionsfolder.pngreboot console dump.png
 
Alas. Unfortunately even with these changes the machine crashed and rebooted after about 40 minutes. Same symptoms as before. This is proving to be extremely difficult to diagnose. Appreciate any thoughts at all: I am at a loss. Attaching snapshots of the EFI folder, the Clover Config pages, L/E and some console output....

View attachment 438416View attachment 438417View attachment 438418View attachment 438419View attachment 438420View attachment 438421View attachment 438422View attachment 438423

I might be imagining it (hopefully someone will come along with something more specific ...) but I've seen this happen before at a regular time after boot. This was caused by the Software Update service failing. Taking a look at your final screengrab, it certainly looks as though you have a similar problem.

Now quite what is causing this, you'll need to dig deeper and check which apps are going online to check for updates.

A couple of months back Google Chrome's update service, Keystone, was found to be crashing Macs when it tried to check for new versions. Rather than the full reinstall Google suggest, a few sites posted Terminal scripts such as this one.

In your case it might not be Chrome causing the problem, but certainly worth checking out as something is.

:)
 
Many thanks for this. I have:

1. Cleaned out an old kext (IntelMausi) which I found in Library/Extensions. Now all texts reside on the EFI\Clover\kexts\10.15 and I have just: AppleALC (1.4.3), FakeSMC (1765), IntelMausi.kext, IntelMausiEthernet.kext (1.0.2), Lilu.kext (1.3.9), USBInjectAll.kext (0.7.1) and WhateverGreen (1.3.4)

2. I have rebuilt the cache by using terminal then sudo kextcache -i /. Ran this three times. First time it showed an error with the permissions of the IntelMausi kext (which was then in Library\Extensions.. after removing it from there the cache rebuilt without error

3. I have only the two kexts patched mentioned above.

4. Checking on Hackintool there do not appear to be any USB ports with SATA linkages. Attached is a screen-shot

Have rebooted.

The machine has been up without crashing.. keeping an eye on it now.. will revert in a bit with an update. Thanks again for the help!
Tomorrow morning I will replicate your steps above and post my result, understanding that ultimately it did not solve the crash problem. It may enable my system to stay up longer than 5 minutes.
 
I might be imagining it (hopefully someone will come along with something more specific ...) but I've seen this happen before at a regular time after boot. This was caused by the Software Update service failing. Taking a look at your final screengrab, it certainly looks as though you have a similar problem.

Now quite what is causing this, you'll need to dig deeper and check which apps are going online to check for updates.

A couple of months back Google Chrome's update service, Keystone, was found to be crashing Macs when it tried to check for new versions. Rather than the full reinstall Google suggest, a few sites posted Terminal scripts such as this one.

In your case it might not be Chrome causing the problem, but certainly worth checking out as something is.

:)
Thanks! This is immensely helpful. Okay, so I've removed all the Google programs from my machine (Chrome and 'Sync Backup'). Then I removed the following files
  1. /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist
  2. /Library/Caches/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate/
Then I used the steps in the google note that you posted, in 'recovery mode' in the terminal to repair the file system, if this is the case

chroot /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD [note: “Macintosh HD” is the default]
rm -rf /Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/GoogleSoftwareUpdate.bundle
mv var var_back # var may not exist, but this is fine
ln -sh private/var var
chflags -h restricted /var
chflags -h hidden /var
xattr -sw com.apple.rootless “” /var

Seems I got that right as the machine is now up again. Will see if it crashes. Will post again in a bit...
 
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