Merry Christmas

I hope everyone had a good Christmas, I have no complaints. Our family does exchange a few small gifts, but nothing grand anymore. I got myself a new set of tires for my car (which is a substantial purchase) and a new battery.

Wifey made a lot of homemade candy treats, so I should be in a sugar induced coma for a couple of weeks to come. Yum!

So, Merry Christmas to All, and eyes forward towards the New Year.

God Bless You All

Install Win10 BootCamp Drivers on MP51 / macOS Mojave (APFS) Dual Boot

So, as many Mac Pro users have learned, Mojave requires the boot drive file system to be formatted as APFS and the installer converts it to such (want it or not). If you try to force any variation of HFS+ for the Mojave boot drive, no updates will ever be possible on this drive through the Software Update mechanisms.

With the boot drive being APFS, when you boot to WIN10, you lose the ability to switch back to macOS because neither BootCamp (for MP51) nor Windows provides APFS drivers to make this possible.

Yesterday (I Think), Apple updated it’s BootCamp software for the iMac Pro, and now it regained this functionality for iMac Pro, APFS/Win10. It works again. Great!  Too bad Apple didn’t provide this update for MP51 drivers.

Well, let me fix that for you...  ;)

Below is a quick guide I put together that allows you to install BC 6.1 driver’s on an MP51/Win10 System. This should do the trick for you.

After Windows Legacy is installed;

1. Install BC drivers for cMP 5,1
2. Download brigadier-0.2.4.zip and extract the exe file.
3. Open CMD as Administrator & navigate to the folder with brigadier.exe
4. Execute (from command line) brigadier.exe -m iMacPro1,1
5. Wait for download to finish, this will be the BC6.1 drivers
6. Navigate to the BootCamp/Drivers/Apple/
7. Run the command msiexec /i bootcamp.msi
8. Reboot when install is finished

How to make an OS X Sierra DVD Installer

Make sure you have downloaded the Sierra Installer package from the Mac App Store, and placed it in your Applications folder. Then open a command line Terminal. Paste these commands into the terminal. The resulting DVD iso will be on your desktop when completed correctly.

hdiutil attach /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg -noverify -nobrowse -mountpoint /Volumes/install_app

hdiutil create -o /tmp/Sierra.cdr -size 7500m -layout SPUD -fs HFS+J

hdiutil attach /tmp/Sierra.cdr.dmg -noverify -nobrowse -mountpoint /Volumes/install_build

asr restore -source /Volumes/install_app/BaseSystem.dmg -target /Volumes/install_build -noprompt -noverify -erase

rm /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/System/Installation/Packages

cp -rp /Volumes/install_app/Packages /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/System/Installation/

cp -rp /Volumes/install_app/BaseSystem.chunklist /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/BaseSystem.chunklist

cp -rp /Volumes/install_app/BaseSystem.dmg /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/BaseSystem.dmg

hdiutil detach /Volumes/install_app

hdiutil detach /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/

hdiutil convert /tmp/Sierra.cdr.dmg -format UDTO -o /tmp/Sierra.iso

mv /tmp/Sierra.iso.cdr ~/Desktop/Sierra.iso

A bootable iso file called Sierra.iso will then appear on your desktop and you can use this to burn it to a dual layer dvd.

How to make an El Captain DVD Installer Disk

A long while back, I was asked to do a write up on making a DVD Installer Disk for OS X El Capitan.

I’m sorry it took me so long to do this, I just got wrapped up in life, and simply forgot. So, below is a script to automate the process. If you don’t want to run a script, you can copy/paste the individual commands into a terminal session. This will put an installer iso on your desktop. Just burn the resulting iso onto a DL DVD. It’s bootable, installable, and can be used to create a vm if wanted.  Make sure you have downloaded the full El Capitan Installer from the App Store, and placed it into the Applications folder before starting.

#!/bin/bash

# Mount the installer image
hdiutil attach /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg -noverify -nobrowse -mountpoint /Volumes/install_app

# Create the ElCapitan Blank ISO Image of 7316mb with a Single Partition - Apple Partition Map
hdiutil create -o /tmp/ElCapitan.cdr -size 7316m -layout SPUD -fs HFS+J

# Mount the ElCapitan Blank ISO Image
hdiutil attach /tmp/ElCapitan.cdr.dmg -noverify -nobrowse -mountpoint /Volumes/install_build

# Restore the Base System into the ElCapitan Blank ISO Image
asr restore -source /Volumes/install_app/BaseSystem.dmg -target /Volumes/install_build -noprompt -noverify -erase

# Remove Package link and replace with actual files
rm /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/System/Installation/Packages
cp -rp /Volumes/install_app/Packages /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/System/Installation/

# Copy El Capitan installer dependencies
cp -rp /Volumes/install_app/BaseSystem.chunklist /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/BaseSystem.chunklist
cp -rp /Volumes/install_app/BaseSystem.dmg /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/BaseSystem.dmg

# Unmount the installer image
hdiutil detach /Volumes/install_app

# Unmount the ElCapitan ISO Image
hdiutil detach /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/

# Convert the ElCapitan ISO Image to ISO/CD master (Optional)
hdiutil convert /tmp/ElCapitan.cdr.dmg -format UDTO -o /tmp/ElCapitan.iso

# Rename the ElCapitan ISO Image and move it to the desktop
mv /tmp/ElCapitan.iso.cdr ~/Desktop/ElCapitan.iso

HighPoint SSD7101A-1 & Samsung 970 Pro NVMe SSD

It’s been a long time since my last post, but I have to write about my newest upgrade to my Mid-2012 Mac Pro. I’ve been adding 2.5” SSD drives to replace the old HDD’s. It’s been a big performance boost, but nothing like my new upgrade.

I purchased a HighPoint NVMe Raid M.2 SSD carrier (SSD7101A-1) & a 512GB Samsung 970 Pro NVMe m.2 SSD. 

Wow! This thing is beyond fast... 3300 GB/s read speeds / 2800+ GB/s write speeds.

I modified the Mac Pro’s Boot Rom by injecting an NVMe driver so now my Mac is booting from the NVMe 970 Pro, and getting PCIe Gen 3 speeds with an 8 GT/s connection to the 16x Raid carrier. Storage technology on my Mac Pro is now up to the most cutting edge tech. available anyware. 

Thanks HighPoint

SSD7101A

Ubuntu as VMWare/OS X Guest

I’ve had Ubuntu 17.10 running great in VMware for a couple of days now. It’s revitalizing my interest in Linux. I’ve forgotten much of what I knew since switching to macOS. macOS really is, a truly great Unix variant, and I don’t see myself using anything else as my primary OS in the future. That said, I’m enjoying Linux again, and that’s a good thing. At some point I’ll try to dual-boot Ubuntu/macOS natively, but for now I’m content with a vm.

Now my next task is to fix my boot splash/loading/boot screen, I detest the scrolling verbose mode. I had this working just fine in older versions but now I can’t remember how I did that. I seem to recall having to regenerate/recreate a particular file and then it all worked fine. I’ll be reading up & searching the forms for that puzzle piece. When I get it solved, I’ll post it here as a “note to self”.

Installing VMWare tools to a Ubuntu 17.10 vm Guest

So, for anyone struggling with screen resolution for a VMware Fusion 10, Ubuntu 17.10 install, try the following. vmware tools seems to install more effectively when downloaded & applied using the repository.

sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools-desktop

Update

So, it’s been a pretty long time since my last entry. The reason being that my life has been ripped apart, turned upside down, and I’m slowly trying to put it all back together.  I won’t be more specific as I’m actually trying to repress memory and disturbing thoughts.

As a result of my recent life-crises, I’m now left with a financial crisis. If anyone cares to, please pray for me. I need a blessing right now.

I’ll post again soon, thank you...