Here is a little write-up on how I installed El Capitan on my 2006 MacPro 1,1. Before reading any further, please keep in mind that all my attempts to create a bootable USB stick, with the El Capitan installer, failed miserably.
So I had to follow a different path to do it, which requires access to a Mac computer, which natively supports El Capitan. In my particular case, I used my early 2009 iMac. If you do not have access to a Mac which can natively support El Capitan, this method is NOT for you. With this disclaimer out of the way, a quick description of the issue of installing El Capitan on those old Macs.
The 2006 and 2007 MacPros were extremely powerful computers for their time. They were the top of the line, professional machines from Apple and they still are quite capable. Unfortunately, even though most of their hardware is 64-bit, their firmware is only 32 bit. At some point in time Apple decided to no longer provide their OS-X with 32-bit firmware support (I do not exactly remember what was the OS-X version that broke it). As a result, those MacPros couldn’t use the latest releases of OS-X.
Thank to some enterprising souls on the Internet, patches were developed, which allowed the use of later OS-X versions on those Macs. And those patches were easy to implement, my 2006 MacPro 1,1 was running Yosemite, before I decided to upgrade it to El Capitan.
Mar 28, 2018 - E Mu Xboard 49 Drivers Os X El Capitan Dmg. Microsoft released a new version (15.26.x) of Office 2016 for Mac. You are still required to have.
While some people are quite happy running OS-X 10.6 on their MacPros, I wanted to run the latest and greatest (or so they say) of OS-X, which is El Capitan or 10.11.1. The following paragraphs describe how I managed to install El Capitan on my MacPro 1,1 and give you some troubleshooting guide on issues you may face after the installation. Please keep in mind that I can not be blamed if something breaks in your computer, by following the instructions below.
Always have a backup of your data before doing anything dangerous to your system, and the instructions below are definitely not for those who do not know their way around the Mac OS-X. OK, let’s start, here is a description of my systems: 1. MacPro 1,1 already running Yosemite (MP for short, from now on). IMac early 2009, also running Yosemite and Server.app All lines starting with a – are commands you should enter in a terminal window. Do not enter the “- “, only what follows it.
My MP boot disk is an SSD which is twice a day backed up to an external SSD disk, for security reasons. So I got this second SSD disk, let’s call it SSDExt, and move it to the iMac. I run App Store on the iMac and downloaded El Capitan installer. However, I didn’t allow it to install on the iMac internal disk. Instead I asked it to install the new software to the SSDExt disk, which was now connected to the iMac. The installer went through it process and ended up by upgrading the SSDExt disk to El Capitan. I verified that by allowing the iMac to boot from SSDExt.
I then changed the System Properties, instructing the iMac to boot from its internal disk (which I remind you has Yosemite installed) and removed the SSDExt from it. I took the SDDExt disk to my MP (still running Yosemite). I opened a terminal window and issued the following commands.
– su The system will ask you for your root password, enter it. – cd /Volumes/SSDExt/System/Library/CoreServices This will take you to the first place where the boot.efi needs to be replaced. – chflags nouchg boot.efi The above command will remove the protection from boot.efi At this moment, I visited the following URL and downloaded the patched boot.efi needed to have the MacPro run El Capitan: Scroll down until you find the “Download” paragraph and download either of the two boot.efi’s mentioned there. One is for a black background with a white apple and the other is for a white background with a black apple. Pick your choice, both work. I saved the boot.efi on my Desktop folder. I then went back to terminal and issued the following commands: – cp /Users/john/Desktop/boot.efi.
That will copy the new boot.efi to CoreServices, overwriting the standard one. I then issued: – chflags uchg boot.efi This will protect boot.efi again. While in the CoreServices directory, I then used Property List Editor to edit the file called PlatformSupport.plist. Since not all of the readers have this program, you can also edit the file with your favorite editor. I use vi, so here are the instructions on how to do it.
Enter the following command: – vi PlatformSupport.plist Move your cursor down, until it is on the line saying “”. Then press the letter “o”. A new empty line will open below the line your cursor was on. In the new line, enter the following: Mac-F4208DC8 Press Esc (the Esc button) and then enter::wq This will save the file and take you back to the prompt.
Now enter: – cd./././usr/standalone/i386 This will take you to the second location, where you need to copy the boot.efi file. Just enter the following command: – cp /Users/john/Desktop/boot.efi. You are all done now. All that remains is to reboot your system from the SSDExt disk, to have El Capitan running. To do that, go to your System Preferences, Startup Disk and select the SSDExt as your boot disk. You may need to enter your administrator password two or three times, but that’s OK.
Then click on the small apple sign, on the top left corner of your screen and your computer will restart. There is an alternative way to select what disk to boot from.
You simply restart your computer and when the boot sound is heard, press and hold the Option key on your keyboard, until a gray screen appears with all your bootable drives. Select the SSDExt (or whatever your external disk is called) using your mouse or your arrow keys and press Enter. The system will boot from that disk, in El Capitan.
Some remarks regarding El Capitan on your MacPro 1,1. It is possible that some of your Internet Accounts are not copied correctly. So please check them out in your System Preferences. In my case, a CardDav account didn’t survive the upgrade, but that was easily fixable.
Most probably, you will not be able to boot from your Recovery Partition, which the installer has created on your SSDExt drive. The reason is that the boot.efi file installed in it, is the standard one, not the patched one. You can change that (and gain access to the Recovery Partition) by following these instructions. Boot from your internal disk again, not from SSDExt. Open a terminal window and enter: – diskutil list This will show you all the partitions on all your disks. Find a partition called “AppleBoot Recovery HD” which is on the SSDExt disk.
Notice the last word in that line, something like “disk1s3”. Now issue the following command: – diskutil mount /dev/disk1s3 The program will tell you that the disk is mounted. Enter this command to verify that: – ls -l /Volumes You should see a “Recovery HD” disk there. Issue the following commands: – cd /Volumes/Recovery HD This will take you into the Recovery HD disk. Issue: – cd com.apple.recovery.boot – ls -l In the directory, you will see a boot.efi file.
You need to replace it with the patched one, so issue the following commands: – chflags nouchg boot.efi – cp /Users/john/Desktop/boot.efi. – chflags uchg boot.efi These will unprotect the boot.efi from the directory you are in, replace it with the patched one and protect the file again (just like we did above). Then edit the PlatformSupport.plist file found in that same directory, following the instructions above. You can now restart your computer and try booting from the Recovery HD.
El Capitan comes with a strange protection scheme called SIP, which is supposed to prevent overwrite of critical system files. That protection however, may prevent you from running certain programs, which may be crucial for you. In my case, the program XtraFinder which I use, couldn’t run due to that protection.
To make it work, you need to disable the protection scheme. To do that, you have to boot from your Recovery HD partition, and from the menu on the top, select Utilities and then Terminal.
When you are in the terminal window, enter the following command: – csrutil disable For the XtraFinder, it is not necessary to disable SIP completely, so you can enter the following command, instead: – csrutil enable –without debug 4. An interesting side-effect of El Capitan, for those using two monitors connected to your MP, is the fact that now, the log in screen appears on your primary display, instead of the secondary one.
For me, that’s a good thing. Something strange I discovered yesterday night, is that the upgrade to El Capitan erased my trusty Airport Utility 5.6.1, which was inside a directory in /Applications/Utilities. So it seems that Apple doesn’t like us using the old but powerful 5.6.1 version. Thank God, it is easily available on the net, together with the Loader required for it to run on recent Mac OS-X versions. I’ve been using the MP with El Capitan for three or four days now, and I haven’t noticed any significant issues. My Chronosynch scheduler has been disabled, after the El Capitan installation, but that was easily fixed. Also, a strange error message appears, from time to time, which is due to SuperDuper!, again nothing serious, google that issues, easily fixable.
I hope you’ll find these guidelines interesting and useful. Addendum for problems with my second MacPro (December 25th, 2016) A few days ago, I got my hands on a second MacPro 1,1. Same computer as the MacPro I’ve been using with El Capitan for some months now.
The new computer came with OS-X 10.7.5 installed. The initial plan was to just make a copy of the boot disk from my old MacPro (let’s call it MacPro1 from now on) and install it in the new MacPro (let’s call it MacPro2 from now on) and have two similar MacPros.
Unfortunatelly, this didn’t work out as planned. The disk booted MacPro2 fine, but after a while, the computer hanged up.
I tried to figure out what the problem was, but no luck. So I tried the next best thing. I had a copy of El Capitan install file saved, so I used that to create a bootable disk. The version of that install file was 10.11.4. Tried that, but that didn’t work either. So I downloaded El Capitan from the App Store again, and created a boot disk. That download was also 10.11.4, so I updated it to 10.11.6.
But I asked the program to import all my settings from my MacBook. Well, that disk didn’t work either, so right now, I am in the process of redownloading and reinstalling 10.11.4 again. I’ll update it to 10.11.6 but won’t import the user settings from any computer. I’ll set it up from scratch. Wish me luck!
I’ve had better ways to spend Christmas and next day, than playing with a crazy El Capitan! Addendum of the addendum Well, am I stupid or not? The MacPro2 came with only 4GB of RAM. Upgrading that to 8GB solved all my problems! This entry was posted in,.
Bookmark the. Hi John, Following the description of Piker Alpha El Capitan is now running on my quad core Mac Pro 1.1 – 2.66 ghz.
Disabling the System Integrity Protection and exchanging the Boot Efi’s – it worked well! El Capitan starts very well and runs perfectly for about 7 minutes. Then suddenly the system crashed and starts again.
With the message – the computer is restarted due to an error. After about 7 minutes again the same procedure, and always the same.
The detailed report shows the following kernel panic: Long crash report deleted What does this mean? Perhaps someone in this community, who has the same problem knows a solution. Thanks in advance for your help. I haave a 2006 MacPro2,1 3GHz dual quads, 16GB ram, ATI Radeon 5770 w 1024MB.
Followed your method but still won’t boot to the ext drive. I used Xcode to edit the plist, very simple. I noticed on booting that it goes a little further than before but it defaults to the 10.7.5 system. You had a string to add for the board, how can I check to see that my board is on the list? I can’t seem to find it anywhere. Thanks for your help. I hope I can get this done and functioning.
Recap: Updated both boot.efi files, added MacPro2,1 to Supported Machines and your string for the board. Quick question Im running a Mac Pro 2007 with 10.6.8 installed. I have 2 hardrives 1 is running 10.11 that I download from a mac that natively supports it, My 2015 Macbook Pro. I check that it was installed correctly by booting the Macbook Pro from the drive with 10.11 and everything worked fine. Now, on my Mac Pro running 10.6, How do I tell the computer to use the hard drive with 10.11 on it, and use the new boot loader, bootgrey.efi? The name of my drive is OSX1011 if that helps in the command line.
Basically I deleted the normal 10.11 boot.efi but how do i tell it to use the new one I added in? Cheers, Darius. First of all, I hope you didn’t copy bootgrey.efi in the directories where boot.efi was. You need to copy bootgrey.efi to boot.efi in those directories. Go in them and verify that you have the proper boot.efi, it should be about 300KB. Second, to tell your computer that you want to boot from your OSX1011 drive, click on the small apple, at the top left corner of your screen, select System Preferences and then Startup Disk.
Or restart your computer and when you hear the bong sound, press the Option key and hold it down until a screen appears with all your boot drives. Select OSX1011 and you should be good to go. I followed the above instructions to the letter, and for some while had been enjoying El Capitan on my Pac Pro 1.1. All the updates worked fine until 10.11.5, from which point the Mac no longer sees the HD during the boot process. Just nothing happens.
Booting into Safe Mode doesn’t happen either. Fortunately I’d saved (cloned) the drive at 10.11.4, which still boots fine. I’ve tried cloning that, and doing an update to.5 but it still fails to boot. I even started from scratch with a fresh download of El C and tried the process again, but it seems to fail at 10.11.5. Any ideas which might solve the problem or am I a ‘one-off’?
Hi John, I am a newbie in working with Apple Servers and I followed it today and managed to upgrade a MacPro 1,1 (OS 10.6.8) to El Capitan and it worked like a charm. A couple of things, though: – Server Preferences, Server Admin, Workgroup Manager, Server and System Image Utility are not found on the machine I haven’t checked the Terminal yet to see if they are still there, but then I realized El Capitan may not be the right OS to upgrade to. I have duplicated the original config (in two restorable instances just in case).
I wanted to upgrade the server capabilities to allow 64-bit development, but this may not be the path. Any suggestions? Frank, the boot.efi file is protected, so you need to follow the steps I describe for the installation of El Capitan.
You can’t just drag and drop the file in its proper positions. A simple check is to go in the two directories I mention, and check the file size. It should be around 316 or 319 KB, if it is larger, then you do not have the proper boot.efi in place. I am nto sure what happens, this is weird, I do not understand how the MacPro can boot with the wrong boot.efi and stop afterwards. But please check the file size and get back to me.
I have followed these steps on a 1.1 Mac Pro with a 7300 GT and it seemed to work, but El Capitan is extremely unstable for whatever reason. After about 1 minute on average the machine crashes and reboots. If i’m lucky. The machine runs for 5 minutes without crashing. In the worst scenarios, it crashes before even booting.
Strangely it seems to get a little better the more times i boot it, but that could be coincidental. Experienced anything like that? It might be worth noting that it only has 2GB of RAM, but that shouldn’t cause it to crash randomly. Lion runs just fine on it so i have no idea what’s up with el capitan. And its not the gpu, i tried to use a gt 610 which is natively supported in el capitan, the graphics run smoother but the instability remains unchanged. I followed your guide to install El Capitan when it first came out, on my Mac Pro 1.1.
I recently (30 minutes ago) updated to the latest version using the apple updater, it seemed to install fine but then rebooted into windows during the installation. Since then, I have been unable to boot OSX. I have another partition with windows 7 that still works fine, but I am no longer able to boot from either my main El Capitan drive, or the OSX recovery partition. I can select both in the booting screen, it goes black and stays that way for 5 seconds, then boots right back into Windows 7.
I will check this daily to see if you respond if I can’t figure it out. I’ve done a clean install and tried again with the updates applied (via MacBook Pro 15 early 2011) to the SSD before transferring to the MacPro. I was able to get both Chrome and iTunes open, running the SSD on the MacPro. In Chrome I was able to go to Netflix, sign in, load a movie and start itthen the MacPro crashed. I rebooted and this time tried iTunes. The application loaded, let me say “no thanks” to Apple Music, let me sign in to my apple accountthen the MacPro crashed. Now it won’t boot to the SSD.
Am I running into problems because I’m loading the SSD up from a MacBook Pro, or that it’s 10.11.6 and not 10.11.1/10.11.2? Well, darn it! I am in the same boat as you are!!! I got myself a new (used) MacPro 1,1, hoping to duplicate my original setup. So I took my backup system disk out of my MacPro No1 and put it in my MacPro No2.
Same problem you are facing, the system starts, but hangs up after a while, on opening or using some programs. So I thought hell, I’ll redownload El Capitan file and start from scratch.
Did that, I updated to 10.11.6 (the download was 10.11.4), imported my settings from my MacBook and then moved the disk to MacPro No1, patched boot.efi etc and then move the disk to MacPro No2. Still the same, the system hangs up after a while! More investigation now!!!!!
Hi John, I could not get the “cp /users/(account name)/desktop/boot.efi” command to work either, same deal it gave me usage info, so after I had removed the protection from the “boot.efi” in ” /volumes/(disk name)/system/library/corservices” with the “chflags nouchg boot.efi” command I just drag and dropped the boot.efi from my desktop to the MP1,1’s corservices folder on the And told it to “replace” then entered my password, Then entered the “chflags uchg boot.efi” command to reinstate the file protection and that worked fine. Just need the path string for the second file location so I can browse the MP 1,1 disk to the correct folder then drag and drop the boot.efi and I’m good to go ( I hope lol ) I’m using an MP 3,1 running EL Capitan to do the editing. Forgot to mention the Specs of my MP 1,1 CPU’s= Dual 3Ghz Quad Core Xeons ( can’t remember the models number ) Memory= 32 Gig 667 DDR2 FB dimms with Mac Heat Shields Bay 1= TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM Sata drive Bay 2= TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM Sata drive Bay 3= 500 Gig Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM Sata drive DVD Players= Dual super drives Vid Card= Radeon HD 4870 756 Meg Memory Can’t afford an SSD at the moment. I also have an Nvidia Quadro FX 4800 1.8 Gig Which is going in soon as I get the MP 1,1 up and running again, holding off on installing that at the moment not sure if its compatible with MP 1,1’s, hoping it will work under El Capitan. I am going to be using the MP 1,1 for running Autodesk AutoCad, Hence the Quadro FX.
Second path is /usr/standalone/i386 That’s the second place where you should copy boot.efi. I am not sure if that card will work with the MacPro, never tried one. Actually, the only one I’ve ever tried was the 8800GT.
Lately, when I acquired my second MacPro, I faced a problem with the standard card, that used to come with the machine, but also with an Nvidia Quadro FX4500. Neither of these cards worked OK with the latest version of Apple Aperture I am using, and El Capitan 10.11.6.
However, the same program works just fine with the 8800GT. So there are some compatibility issues, for sure. I am waiting for another 8800GR to come, to see if that will allow the new Pro to run Aperture, as the old one does. Hi John Thanks for the fast response, Found the folder, it’s a hidden folder 8( lol, Just in case any body else strikes the same problem run the following command in terminal to unhide all your hidden files and folders, leave out the hyphen “-” just the bit from “defaults” to “Finder ” Then hit enter: – defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE;killall Finder RE hide all your hidden files and Folders: – defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles false;killall Finder Just have to patch the recovery drive now. My MP 1,1 is running great with OS X 10.11, Did notice that 10.11 will not boot unless you have an MP 1,1 compatible OS installed, I’m using 10.7 as my backup OS, also installed boot camp windows 7 x64 on it. I tried out the Nvidia Quadro FX 4800 in the MP 1,1 they do run in MP 1,1’s however there is no boot screen, tested it in both HDMI and VGA mode, At the present I am running an ATI Radeon HD 4870 1 Gig till I can test Weather a third party boot loader will give me a boot screen with the Quadro FX.
Failing that I will try a standard MAC Nvidia FX card as the boot card an.
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