Apple released macOS 10.12 Sierra recently. While there are many brave souls who updated their personal, work, or hosted Mac computers immediately, we're sure many of you were waiting for the all clear. We think it's here.
OS X 10.11 El Capitan, following on from Mavericks and Yosemite, is to be offered as a free upgrade for existing Mac users of any OS X version from 10.6.7 Snow Leopard onwards. MacOS 10.12 Sierra The first version of OS X now titled as macOS, Sierra is a free upgrade to existing Mac users of any version of the operating system since 2010's OS.
With any operating system upgrade, you have to be careful. Whether it's a personal or work computer, important data is stored on it. No-one wants to lose access to that data or find it missing entirely due to a botched operating system upgrade.
- If your current operating system is OS X Lion (10.7), you can skip a few versions, and upgrade directly to macOS High Sierra. To upgrade to Sierra from, say, Mavericks, you’ll have to consequently upgrade to Yosemite and then to El Capitan first. Check Your macOS for Sierra Compatibility These OS versions can upgrade to Sierra.
- I think I'd like to try the upgrade from El Capitan to Sierra. I can't go all the way to High Sierra without Sierra first, correct? I want to install on one hard drive and be able to pull the drive out if I want to keep El Capitan. Cheryl - you gave me a download link before to get a clean ISO install of El Capitan.
Many MacStadium customers rely on a hosted Mac in one of our three data centers to complete important tasks on a day-to-day basis for personal or business reasons. There are a few best practices you can follow to enjoy the best OS upgrade experience on your hosted Mac at MacStadium.
Backup
On every single list like this one, backup is always at the top. Backup your data. Backup your backup of your data. Follow the 3-2-1 method if possible.
At MacStadium - if you don't already - we recommend you take advantage of external bus-powered storage like a 1, 2, or 4TB external usb drive for regular Apple Time Machine backups of your hosted Mac. These are very popular among our customers and allow us to quickly help them return to an unbroken or clean state after software errors. You can also colocate your own USB or Thunderbolt-powered 2.5' external drive at no cost.
With the 3-2-1 method, you can regularly send a copy of the Time Machine backup from the hosted Mac to another location like your home or work. Always consider whether your most recent backup is valid before updating any software or operating system on a production machine.
Connection
We recommend customers use Screen Sharing to start the operating system upgrade and leave it open if possible. It's not often we see customers with issues but usually it's because they're using a 3rd party VNC application that doesn't want to play nice with macOS during an upgrade.
If your connection does drop, don't freak out. It is likely still working in the background.
Patience
Patience? An operating system upgrade can typically take 30-60 minutes. You can't rush it so just relax and find something else to work on while it runs in the background.We don't recommend you leave the upgrade running and walk away.
System Settings
Critical system settings can be reset during an upgrade. We're referring to Computer Sleep and Display Sleep which should both always be set to 'Never' and Start up automatically after a power failure which should always be checked. You might also use Schedule to have your hosted Mac power-on at a specific time every day if it's accidentally shut-off.
Once an upgrade is complete, you should verify these settings are still configured correctly before allowing your hosted Mac to sit un-used (it might shut-off on it's own). Upgrade macbook air 2013 ram. If they aren't and your Mac later becomes unresponsive, you may need to open a support ticket to have the settings changed. The Mac will be pulled into our lab for a short time to be reconfigured at no cost to you.
Recommendations
- Since your hosted Mac is connected via ethernet, we recommend you turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth network connections by making them inactive in system settings.
- Don't be afraid to ask for help. You're likely one of many users completing this upgrade; our support staff can help if you have any issues.
- Save your work, close out all of your open programs, and complete one final backup before starting the OS upgrade from the App Store.
Clean Installs
For users not interested in upgrading or those that don't have an active subscription, we've just added macOS 10.12 Sierra as an option in the OS dropdown when getting a new Mac server. That means you can get a fresh install at any time. We'll also refresh your hosted Mac with a clean install if you have truly, royally screwed up an OS upgrade (it happens to all of us; wear it like a badge of honor).
So I sit down at my desk yesterday all hyped to upgrade to the latest version of Ableton Live 10. Once I'm ready to launch the app and see if it works, I get this error message.
Depression! Of course this would happen to me. Since I run a Hackintosh on a custom build, upgrading my OSX is always somewhat of a perilous adventure. I built this computer in January 2015, and getting it up and running as a Hackintosh took a ton of work.
Just finished setting up my first #Hackintosh! Super stoked. Thanks to the @tonymacx86 community for #UniBeast + #MultiBeast!
— Michael Hwang (@terranmoccasin) January 22, 2015Found my tweet for 2015 just for kicks. So now, I start looking into how to upgrade my OSX, but the rabbit hole only leads deeper. Unibeast? Clover? Chamelon, Chimera, UEFI, and now APFS? Something, something, video card, kext.. The plethora of jargon and acronyms break through the dam staving off the nightmares from Hackintosh-Setup Past. I take in a deep breath and prepare to embark on this Upgrade Mission.
Some quick specs since YMMV
CPU
Intel i7 4790k
Graphics
ATI Radeon R9 280x
RAM
32GB
Motherboard
Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD7-TH
Hard Drive
Intel 730 Series 2.5' 480GB SATA 6Gb/s SSD
0. Backup!
I always run a full backup by cloning my disk before starting on upgrades because something always goes terribly wrong. This time was no exception, as I didn't copy some drivers over correctly on the first attempt and was unable to boot to my original system for a few hours. I had to boot into my backup and do some sleuthing before things were up and running smoothly. So long story short, always backup!
I used Carbon Copy Cloner. The free trial should be fine.
Took me about an hour.
1. Update Clover
So I'm already running on the Clover bootloader, which allows for a pretty easy OS upgrade. The first thing I did was upgrade to the latest version by downloading the Clover Configurator and using the Update tab on the left.
And follow the install prompts..
Update El Capitan To Sierra Hackintosh
Once Clover was successfully updated, I rebooted to make sure I could still boot into my machine.
2. Update Mac Model
So unbeknownst to me, I was using a super old Mac Model number for my setup. Ideally, you find the model that has the closest specs to your machine starting from the CPU. I was set on some old Mac Pro from 2008 (I just picked it randomly when I first built this machine). Now, since Macs from 2008 and earlier aren't supported on Sierra and above, I was forced to update. I followed this guide about updating SMBios on Tonymacx86 after finding the correct Mac Model at Every Mac.
Upgrade El Capitan To High Sierra Problems
Upgrade from lion to yosemite. Tonymacx86 SMBios Upgrade Guide
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/guide-how-to-configure-your-systems-smbios-correctly.198155/
Every Mac for model lookup
https://everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/specs/imac-core-i7-4.0-27-inch-aluminum-retina-5k-late-2014-specs.html
I went with 14,1 since it matches my ATI video card and i7 4790k CPU.
3. Upgrade to Sierra 10.12
I decided to take the safer route of upgrading to 10.12 Sierra first before going to 10.13 High Sierra.
I was running OSX El Capitan 10.11.15, and I followed this guide to upgrade directly to Sierra (for Clover users).
Tonymacx86 guide for upgrading from El Capitan to Sierra
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/direct-update-to-macos-sierra-using-clover.201465/
Since Sierra is pretty old now, you have to download it from a special link provided by Apple Support.
Download Sierra from the App Store
https://support.apple.com/en-us/ht208202
The only thing I had to do that wasn't mentioned in the Tonymacx86 guide is copy over my custom kexts from my 10.11 installation. For me, these were kept on my EFI partition at /EFI/CLOVER/kexts..
So 10.12 would be used for Sierra, and 10.11 is what I'm currently on. I didn't copy these at first and I ran into a kernel panic on boot. The stack trace showed that AppleIntelE1000e.kext was probably the culprit.
So to fix this, I booted into my cloned backup, mounted the EFI partition of my main disk, and then copied over the kexts I mentioned above into the folder of my new OS version number (10.12 for Sierra).
Was a real relief when this worked.
Sierra was working fine after.
4. Upgrade to High Sierra
Upgrade El Capitan To High Sierra Hackintosh
Similar process as above - follow the guide, copy the kexts, and upgrade directly from the App Store!
Tonymacx86 guide for upgrading from Sierra to High Sierra
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/update-directly-to-macos-high-sierra.232707/
How To Upgrade El Capitan To Sierra On Macbook Pro
Note: I did the APFS method, which upgrades your file system to a newer format. You should only use this if you're using an SSD and not a HDD.
Everything was up and running fine afterwards. I think onboard audio doesn't work out of the box, but it's not a problem for me since I use a USB audio interface. There's a post here that talks about installing audio drivers.
How To Upgrade El Capitan To Sierra
5. Boom
Now I'm happily on High Sierra, and I just installed Ableton Live 10.