Upgrade from macOS Mojave to macOS Catalina

Jiří Málek · November 1, 2019

This guide is meant for HP Probook/Elitebook/Zbook but it can be used for all hackintoshes. The only difference is that you have to get all kexts by yourself.

If you own the same laptop, you can use my EFI partition from github.com.

Before upgrade

Backup

Always make a backup before you update/upgrade. Time Machine backup is not enough for Hackintosh, bit-by-bit backup is recommended. I do my backup using 2 hard drives and a USB stick with macOS Installer on it, because I don’t want to pay for Carbon Copy Cloner (stay tuned for my guide How to clone disk using APFS snapshots)).

I connect both my hard drives (using SATA or USB, the only difference is the speed) and boot into the installer.

You have to be very careful not to override your primary hard drive or to format it!

On the main screen, launch Disk Utility. Format the spare hard drive to have to empty. Then close the Disk Utility and run Terminal from Utilities menu.

Identify disk number of your primary and secondary disk.

diskutil list

   /dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
      #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
      0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *128.0 GB   disk0
      1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
      2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         127.8 GB   disk0s2

   /dev/disk2 (internal, physical):
      #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
      0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *128.0 GB   disk2

Here my primary disk is /dev/disk0 and secondary is /dev/disk2. We will reference these drives as /dev/rdisk0 and /dev/rdisk2.

dd if=/dev/rdisk0 of=/dev/rdisk2 bs=1m conv=noerror,sync

Now we have to just wait till it’s finished.

Update essential kexts

Boot into the OS and update and install kexts from Rehabman’s repo according to the guide. Namely sections Updates to the patch repositories and System updates.

Upgrade

DON’T FORGET TO DO A BACKUP!

Now you can start the upgrade from the Mac App Store.

Post-upgrade

Install kexts from Rehabman’s repo according to the guide again.

With my setup, my Wifi was working but the Bluetooth was not. Rehabman is currently not active so I migrated to acidanthera’s BT kexts (Mieze’s patches included).

If you install hackintosh by yourself, download latest BT kexts from Releases page and copy BrcmPatchRAM3.kext, BrcmFirmwareData.kext and BrcmBluetoothInjector.kext) to /EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other/. If you prefer installing kexts to /Library/Extensions, copy BrcmPatchRAM3.kext, BrcmFirmwareRepo.kext and BrcmBluetoothInjector.kext instead. **Don’t forget to remove old kexts (such as BrcmPatchRAM2.kext, etc).

Update: You can use my EFI folder if you have the same model (choose the branch according to the version you are upgrading to).

Since macOS Catalina, system partition is read-only, you have to mount it first as read-write:

sudo mount -uw /

Then rebuild kext cache:

sudo chown -v -R root:wheel /System/Library/Extensions
sudo touch /System/Library/Extensions
sudo chmod -v -R 755 /Library/Extensions
sudo chown -v -R root:wheel /Library/Extensions
sudo touch /Library/Extensions
sudo kextcache -i /

Also, don’t forget to disable hibernation (it can enable with the update):

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0
sudo rm /var/vm/sleepimage
sudo mkdir /var/vm/sleepimage

That’s it, everything is working for me (except the mute button with builtin speakers, but that’s a story for another time).

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