Unraid on older Mac Pro's


ashman70

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  • 1 year later...

I would like to submit my findings on this topic as I came across this thread when I was research the same question.

 

I have a Mac Pro 4,1 (early 2009) that I have updated the EFI Firmware to be a 5,1.  Both before and after the update, my Mac refused to boot from a MBR configured usb flash stick.  I was able to take the Unraid flash device and boot my '14 Macbook Pro from it, but the old Mac EFI just won't do it.

 

I DID manage to boot the Unraid install from an SSD, connected to an internal SATA port, but.....  Unraid doesn't support this option for use.  You HAVE to have the USB flash device to save the configuration to as the system refuses to use the internal SSD after it's booted and the system is loaded into memory.  I did read a post from Lime Tech saying that they do not support booting form an internal drive.

 

Being that I had it working, all but saving my configuration for the next reboot, I went on a mission to find a way to make it work.  I found this link:  http://www.ostricher.com/2012/09/setting-up-unraid-vm/

After reading through it, I tried that method too.  I booted ESXi from a USB flash drive, used the empty space on the flash drive to create a datastore and then configured PCI Passthrough on the 6 port SATA controller AND my USB 3 PCI card.  While I did get it to boot and it worked, it was definitely sluggish because of all the extra processing occurring with Unraid being in a VM.  The setup process DID get me thinking of an option though.

 

In his guide, Itamar explained how he used Plop Bootloader to make VMware boot directly of a USB device, which was otherwise, unsupported and impossible.  THIS got me thinking.  I did a ton of reading about Plop Bootloader and the methods of installing it and using it.  Ultimately, I needed a syslinux boot loader to load Plop Bootmanager, which I had already configured to stay hidden and load my USB flash drive directly.  I HATE dealing with Grub and Grub2 and in general, boot loaders are not my thing.  I found a thread talking about an app called YUMI to install a MULTIBOOT ISO boot manager with syslinux and you can boot any ISO or live ISO of linux and all kinds of operating system.  The downside is that YUMI is a Windows app, but what the hell, right?  I took my SSD that I had booting before, wrote the new MBR to the disk with syslinux and MULTIBOOT which then opens Plopbootloader as hidden and loads UNRAID.  It sounds complicated, but the boot process literally takes about 40-50 seconds to get to the UNRAID boot.  I modified MULTIBOOT's menu to skip everything, timeout after 3 seconds and load Plop by default with no keyboard interaction.  I think the amount of time it takes for UNRAID to start loading is about 30 seconds now.  

 

How often do you really reboot a NAS anyway?  The bootloaders have nothing to do with the system once it's running.

There is 2 negatives to this and neither affect me at all.

1. I have to waste an internal SATA port JUST for the MBR and bootloader.

2. I'm using an SSD for nothing else, other than the bootloader.

 

I have 5 other internal SATA ports which are all being used for my disk Array and I have a 4 port, USB3 PCI card which I have a 4 drive external enclosure on and still have the ability to connect another enclosure, invidiual drives, etc.

 

Ultimately, UNRAID is running perfectly on my 2009 Mac Pro 4,1 with 32 gb of ram and 20 TB of storage space on the array with 2 TB of ssd cache space.  I think that's a pretty damn good setup.

I'm also sure there is an easier method to get Plop Bootmanager loading on the internal disk, but every possibility I tried to load it from USB flash drive failed.  This Mac Pro (and assuming others of this age and older) absolutely refuse to boot from an MBR partitioned USB flash device.

 

Here's a link with a tutuorial on using YUMI:  http://smyl.es/tutorial-how-to-build-the-ultimate-custom-usb-drive-with-multiple-bootable-installs-for-windows-and-linux-and-portableapps-for-windows/

And the download link here:  https://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/

 

Hopefully my info will help someone else make use their old Mac Pro or other old Mac. They are very solid machines!

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  • 10 months later...
  • 1 year later...
On 3/19/2018 at 4:20 PM, Holla said:

Burn the Plop Bootloader to a CD. Works on Mac pro 1.1.

 

 

Did you need to update the EFI on the 1,1 to get Plop to play nice? I'm trying to run it on my 1,1 via superdrive to test unRAID but I can't get the actual manager to function. My understanding is that the manager should run directly from the cd drive, but so far I'm only seeing the installer, which is unresponsive.

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  • 5 months later...
  • 3 months later...
  • 3 months later...
On 9/26/2020 at 7:40 PM, Holla said:

For posterity, an UNRAID 6.8.3 bootable USB created with the provided tool boots fine with a plopkexec 1.6 CD on a Mac Pro 1.1 with 2.1 flashed SMC. May this saves someone an ungodly amount of wasted time 🤗

I'm confirming that this method works on a a MacPro 3,1  as well.

 

I hope that this can save others as much time as it saved me! 

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  • 5 months later...

This WorKs !

Thanks, really thanks for this information.

Works on a MacPro 3.1.

 

Nice, nice...

 

Concerning the boot, how did you configure the machine? During a reboot, you have to select the CD manually with the keyboard (press the C key), or without anyone behind the keyboard that's a problem. Thank you ;)

Edited by PicPoc
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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...

To set a default boot device on Mac for booting unRAID USB via Plop Boot Manager:

When you are at the login screen and can see your bootable devices (yes, you will need a supported video card to do this; any modern nvidia card will not work), all you have to do to set a default boot item is before you click the Optical Drive with your plop cd is hold down the Control key (CMD on a Mac keboard) and then click your choice.

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  • 5 months later...

I have a Mac Pro 5,1 with 64 GB ram, dual 3.46 GHz 6-Core Xeon but I'm running latest Monterey thanks to OpenCore, minus the iOS apps.  No biggie for now, but eventually I will end up getting an M1 chipped machine and would make this Mac Pro a perfect platform for unRAID...

 

My question is...has anybody tried to do video/other passthroughs and running Monterey VM on a Mac Pro unRAID?

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  • 1 month later...
On 9/26/2020 at 10:40 PM, Holla said:

For posterity, an UNRAID 6.8.3 bootable USB created with the provided tool boots fine with a plopkexec 1.6 CD on a Mac Pro 1.1 with 2.1 flashed SMC. May this saves someone an ungodly amount of wasted time 🤗

I'm confirming that this also works with a Mac Pro 4,1. However, to save some more time, I wasn't able to get the drive to boot when I put plopkexec 1.6 on a USB instead of a CD. Only the CD worked.

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  • 1 month later...

I am running 6.10.3 on a Mac Pro 6,1 (trash can from late 2013). I was able to get unRaid to boot by making the USB flash the only bootable media connected. Restart works fine but not shutdown. For some reason after clicking shutdown from unRaid UI, pressing power button to bring it up it doesn't boot from the USB and gives me black screen (HDMI connected to a monitor). Disconnect the power cord from the outlet for 10 seconds, plug it back in and power up, it loads unRaid just fine.

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  • 2 months later...

Hi, I was able to get this to work on 4,1 flashed to 5,1 Mac Pro with Plopkexec 1.6. Everything is working swimmingly, but once I put in a GTX 1660 Super GPU into the machine, it will no longer boot. It just shows a light grey screen and a folder with a question mark on it. I have no idea where to go from here. If I remove the GPU, it boots as normal. To be honest, I was surprised it showed any kind of picture at all.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

Edit: I tried plopkexec 1.6 64-bit, 1.6 32-bit and 1.5 64-bit with frame buffer drivers and none of them will boot.

Edited by 00011000
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2 hours ago, benrose said:

The light gray screen with the question mark folder means that no boot device was found. It’s odd that adding a PCIe device would cause the boot devices to be unrecognized, but looking at how you’re booting plopkexec would probably be the place to start.

Hey, thanks for the reply. Yes, I thought it was odd too, which is why I decided to comment here. What do you mean by "look at how you're booting plopkexec"?

 

At first I was using an external Apple USB superdrive with plopkexec burned onto a DVD. When that didn't work with the 1660 Super, I put the internal back in and tried the dvd there.

 

I'm really not sure where else to go with this. Any pointers would be very helpful!

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I've done a little bit of further testing.

 

1) I reset the PRAM/NVRAM by holding down Option+Command+P+R at the startup chime, and kept waiting until I heard the third chime.

 

2) I held down the option key at the chime to get the apple boot menu. With the Apple GT 120 the boot menu shows up with one option: the DVD with plopkexec. It appears as a Windows disk and pressing enter will boot it. With the 1660 Super, I get the same boot screen, but pressing Enter will not boot the disk - It just stays stuck on the boot screen

 

3) I removed the 1660 and put it into my Windows PC - a fairly recent Lenovo Legion T5 tower and the GPU seems to be perfectly fine. So I think I can rule out a bad GPU.

Edited by 00011000
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I tried inserting a Windows 10 install DVD to see if I can get it to boot into that. Holding option presents two options... Windows + EFI Boot. Selecting the Windows option locks the system, Selecting the EFI Boot option brings me to a black screen that says "Press any key to boot from CD or DVD....." And then just hangs there.

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