A little over a month ago I blogged about El Capitan support for macosxbootloader and today, after 80 hours of research and development, I released two versions of boot.efi for El Capitan. One with a black background and a white Apple logo, and another one with a grey background and Apple logo.
You can read more about this project for El Capitan here.
Note: I should have added that using -f (flush caches) is no longer supported, and using it will throw a KP. In short. Please wait for me to add support for it (see development phase 3).
Edit: Great. Mike started a new developer thread over at macrumors.com
Have fun now!
Pike's Universum 
VSE2013 fails at line 791 for the same reason in BootArgs,cpp, also.
“//” commenting-out line 791 allows the build to succeed
See my previous comment.
replacement of modified (per comments, above) 4d81f58 produces the same null string lines 4x, as before.
I have class with three groups of children this morning, then the rest of the day I will spend with Mom.
I won’t be back till well-after midnight your time ;(
Good luck.
Pike, AFTER EDITING line 25 of StdAfx.h, so that BOOT_BASE_EFI will be defined as 0, I’ve compiled commit 4d81f58f59335c1080b412e1740aa72b6f25fa07 and posted it. By the way, I think this is the “grey” version.
Sorry. Had to so something else. Fixed and committed now. And yes. This is the one with the grey Apple logo. For black you need to flip the 1 and 0 in this snippet:
Commit 903de61ab09e7a46438ffd8f7063c2b509eada65 compiled and posted. I made the black version (personal preference).
Commit 910ebd0fa8aa63a65062ab730fea121930ed981a compiled and posted! I may be AFK intermittently until 9 o’clock in the evening. Then I won’t be back until tomorrow morning.
You wrote, Pike, on October 3, 2015 at 9:21 am
—-8<—————–
"Edit: Under “Things you will need” points 3 and 5 you mention Pacifist.
Ehm. Why don’t you use createinstallmedia and mod the result instead?"
See https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CQcOWjfWsAAuNNg.jpg
The tasty tid-bits (Distribution in OSInstall.mpkg, un-signed access to BaseSystem.dmg, and various other seemingly-key files) are contained within Install OS X El Capitan.app, which is signed by Apple, and fails to verify when modified.
True that three versions of boot.efi exist, and two (exact) copies, each, of com.apple.Boot.plist and PlatformSupport.plist exist; I've performed these replacements when trying Mavericks 'back in the day' with a compile of Tiamo's original boot.efi, but I can't remember it this succeeded to satisfaction . . . as you are aware (no surprise there, really), things have changed a bit since then *smile*
I’ll try (again) to install via the modified product of createinstallmedia (with your latest commit), tonight, that I can compare how things work.
I’ve always thought that the quickest way to a fully-modified installer was to expose an edited BaseSystem.dmg as early as possible into the process . . . it may well be that this is not necessarily the most efficacious path . . .
Still, it’s all educational 🙂
Regards, splifingate
Boot into createinstallmedia image with all three boot.efi’s replaced with latest commit 910ebd0, and PlatformSupport.plist edited, appropriately:
Initial boot produced:
PIKE: EfiMain(\.IABootFiles\boot.efi) 5x
I am now stuck at “Waiting for DSMOS…” . . . kernel verbosity output has been odd, and slow, so I’ll wait a good while for new output before I re-boot.
IIRC, I’ve always had problems with createinstallmedia images….
Before you go nuts and change all kinds of stuff, first try the version of boot.efi from this page. If that works, then we know that a later commit is not working.
And thanks to the text: “PIKE: EfiMain(\.IABootFiles\boot.efi)” we now know where we can add detection for the installation mode. Thanks!
Inserted the black version from the landing page, and replaced all three boot.efi’s
Still hangs at “Waiting for DSMOS…”
I’ll back-out the two in /usr and /System (leaving only the one in /.IABoot), and try again.
So many versions of boot.efi (and so many different places where I can/should/could put it) makes for some head scratching, at times…
Mikeboss got it started so perhaps you want to join him (us) here.
o.k., I may have replaced things wrongly (shocking, I’m sure).
Double-checked, again, and made sure that the three boot.efi’s in the createinstallmedia partition were replaced with the black version in the Precompiled repository.
Boot into graphical installer verified as OSX 10.11 Release
Nope . . . still waiting for DSMOS this morning.
Rebooted to plan another attack.
Pike, I need your expert advice. Please, read http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/boot-efi-developers-thread.1924434/page-2#post-22023455
Hi Peter,
Good news. I asked the guys of the VPN service that I am using to add the macrumors.com forum to their list – service is very strict in what is allowed – but one the guys moved to Sweden, and thus I was stuck. Could not sign up until today. See my reply there 😉
Hi guys… I´m taking a look at this and downloaded the boot efi grey, buy… where need I to do with this?… is there any link with complete instructions on how to install El Capitan on my mac pro 1.1?, I updated it to firmware 2.1 and bought a radeon 5770 card… now i´m on lion. But I don´t find a link with complete instructions to install El capitan.
Maybe would be fine to upload anywhere a disk (HDD) image with El capitan installed, so… people could download it, restore it on a hard drive and got a plug an play installation… I know that there are people who selles hard drives like this… yo can find one here http://goo.gl/UKfGsJ
Great work guys my install went like a charm. One question I do have is do we need the PikeYoseFix with El Capitan?
Look for the updated one in the macrumours forum.
Thanx
I went to Macrumors and downloaded the CaptainPikeFix from the first post by a guy named satan but when I started to install it on my Mac Pro 1,1 with a HD 5770 and 16 GB of Ram running 10.11.2 I get a warning message that reads as follows: This package is incompatible with the version of OS X and may fail to install.
The message also says it may damage my system. I want to make sure I have the correct fix before I install it. If its not the correct one can you post a link to the one I should use?
I am on holidays so please visit forums.macrumors.com and ask there for help.
Hi piker-alpha I want to install a new OS X version but I only have Intel core duo, do you have some patch or boot loader to run 64 bit kernel on 32 bit processor?
No. Sorry. I do not have a solution for 32-bit CPUs.
Hi, Awesome work and thanks for giving my old MP extra years. Quick question. How do i remove the script? Im on el capitan. Just upgraded to new MP
Hi Pike, a BIG THANK YOU for your wonderful work. I have just installed El Capitan 10.11.4 on a brand new hard drive for my MacPro 2006 1,1. I used a secondary mac to install. I reported what I did on this post: http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2006-2007-mac-pro-1-1-2-1-and-os-x-el-capitan.1890435/page-85#post-22833062 .
I would like to contact you here to thank you and would like to ask if you are still accepting donation. I checked out your Donation page, but there is no more link on how to donate. Let me know please. Thank you again!!
I’ve been using my piker alpha boot.ini now for 6 to 9 months , with no issues, until last week when I selected the Mac update. Now I get a flashing folder icon on the screen and it rails to boot. I think I read somewhere that you warned to be careful with updates as these can update your boot.ini. understood, but the update doesn’t detail what files are being updated. Anyhow, what do you recommend is the quickest recovery method in this situation? Looking forward to your response , many thanks in advance
Thanks so much for all your hard work. I have been able to install El Capitan on my Mac Pro 1.1.
Really happy that my Mac Pro 1.1. is running great again… thanks to you!
Guess I am not going to do the security update unless I hear that it is ok though.
I think Apple should support their customers more, so many people bought the Mac Pro for quite a bit of money, they deserve to get the latest OS as long it is technically possible!
Might be helpful for someone. I’ve just done this again (been doing from beginning) and the process of swapping out the boot.efi files didn’t work on Sierra (I mounted the El Cap drive via usb). I went the through the process again and used a El Cap mac for the process and worked first time.
Thanks for all your work! I have been able to update my Mac Pro 1,1, upgraded to 2,1 to Mavericks and Yosemite without problems. However, with El Capitan I am having problems. The mouse and most likely the keyboard don’t work anymore. Any idea what could be the cause? Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
The USB stack has changed in El Capitan. See macrumors forum for suggestions.