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[SUCCESS] Old Hack, New Tricks II - Upgrading My GA-Z77X-UP5 TH System to Catalina

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Jul 12, 2013
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105
Motherboard
Gigabyte Z490 Vision D
CPU
i7-10700K
Graphics
AMD RX 580
Mac
  1. MacBook Pro
  2. Mac mini
Classic Mac
  1. Centris
  2. Power Mac
  3. Quadra
Mobile Phone
  1. iOS
A while back, I posted how I got Mojave running on my Gigabyte-based Hackintosh that is built around a GA-Z77X-UP5 TH motherboard. This build is showing it's age a little bit, but it still serves me well. Since Catalina is past its initial release bugs with 10.15.1, I figured I'd update my Hack via an upgrade installation—which seemed to be working fine for many people.

So, here's what I did for those who want to give something similar a try:
  1. Update your boot drive backup using your tool of choice (in my case, SuperDuper! works wonderfully).
  2. Downloaded the latest tonymacx86 version of Clover - v2.4k_r4961-UEFI.
  3. Launched an auto-upgraded Clover Configurator.
  4. Mounted my boot drive EFI partition with Clover Configurator.
  5. Duplicated the CLOVER folder on the EFI volume to ensure I have a backup of my current working configuration.
  6. Went to my /Library/Extensions folder to find my installed Hackintosh kexts. I then downloaded any available updates to prep them for installation in my Mojave installation.
    • AirportBrcmFixup.kext - was 1.1.9; now 2.0.4
    • AppleALC.kext - was 1.3.8; now 1.4.3
    • FakeSMC.kext - was 6.26-357-gceb835ea.1800 — no update
    • Lilu.kext - was 1.3.6, now 1.3.9
    • NoVPAJpeg.kext - now deprecated and no longer needed, with functionality available in WhateverGreen as described here. Deleted this kext prior to upgrading the others.
    • WhateverGreen.kext - was 1.2.9, now 1.3.4
  7. Updated all these kexts in the /Library/Extensions folder using Hackintool as described in this excellent tutorial (see Part 7). This is a safe and easy way to install kexts properly! If you delete any kexts, be sure to either do it prior to installing new ones (which includes rebuilding cache automatically) or to manually force a rebuild.
  8. While I was in Hackintool, I generated a quick information page to have all my custom serial numbers and UUIDs handy -- very useful in the event a clover.config file gets botched!
  9. Reboot the system and test things to ensure all your new kexts are working properly and you're still logged in to iCloud, etc.
  10. Install the tonymacx86 package for the latest Clover build. Reboot and confirm the Mojave build still works 100% properly.
  11. Download the current Catalina installer. I did this by visiting the App Store, which then bounced me into Software Update in system preferences. Once it downloaded, the installer auto-launches. Quit the installer at this point.
  12. Update your boot drive backup again for extra precaution—for the truly paranoid, do this on a separate backup from the one you updated in Step 1.
  13. Run the Catalina installer. Things worked very smoothly for me - all reboots automatically went to the correct working partition, etc. Remember - Catalina uses a new boot volume partition scheme that's described in this post. This is one of the reasons why backups are critical!
  14. After a while and multiple reboots, I was logged back in to my user account on a newly-upgraded installation of Catalina. Nearly everything worked as expected. Here are the little bumps I ran into due to the uniquenesses of my setup:
    • I ended up in an iCloud authentication loop - the PrefPane kept asking me to log in, but it never "took." A full reboot of the system fixed the looping issue.
    • Once I was fully logged in to iCloud, I couldn't turn on iCloud Photo Library. I got an error about the volume format for my the disk with my Photo Library—which is a bit odd, as the non-boot volume where the library is stored was already in one of the "allowed" formats. Thanks to this post, I rebooted into recovery mode, ran Disk First Aid on the volume storing the library, and then rebooted. After that, I could turn on iCloud Photo Library without problems. NOTE - I also booted Photos and let it spin overnight to upgrade the library, which has about 70K photos and movies in it...no issues with that. Once iCloud Photo Library was turned on successfully, Photos also wanted to "upload" everything again - which I believe, in fact, is doing a (SLOW!!!) consistency check between the iCloud library and my locally-stored library.
    • The new separate Music app wasn't showing album art for basically ANY of my albums. That's a pain in the butt. It appears that just letting the app sit and run (don't let the machine go to sleep!) is SLOWLY fixing this problem. You'll see a "Loading artwork..." message at the bottom left of the Music window while this is underway. I have nearly 350GB of music in the library across 4,500+ albums, so this is going to take a while...
  15. Update any apps with new versions via the Apps Store (Pages, Numbers, Keynote, etc.). Launch all other apps to confirm everything works as expected, force updaters to fire, etc.
All things considered, this upgrade went pretty smoothly. A little bit of Clover and kext housekeeping, run the installer, troubleshoot some things that seem to happen on "real" Macs as well. No panic moments at all!

Hope others find this useful. Happy Hackintoshing!
 
Hey, I was a follower of your last post. Thanks for keeping our Hackintoshes working all of these years later. Will be checking out this guide later on to do the installation myself!
 
Going to follow your guide today. Big thank you for posting your Z77 build. I have the same board and it is still working well. Have a bit of time to update my system and try a brand new install on a new SSD.
My 1TB Samsung 860 EVO is bricked at current due to an issue with an over install of Catalina MacOS 10.15.1. Going to give your instructions a go and report back here. All updated plugins have been installed.

Good luck! Hope this helps you out...I suspect that you'll find it pretty easy to do a clean install based on my original thread with the KEXT modifications described in this thread and careful use of UniBeast/MultiBeast...I won't be doing a clean install until they are updated and ready to go with Catalina.
 
Hey, I was a follower of your last post. Thanks for keeping our Hackintoshes working all of these years later. Will be checking out this guide later on to do the installation myself!

Glad to help @Kidney05!
 
So I apparently have kexts in the EFI in the clover folder but also in /L/E... how bad is that?

Also when you go to get the updated kexts it seems you have to compile them? Or can I just grab them from the releases page?
 
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So I apparently have kexts in the EFI in the clover folder but also in /L/E... how bad is that?

Also when you go to get the updated kexts it seems you have to compile them? Or can I just grab them from the releases page?

@Kidney05 As noted in the "where to install kexts" guide I link to in my original post about this motherboard, you should NOT duplicate anything between /L/E and EFI/Clover except for FakeSMC (or perhaps VirtualSMC if you use that instead...not sure if Clover auto-detect works the same way with that). I had some bad behaviors when I was mistakenly doing this myself.

And you don't have to compile the kexts...go to the Releases page for each and just download the ZIP file.
 
Run the Catalina installer. Things worked very smoothly for me - all reboots automatically went to the correct working partition, etc. Remember - Catalina uses a new boot volume partition scheme that's described in this post. This is one of the reasons why backups are critical!

So another question for me is-- why does this matter? Your guide seems otherwise straightforward-- making backups, updating kexts, updating clover, but this sticks out to me and I'm afraid to upgrade until I understand.

Furthermore-- does your machine sleep? Mine doesn't and I'm not sure what else I can do to try and fix it. Is your startup slower than it used to be? Mine hangs on the bios splash screen a little longer than it used to. Also my machine doesn't seem to like the USB ports on the front of my tower-- doesn't seem to want to boot if anything is plugged into them.
 
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So another question for me is-- why does this matter? Your guide seems otherwise straightforward-- making backups, updating kexts, updating clover, but this sticks out to me and I'm afraid to upgrade until I understand.

Furthermore-- does your machine sleep? Mine doesn't and I'm not sure what else I can do to try and fix it. Is your startup slower than it used to be? Mine hangs on the bios splash screen a little longer than it used to. Also my machine doesn't seem to like the USB ports on the front of my tower-- doesn't seem to want to boot if anything is plugged into them.

So...regarding what volumes boot when during installation. In my experience, many of the guides point out the specific volumes you should ensure you're booting from during a clean install or during and upgrade deployment. My guess is that there are a few reasons for this:
  • Guide authors are being very clear to avoid misinterpretations.
  • Some people have Clover set to ALWAYS boot from a certain volume in their config files, so they may need to override those settings during boot for the installation/upgrade to complete.
  • Other people have Clover set to ALWAYS wait to be told what volume to boot from, so they are being guided where to go.
  • In cases where NVRAM emulation isn't working, a Hackintosh is unable to store boot volume settings being made by the installer and so user intervention is required.
I don't remember my specific clover.config setting for boot volume right now so I can't make a suggestion there. But I do know my NVRAM emulation is working correctly, so it appears that my Hackintosh is always able to let the installer/updater do its thing and set the boot drive correctly between restarts. This has worked well for me ever since I moved to Clover. Ditto for all the stuff like iCloud, Messages, etc. I work hard to ensure I keep my serial numbers and SMBIOS IDs correct between installations with all my clover.config backup practices -- this is one of the reasons why.

For your final questions - my machine will sleep, but I haven't exhaustively tested it. I keep it on 24/7 because it's also a Plex server for my home media networking needs. Startup speed might be a touch slower, but I haven't really compared things exhaustively. And my front USB ports do work - this used to be a problem sometimes pre-Clover, but things seem to be OK now. I have dual USB2 and dual USB3 on my particular case...I think they fully work but again haven't tested exhaustively or benchmarked them in a long time due to the fact that I use USB very infrequently with those ports.
 
So...regarding what volumes boot when during installation. In my experience, many of the guides point out the specific volumes you should ensure you're booting from during a clean install or during and upgrade deployment. My guess is that there are a few reasons for this:
  • Guide authors are being very clear to avoid misinterpretations.
  • Some people have Clover set to ALWAYS boot from a certain volume in their config files, so they may need to override those settings during boot for the installation/upgrade to complete.
  • Other people have Clover set to ALWAYS wait to be told what volume to boot from, so they are being guided where to go.
  • In cases where NVRAM emulation isn't working, a Hackintosh is unable to store boot volume settings being made by the installer and so user intervention is required.
I don't remember my specific clover.config setting for boot volume right now so I can't make a suggestion there. But I do know my NVRAM emulation is working correctly, so it appears that my Hackintosh is always able to let the installer/updater do its thing and set the boot drive correctly between restarts. This has worked well for me ever since I moved to Clover. Ditto for all the stuff like iCloud, Messages, etc. I work hard to ensure I keep my serial numbers and SMBIOS IDs correct between installations with all my clover.config backup practices -- this is one of the reasons why.

For your final questions - my machine will sleep, but I haven't exhaustively tested it. I keep it on 24/7 because it's also a Plex server for my home media networking needs. Startup speed might be a touch slower, but I haven't really compared things exhaustively. And my front USB ports do work - this used to be a problem sometimes pre-Clover, but things seem to be OK now. I have dual USB2 and dual USB3 on my particular case...I think they fully work but again haven't tested exhaustively or benchmarked them in a long time due to the fact that I use USB very infrequently with those ports.

OK the first part of what you said makes alot of sense! My system also seems to select the correct boot drive as well, but I will be careful of that when I update. The non-sleeping thing bothers me, but the USB ports bother me more. I'm not really sure what I should try to do about them-- I must not have something configured correctly.
 
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