15-09-2021

Mac Os Big Sur Unsupported Mac

It's that time of year again and with it, and a new macOS beta has been dropped. Here's all the info you need to get started.

Reminder that Dortania and any tools mentioned in this guide are neither responsible for any corruption, data loss, or other ill effects that may arise from this guide, including ones caused by typos. You, the end user, must understand this is beta software on unsupported machines so do not pester developers for fixes. Dortania will not be accepting issues regarding this mini-guide except for typos and/or errors.

This guide expects you to have a basic understanding of hackintoshing. If you are not familiar with it, we highly recommend you to wait until there is an easier and more straight-forward solution available.

To grab the Big Sur installer, download the beta profile from Apple's developer portal, then check for updates in System Preferences. If you don't have a developer account, you can use gibMacOS to download it: Download gibMacOS and open gibMacOS.command: Press M to change the Max OS, then enter 10.16 to switch the (update) catalog to the Big. How to install big sur on an unsupported mac. Luckily there's a patcher for installing macos big sur on older macs available the big sur micropatcher can be downloaded from github. Step 3: open the macos big sur patcher file. Step 4: insert usb drive. Step 5: install macos bir sur on unsupported mac. Install macos big sur on unsupported mac. MacBook Pro (13-inch, M1, 2020) MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2020, Two Thunderbolt 3 ports) MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2020, Four Thunderbolt 3 ports) MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019).

# Backstory

More a mini-explainer as to why this release is a bit more painful than average macOS releases, the main culprits are as follows:

# AvoidRuntimeDefrag

  • Latest macOS Big Sur beta hints Apple may prevent users from sideloading unsupported iOS apps on M1 Macs Evan Selleck / January 13, 2021 One of the strengths of the M1 -equipped Mac models out there (which are a MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and the Mac mini ) is the ability to run iOS apps.
  • How to install Big Sur on an unsupported Mac. If your Mac is more than a few years old and you try to install Big Sur on it you will hit a few hurdles – the first being the fact that Software Update simply won’t let you install the new version of macOS. However, this doesn’t mean that installing Big Sur on an older Mac isn’t possible.

With macOS Big Sur, the AvoidRuntimeDefrag Booter quirk in OpenCore broke. Because of this, the macOS kernel will fall flat when trying to boot. Reason for this is due to cpu_count_enabled_logical_processors requiring the MADT (APIC) table, and so OpenCore will now ensure this table is made accessible to the kernel. Users will however need a build of OpenCore 0.6.0 with commit bb12f5f or newer to resolve this issue.

# Kernel Collections vs prelinkedkernel

Since 10.7, the prelinkedkernel has been the default way for real macs to boot. This contained a very minimal amount of kexts to get a mac booted. This same bundle is what OpenCore uses to inject kexts, and was hoped to last quite some time. With macOS Big Sur, a huge change happened in where Apple no longer makes it the default form of booting.

Due to the hard work of @acidanthera, OpenCore gained experimental support for this new format in roughly 2 weeks, and we can now attempt to boot Big Sur on our hackintoshes without a Mac or VM - although you will likely run into some issues along the way.

# Prerequisites

Before we can jump head first into installing Big Sur, we need to go over a few things:

# A supported SMBIOS

Big Sur dropped a few Ivy Bridge and Haswell based SMBIOS from macOS, so see below that yours wasn't dropped:

  • iMac14,3 and older
    • Note iMac14,4 is still supported
  • MacPro5,1 and older
  • MacMini6,x and older
  • MacBook7,1 and older
  • MacBookAir5,x and older
  • MacBookPro10,x and older

If your SMBIOS was supported in Catalina and isn't included above, you're good to go!

For those wanting a simple translation for their Ivy and Haswell Machines:

Mac
  • iMac13,2, iMac14,2 and iMac14,3 should transition over to using iMac15,1
  • iMac14,1 should transition over to iMac14,4

# Supported hardware

Not much hardware has been dropped, though the few that have:

  • Official Ivy Bridge U, H and S CPUs.
    • These CPUs will still boot without much issue, but note that no Macs are supported with consumer Ivy Bridge in Big Sur.
    • Ivy Bridge-E CPUs are still supported thanks to being in MacPro6,1
  • Ivy Bridge iGPUs.
    • HD 4000 and HD 2500, initial developer beta forgot to remove drivers but more than likely to be removed in later updates.
  • BCM94331CD based Wifi cards.
    • See Wireless Buyers guide for potential cards to upgrade to.
  • Certain SATA controllers dropped
    • For some reason, Apple removed the AppleIntelPchSeriesAHCI class from AppleAHCIPort.kext. Due to the outright removal of the class, trying to spoof to another ID (generally done by SATA-unsupported.kext) can fail for many and create instability for others.
    • A partial fix is to block Big Sur's AppleAHCIPort.kext and inject Catalina's version with any conflicting symbols being patched. You can find a sample kext here: Catalina's patched AppleAHCIPort.kext
    • This will work in both Catalina and Big Sur so you can remove SATA-unsupported if you want.
Mac

Also note that AMD OSX has updated their patches, but they are experimental and unsupported and you will not obtain support for them:

And a special note for MSI Navi users, you no longer require the ATY,rom/-wegnoegpu patch to boot the installer!

# Up-to-date kexts, bootloader and config.plist

Ensure you've updated to the latest builds (not releases) of OpenCore and all your kexts, as to avoid any odd incompatibility issues. You can find the latest builds of kexts and OpenCore here:

  • Driver Repo (contains OpenCore builds too).

You will also need to ensure you have a few NVRAM variables set:

  • NVRAM -> Add -> 7C436110-AB2A-4BBB-A880-FE41995C9F82:
    • boot-args:
      • -lilubetaall
        • Newest builds of Lilu(v1.4.6+) and most plugins do not require this boot-arg
      • vsmcgen=1
        • Newest builds of Lilu(v1.4.6+) and VirtualSMC(v1.1.5+) don't need this boot-arg
      • -disablegfxfirmware
        • Newer builds of WhateverGreen(v1.4.1+) resolves this

If you're unsure what version of OpenCore you're using, you can run the following in terminal:

  • Note: The about command will require you to include bit 0x2 in Misc -> Security -> ExposeSensitiveData, recommended values for ExposeSensitiveData is 0x6 which includes bits 0x2 and 0x4.

# Known issues

With Big Sur, quite a bit broke. Mainly the following:

  • Lilu
    • Mainly user-space patching has severely broke, meaning certain patches like DRM don't work
    • Kernel-space should be working correctly with v1.4.6, but plugins may require updates due to a complete rewrite of the patcher for Kernel Collection support.
  • VirtualSMC
    • Some users may notice that even with vsmcgen=1 in boot-args, you'll still have VirtualSMC failing. To work around this, you may need to use FakeSMC till vSMC and Lilu issues are resolved.
    • Resolved with v1.1.5+
  • Battery status
    • Currently RehabMan's ACPIBatteryManager is the only working kext for battery status.
    • Resolved with VirtualSMC v1.1.5+
  • AirportBrcmFixup
    • Forcing a specific driver to load with brcmfx-driver= may help
    • BCM94352Z users for example may need brcmfx-driver=2 in boot-args to resolve this, other chipsets will need other variables.
  • Intel HEDT hackintoshes failing to boot
    • This is due to Asus and many other OEMs excluding certain regions from your RTC device, to resolve this we can create a new RTC device with the proper regions.
    • OpenCorePkg includes a sample SSDT that goes in-depth: SSDT-RTC0-RANGE.dsl

And while not an issue, SIP has now gained a new bit so to properly disable SIP you need to set csr-active-config to FF0F0000. See here for more info: Disabling SIP

Big sur for unsupported macs

# Installation

For the installation, you'll need a few things:

  • macOS Big Sur installer
  • 12GB+ USB drive
  • A Mac, hack, or pre-existing VM to download the installer and create install media
  • Latest builds of OpenCore and kexts (see above)

# Grabbing the installer

To grab the Big Sur installer, download the beta profile from Apple's developer portal, then check for updates in System Preferences. If you don't have a developer account, you can use gibMacOS to download it:

Download gibMacOS and open gibMacOS.command:

Press M to change the Max OS, then enter 10.16 to switch the (update) catalog to the Big Sur one.

Press C to change the catalog, then select the number for the developer catalog.

Select the number for the Big Sur beta to start downloading it.

Once finished, open the InstallAssistant.pkg that was downloaded - it will be located in the gibMacOS/macOS Downloads/developer/XXX-XXXXX - Install macOS Beta folder. This package from Apple will create Install macOS Big Sur Beta.app in your /Applications folder.

Run the InstallAssistant.pkg and point this to whichever drive you're booting off of, this is where the Install.app will be dropped:

Once done, you should find it located in your Applications folder:

# Creating the installer

To create the USB is quite simple, grab your USB drive and open Disk Utility in macOS. Next format as follows:

  • Name: MyVolume
  • Format: macOS Journaled
  • Scheme: GUID Partition Map

Once this is done, run the following command:

This will take some time so you may want to grab a coffee, once done your USB should be good to boot!(Assuming you updated OpenCore and co earlier)

# Installing

Installing macOS 11: Big Sur on a Hackintosh is fairly similar to how previous version of macOS were installed, with the main issues being:

  • KernelCollections over prelinkedkernel (discussed above)
  • Installation being much longer
    • This is due to the new snapshot feature of the OS
  • Certain kexts breaking
    • Mainly Lilu and plugins, though quite obvious when they break

For the last one, if you get a kernel panic with Lilu we highly recommend you to update to the latest version with links we provided above. If errors are still not resolved, you may need to disable Lilu outright.

# Troubleshooting

# Stuck at Forcing CS_RUNTIME for entitlement

This is actually the part at where macOS will seal the system volume, and where it may seem that macOS has gotten stuck. DO NOT RESTART thinking you're stuck, this will take quite some time to complete.

# Stuck at PCI Configuration Begins for Intel's HEDT boards

As previously mentioned, Intel HEDT motherboards may have some issues revolving around their RTC device in ACPI. To resolve, you'll need to look at your RTC device and see which regions are missing. For more information, see here: SSDT-RTC0-RANGE.dsl

# Stuck on ramrod(^^^^^^^^^^^^^)

If you get stuck around the ramrod section (specifically, it boots, hits this error, and reboots again back into this, causing a loop), this hints that your SMC emulator is broken. To fix this, you have 2 options:

  • Ensure you're using the latest builds of VirtualSMC and Lilu, with the vsmcgen=1 boot-arg
  • Switch over to Rehabman's FakeSMC (you can use the MinKernel/MaxKernel trick mentioned above to restrict FakeSMC to Big Sur and up

And when switching kexts, ensure you don't have both FakeSMC and VirtualSMC enabled in your config.plist, as this will cause a conflict.

# DeviceProperties injection failing

With Big Sur, macOS has become much pickier with devices being present in ACPI. Especially if you're injecting important properties for WhateverGreen or AppleALC, you may find they're no longer applying. To verify whether your ACPI defines your hardware, check for the acpi-path property in IORegistryExplorer:

If no property is found, you'll need to create an SSDT that provides the full pathing as you likely have a PCI Bridge that is not documented in your ACPI tables. An example of this can be found here: SSDT-BRG0

  • Note: This issue may also pop up in older versions of macOS, however Big Sur is most likely to have issues.

# Some kexts may not be compatible with Big Sur yet

There are a lot of kexts out there, and Big Sur is still pretty new. Not all kexts are working yet, so if you're experiencing a weird kernel panic, one thing you can try is booting with only the essential kexts (Lilu, VirtualSMC/FakeSMC, WhateverGreen) and seeing if it works. If so, you can enable kexts one by one to try to narrow down the issue.

# Virtual Machine Route

If you're still facing issues, or if with a new beta things break, you can try the virtual machine route to install on a disk and then transfer it over to your hack. Follow the following instructions to build install media and then install in a hypervisor.

Note: If you have an AMD CPU, this method isn't going to work.

# Building the Installation Media

Requirements:

  • A computer or VM running macOS
  • The desired macOS installation software installed to /Applications

Once you have the installation software installed to /Applications you will need to create a VDI of the installation media that will be used to install macOS in your VM. The instructions below are intended to be cut and pasted without editing unless specified.

First, set the IMAGE variable to the name of the installation you are installing. The example defines the image for Big Sur.

Next, create an empty 16GB image to host the media.

Verify that you have a 16GB file named 'Install macOS Beta.img' before continuing. After that, attach it to your macOS system as a virtual disk using the variable you created earlier.

Run diskutil list and verify that you have a disk attached that is type 'disk image'.

Now that the image is mounted, format it to Journaled HFS+.

Mac Os Big Sur Unsupported Mac

Once the image is formatted, create the installation media.

Now detach or eject the virtual disk.

You now have a raw image of the installer. Follow the appropriate page for the hypervisor you'll be choosing:

We all know by now that macOS Big Sur is the latest and greatest version of Apple’s Mac operating system. It was released in November 2020 and offered some serious advancements, especially on the visual side. If you have an older machine, though, you may be wondering whether your Mac is compatible. Let’s shed some light on macOS Big Sur system requirements and help you check whether your Mac supports the new OS.

Before you attempt to upgrade to Big Sur

There are a couple of things you should do before you upgrade to Big Sur.

  • Back up your Mac.

It doesn’t matter whether you use Time Machine or a third-party backup tool, just make sure you backup your Mac immediately before you upgrade.

  • Free up some space for the new OS

To get macOS Big Sur running on your Mac, you need at least 20GB of free space. So, if you aren’t sure you have enough, here’s how to check it. Click the Apple menu and select About This Mac. Go to the Storage tab to let your Mac calculate the amount of free space. If you don’t have enough, you can try removing some old junk with CleanMyMac X. This app detects ancient cache, user log files, and other clutter and helps you delete it from your Mac.

  1. Download the free version of CleanMyMac X and install it, then launch.
  2. Press Scan.
  3. Click Run.

That’s all there is to it. I managed to clear 10GB in just a couple of minutes, which saved me hours I would have spent if I were to do it manually.

macOS Big Sur requirements

Here’s the list of macOS Big Sur supported Macs:

  • Any Mac Pro or iMac Pro
  • MacBook Pro and MacBook Air 2013 and later
  • iMac and Mac mini 2014 and later
  • MacBook 2015 and later

As you can see, some Macs released as long ago as 2013 can officially run Big Sur. That’s pretty good considering the number of macOS updates there have been since then and the new features they have introduced.

Sadly, a few machines that were supported to upgrade to Catalina have fallen off the list for Big Sur, notably the 2012 MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and iMac.

Imac 2013 Big Sur

Mac models that do crash

Immediately after Big Sur's release on November 13, 2020, Mac users started reporting system failures that appeared to affect MacBooks from 2013-2014. The attempted installation resulted in 'bricking some older MacBook Pro models,' according to MacRumors. Notably, those MacBooks are the oldest still supported Macs that can run Big Sur. So if your MacBook belongs to that generation, we advice you to do little research on this before you rush to install Big Sur.

Imac 2013 big sur

macOS Big Sur compatibility

If your Mac’s model is on the list of “officially supported” Macs to run Big Sur, you will definitely be able to upgrade it to the latest OS. You can be sure the installer will run on your Mac and that if you run into trouble, you can expect help from Apple, either in the form of support documentation or an update to the OS.

But, if your Mac is slightly older and isn’t on the list, there is a possibility you can still update it to Big Sur. Several Mac users have had some success installing the Big Sur beta on Macs that aren’t on Apple’s list. It requires a workaround, and there’s no guarantee that it will continue to work when the final version of Big Sur is released or when updates are issued. But, if you’re determined to install Big Sur on an older Mac, or you want to try it as a fun project, it’s an option.

Things to consider before you try to install Big Sur on an unsupported Mac

Installing macOS Big Sur on a Mac that’s not on Apple’s official list of unsupported Macs isn’t as straightforward as just downloading the installer and running it. How you install it will depend on the Mac you’re trying to install it on, and we’ll come to that later in the article. But there are other things you need to consider.

  • Your Mac may not run at all afterwards.

If you get the installation process wrong or something just doesn’t work as it should, you could be left with a Mac that doesn’t boot. For that reason, you should make a bootable clone of your startup drive before you start.

  • Even if your Mac boots, parts of it won’t work

Among those users who successfully installed the beta version of Big Sur on unsupported Macs, most reported that either the graphics system (GPU) didn’t work or that Wi-Fi didn’t work. You can get around the wifi issue by replacing the internal Wi-Fi card or using a USB Wi-Fi adaptor, but you can’t replace the GPU.

  • There’s no guarantee updates will work

Just as you can’t use the regular installer to install Big Sur on an unsupported Mac, you won’t be able to install updates using Software Update. That could leave you vulnerable to security flaws.

How to upgrade to Big Sur on an unsupported Mac

As we said earlier, the specifics of how you install Big Sur on an older Mac vary according to the Mac, but there are lots of success stories in this thread.

Mac Os Big Sur Unsupported Mac Wifi

One example is the user who installed the Big Sur beta on a 2012 15in MacBook Pro, and it ran well apart from Wi-Fi not working. That user got around the problem by using an iPhone as a hotspot (you can use Personal Hotspot by connecting to an iPhone via Bluetooth or USB). Another user reported installing Big Sur on a 2012 Mac mini, but with sound and Wi-Fi not working.

The question of whether or not your Mac is compatible with macOS Big Sur can’t be answered just by looking at Apple’s list of supported Macs. Those are the machines on which Apple has decided to support installation, but there are others on which Big Sur will run, albeit with a bit of extra work. You should decide for yourself whether you want to take risks associated with installing Big Sur on an unsupported Mac. And, if you decide to go ahead, be sure to back up your Mac and clean it up using Mac maintenance software like CleanMyMac X.