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Old 12-21-2017, 06:42 PM   #1
serr
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Default Adventures installing OSX 10.13 High Sierra!

Download the OSX 10.13 High Sierra installer:

Note: The default is a small 20mb incomplete file that will download the full installer on the fly. If you get disconnected, you start over. Also much harder to make a USB installer drive. So use this 3rd party utility instead.

Download the High Sierra Patcher Tool from: http://dosdude1.com/highsierra/

This app includes a simple utility to download the complete installer file form Apple. This app also includes a utility to create a patched USB installer drive that fixes the “unsupported machine” bug that comes up with some random models between 2008 - 2012.

Do a clean install, not an update!

Do a clean install to a freshly formatted drive. HFS+ is supported but APFS is recommended for High Sierra (except this is debated and APFS isn’t working at all on some machines). Migrate from an old system to a clean install rather than updating!

Dosdude patch install:

Boot from the patched installer USB drive/stick and follow the usual instructions.

Note: The version of Disk Utility included with the installer is missing the ability to format a new blank previously unformatted drive. Format that ahead of time with another machine! Drives with an existing format can be reformatted.

Boot from the installer drive again immediately after install and run the post install patches, following instructions per model.

Note: Carbon Copy Cloner 4.1.20 successfully clones the 10.13 system.

There are still some systems the patched installer will not work with! You will still get the "unsupported machine" message. You need to manually patch the installer for this.

Instructions to manually patch the installer:

Use the same full installer app downloaded from Apple above.
(The following assumes the installer app is in /Applications and you have a drive mounted named Untitled.)
Enter the following terminal command:
sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled

Enter password when prompted.

Patch the installer:
Right-click on the installer app file on the USB drive and click ‘Show Package Contents’. Browse to Contents/SharedSupport/ and delete the file named InstallInfo.plist

Boot from the installer USB drive.
Before running “Install OSX”, the machine needs to be connected to a network with internet access. The system time/date needs to be correct for a CERT validation and the command to do so is missing from the installer.
Click the wifi icon top right and connect to the local network with internet.
Launch the Terminal from the Utilities menu and enter: ntpdate -u time.apple.com
Now select and run ‘Install OSX’

The Dosdude patched installer will work for most machines. If you still get the “unsupported machine” message, try the manual patch.

The manually patched installer is working for at least some of the machines missed by the Dosdude patch. However, some of the machines with fixed support from the Dosdude patch will not have success with the manual patch. The Dosdude patch only fixes the installer for certain machines and the manual patch only fixes it for certain others.


Some issues and disagreement with the new APFS disk format!

This new format is recommended for SSD’s.
There are both recommendations to avoid and embrace it.
I’ve seen two things personally.
1. I first installed 10.13 on a HFS+ formatted volume. That seemed to go fine but running the OS update to update to 10.13.2 resulted in a DOA.
Starting over and installing 10.13 clean on a APFS formatted volume and the following 10.13.2 update was successful.

2. I was not able to successfully install 10.13 on an APFS formatted SSD volume on a 13” mid 2012 Macbook Pro. It would crash after the first reboot and the second phase of install would not complete. Installing to a HFS+ formatted volume on this model was successful. I haven’t tested the 10.13.2 update yet here. This is also the machine that did not work with the Dosdude patched installer and required the manually patched version.


Have fun!

Last edited by serr; 12-21-2017 at 06:47 PM.
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Old 12-22-2017, 02:37 AM   #2
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Thanks, Serr, for that complete write-up.

I might add one thing: make very sure that your Mac's firmware is up to date.

And disconnect any drive you don't need in the process, as the firmware updater gets confused if the system drive isn't the first one in the chain. Had that problem with a Mac Pro that had the old system drive in postion 1. It was physically stuck in the machine, so I couldn't disable it. Updating firmware took over 36 hours...
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Old 12-23-2017, 12:15 PM   #3
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Nailed it Cryano!

The installer was crashing on at the point where it would run a firmware update (if there was one to run) with the APFS format. I noticed that firmware update run at that point when I retried with the HFS+ format as I described.

It looks like the firmware updater in the installer can't handle the APFS format yet. Install needed firmware updates manually before installing new OSX. Then one of the above patches will work. (I don't have a grand unified patch yet.) Try the Dosdude version first. If that tells you "unsupported machine", then try the other. I've used these instructions I made now on a number of machines from late 2008 to 2013 without swearing once.

Disclaimer: I know just enough about this to be dangerous.

APFS disk format
Download the full installer and make a patched USB installer. (1 of the 2 methods)
Clean install and migrate from an old system.
Keep something bootable on a live drive in case you have to make the 'other' installer!
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Old 12-23-2017, 11:37 PM   #4
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Dear serr,

You're OSX knowledge is beyond everything.
I wanna thank you for all your great help this year regarding Reaper <> OSX topics.
You are truly valuable to this community !
Have a great Xmas !
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Old 12-24-2017, 04:55 AM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by serr View Post
Disclaimer: I know just enough about this to be dangerous.
And that's more than the rest of us...

Even Apple hasn't got a complete list of firmware updates for their machines. They have put a small team to work to compile it and then discovered some firmware updates weren't available separately on the net.

The result from following the system installer route may yield different firmware versions on seemingly identical machines.

I've seen completely bricked machines. Users don't have the patience to wait 24 hours if they can't see any progress on screen. It's a problem for "upgraded" Mac Pro's.
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Old 12-24-2017, 10:10 AM   #6
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Good tips to know about the favorite Mac Pro upgrade. I've been wanting to upgrade mine to a pair of 4.something GHz CPUs but I just haven't been able to justify the cost yet because I can't max the machine out with anything as is!

Anyway, I don't want to suggest that if you play a little fast and loose and run the update app out of the box (No USB installer, no backup system, no drive reformat, no safety net at all) that it is "guaranteed" to fail. Just that if something were to go wrong you would be pretty solidly shut down for no good reason at all.

It appears that Apple doesn't invest the resources to keep all this software under control like they did in the past so if you aren't careful you now run into scenarios that haven't been tested very well if at all.

If you make the effort to prep for this OS install, you could follow this procedure 15 years from now with some old hardware with zero support online anywhere and still have success. (That 20mb partial download "starter file" isn't going to do shit a year from now!)
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Old 12-24-2017, 04:41 PM   #7
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I've noticed with one system I upgraded that if I formatted the drive as APFS, and tried to install high sierra from a bootable usb stick, that it would fail every time. If the drive was formatted as HFS+ it would work...

The trick was to install El Capitan first, and then do the upgrade normally through the app store. The disk was automatically converted to APFS during the upgrade.

Exactly why it wouldn't work from the bootable usb installer if the drive was formatted to APFS, but would work if the disk was left as HFS+ I couldn't tell you.

That was on a somewhat non standard system though. 2009 mac pro with updated firmware, an OWC ssd, and an Nvidia Quadro 4800.
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Old 12-24-2017, 06:19 PM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by drumphil View Post
I've noticed with one system I upgraded that if I formatted the drive as APFS, and tried to install high sierra from a bootable usb stick, that it would fail every time. If the drive was formatted as HFS+ it would work...

The trick was to install El Capitan first, and then do the upgrade normally through the app store. The disk was automatically converted to APFS during the upgrade.

Exactly why it wouldn't work from the bootable usb installer if the drive was formatted to APFS, but would work if the disk was left as HFS+ I couldn't tell you.

That was on a somewhat non standard system though. 2009 mac pro with updated firmware, an OWC ssd, and an Nvidia Quadro 4800.
That's what I see if the target machine is not up to date with firmware. The firmware installer bundled in the installer package can only work with HFS+. However, it should leave you with an APFS formatted drive when finished. If not, after the firmware update the installer will work successfully with a pre formatted APFS drive.
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Old 12-24-2017, 08:49 PM   #9
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Quote:
However, it should leave you with an APFS formatted drive when finished.
Booting from the USB stick, if the drive was already HFS+, it was still HFS+ when the install was done. I might try it again to see if does the conversion now that the firmware has been updated by the high sierra installer.

I had already updated the firmware to the point where the 32nm 6 core cpu's would work, and (normal) sierra would install, but there is another firmware update in the high sierra package.

Upgrading from El Capitan through the app store converted HFS+ to APFS as expected.
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Old 12-25-2017, 02:19 AM   #10
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Correct me if I'm wrong but I think apfs does require ssd so not fusion drive. It has to be all solid state.
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Old 12-25-2017, 03:53 AM   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Garrick View Post
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think apfs does require ssd so not fusion drive. It has to be all solid state.
Yep. I'm using an OWC 480gb SSD.
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Old 12-25-2017, 04:02 AM   #12
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Correct me if I'm wrong but I think apfs does require ssd so not fusion drive. It has to be all solid state.
SSD is only recommended, not required. SSD's will be auto converted, rust can only be formatted APFS manually.

I'm wondering if APFS is really a good idea for audio and video, since it reintroduces fragmentation.
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Old 01-10-2018, 02:01 AM   #13
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Originally Posted by cyrano View Post
SSD is only recommended, not required. SSD's will be auto converted, rust can only be formatted APFS manually.

I'm wondering if APFS is really a good idea for audio and video, since it reintroduces fragmentation.
I didn't know about the fragmentation. Do you mean like NTFS?
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Old 01-13-2018, 05:21 PM   #14
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I mean real old-fashion fragmentation.

OSX/HFS+ has auto-defragmentation for files up to 20 MB. APFS doesn't have that.

Besides, disk performance is a bit lower on spinning harddrives and a lot lower with some SSD's with APFS. I'm afraid High Sierra is really a beta and we'll have to wait for 10.14 to judge APFS.

APFS holds a lot of promises, like snapshots, but it still is experimental.

File Vault has never failed me. I've lost two encrypted partitions with High Sierra. One didn't recognize it's password, the other one did, but all data was corrupted completely. The odd thing was that all files were present in the finder, but only contained gibberish.

Another thing is that in rare occasions, HS seems to forget where the user's home folder is. Result: some apps crash, others open normally and others simply never open. Usually resolved with a restart of the Mac, but still, not very reassuring.

And then, there's that system prefs goof, where the prefs panel for the appstore will accept any user/password for unlocking, if you're running as admin. Not really a big security issue, since you're already admin, but again, not reassuring...

I've NEVER seen this kind of bugs on any OSX version, EVER.
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Old 01-24-2018, 10:25 AM   #15
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Heh heh, you really can't just boot any machine with any OSX install anymore. I already knew this... Booted a different model Macbook Pro with a system not installed for it anyway. Then when I went to boot the original machine, the trackpad and keyboard are no longer recognized. So the OS tried to use an alternate driver set or something for the different hardware on that different machine. But then when put back to the original machine, that process failed.

OSX seems to be very fragile now! This sounds like the conversations I've always heard Windows users having.

Keep your backup clones current everyone!
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Old 01-28-2018, 05:14 AM   #16
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APFS has snapshots now, enabling you to "roll back" the system to a previous state. Fast and easy.

By the time 10.14 is released "imaging" tools like CCC might not be availabla anymore, since Apple doesn't want 3rd party kernel extensions. The discussion whit developers is still ongoing, though, as most management tools, all AV and some audio interface drivers need kernel extensions.

As the say in China: "Hope you live in interesting times"
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Old 01-28-2018, 09:23 AM   #17
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So they're thinking of pounding the final nail in eh?

Time to start learning Linux. Hopefully this will be the final push to motivate someone to get a pro audio engine happening.

No new pro model machines since 2012. OSX getting more and more fragile with every release. I don't see Apple recovering anymore at this point.
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Old 01-28-2018, 10:37 AM   #18
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I don't see Apple recovering anymore at this point.
Oh, Apple will thrive. As a phone maker, or even as a supplier of an autonomous driving system for cars.

But OSX is dying.
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