Proxmox VE OSX Guide discussion

[fabiosun]

with Enermax liquid cooling temps and frequency with OCCT:

 

[cj750]

Hello,

 

How are you updating your OS's from like 10.5.3 to 10.5.4 or 5? I see there a higher verison. But dont want to mess anything up doing it from  the update options. 

 

 

[fabiosun]

Usually I update via Apple store/internal software update without problems 

@cj750

[iGPU]

6 hours ago, fabiosun said:

@iGPUwhen you have time can you post a screen capture of your BIOS settings for Cpu fan and Pump?

Thank you

 

Attached are the BIOS settings for my fans. I never keep any fans running at the same speed; this can set up a resonance that can make fans noise louder. Even when I have multiple fans on the front (and often even on radiators), I set each one 50 to 100 rpm apart from the others. This is why CPU1 fan ≠ SysFan1 ≠ SysFan2.

 

Overall, the fans are very quiet in their case (a Thermaltake View 71). It's a big case. I placed the CPU radiator on the top. I drilled some extra holes and mounted 3-140mm fans in the front (stock was 2).

 

I still have yet to convert the 2 Radeon VIIs to water cooling That will require at least one more fan header. I presently have 5 free headers.

 

***

 

First image is the CPU fans (the 3 fans on the radiator).

 

 

The next image is the pump settings.

 

 

Next, is the TRX40 chipset fan (inside shroud):

 

 

Finally, the case fans (there are presently 2 sets: 3-140mm intake fans at front and 1-140mm exhaust fan at rear):

 

[iGPU]

6 hours ago, fabiosun said:

Temperature with Enermax liquid cooler are very good, but I have a weird whistle I can hear  (it seems a sort of coil wine)and also Cpu fan have too much ramping also in idle

Thank you

 

 

If the sound is new, I assume it is not from the chipset fan (which can be noisy at times unless slowed a bit). I hear almost no sound from the pump even with my ear close by, unless I run it full speed.

 

When I dismantled the Enermax pump to clean out the system, I did notice some burrs inside the aluminum pump housing. I sanded this part smooth (unfortunately, I took no photos). Since I did not run it before dismantling it, I don't know if those burrs would have produced any noise. I wrote Enermax about this issue, but they never responded.

[fabiosun]

@iGPU thanks to your settings I can say now weird sound is related with cpu fan speed

I will try more these settings but I can also say I like this way, fan are ramping only when I need more fan cooling

thank you again

 

[fabiosun]

update to latest kernel using shell command:

apt update && apt dist-upgrade

pveversion -v output:

root@pve:~# pveversion -v
proxmox-ve: 6.2-1 (running kernel: 5.4.44-2-pve)
pve-manager: 6.2-9 (running version: 6.2-9/4d363c5b)
pve-kernel-5.4: 6.2-4
pve-kernel-helper: 6.2-4
pve-kernel-5.4.44-2-pve: 5.4.44-2
pve-kernel-5.4.44-1-pve: 5.4.44-1
pve-kernel-5.4.41-1-pve: 5.4.41-1
pve-kernel-5.4.34-1-pve: 5.4.34-2
ceph-fuse: 12.2.11+dfsg1-2.1+b1
corosync: 3.0.4-pve1
criu: 3.11-3
glusterfs-client: 5.5-3
ifupdown: 0.8.35+pve1
ksm-control-daemon: 1.3-1
libjs-extjs: 6.0.1-10
libknet1: 1.16-pve1
libproxmox-acme-perl: 1.0.4
libpve-access-control: 6.1-2
libpve-apiclient-perl: 3.0-3
libpve-common-perl: 6.1-5
libpve-guest-common-perl: 3.0-11
libpve-http-server-perl: 3.0-6
libpve-storage-perl: 6.2-3
libqb0: 1.0.5-1
libspice-server1: 0.14.2-4~pve6+1
lvm2: 2.03.02-pve4
lxc-pve: 4.0.2-1
lxcfs: 4.0.3-pve3
novnc-pve: 1.1.0-1
proxmox-mini-journalreader: 1.1-1
proxmox-widget-toolkit: 2.2-9
pve-cluster: 6.1-8
pve-container: 3.1-10
pve-docs: 6.2-4
pve-edk2-firmware: 2.20200531-1
pve-firewall: 4.1-2
pve-firmware: 3.1-1
pve-ha-manager: 3.0-9
pve-i18n: 2.1-3
pve-qemu-kvm: 5.0.0-10
pve-xtermjs: 4.3.0-1
qemu-server: 6.2-9
smartmontools: 7.1-pve2
spiceterm: 3.1-1
vncterm: 1.6-1
zfsutils-linux: 0.8.4-pve1

 

[Driftwood]

22 hours ago, fabiosun said:

AMD master

Sorry Ryzen master. Changed it.

 

So when you guys are installing youre going through the same process as before, placing the ISO within the Proxmox for install.

 

Have you tried installing, by booting into VM, hit f2 at Proxmox screen, insert USB Install Big Sur Boot Beta disk, select the BS boot disk (USB) in its 'BIOS',then booting from it and selecting the Install Mac OS Big Sur? 

Edited July 11, 2020 by Driftwood

[iGPU]

3 hours ago, Driftwood said:

Sorry Ryzen master. Changed it.

 

So when you guys are installing youre going through the same process as before, placing the ISO within the Proxmox for install.

 

Have you tried installing, by booting into VM, hit f2, insert USB Install Big Sur Boot Beta disk, then booting from it and selecting the Install Mac OS Big Sur? 

 

I used the first method. In the BigSur VM, I set ide0 = BigSur.iso (containing BigSur ß1 Installer), ide2 = opencoreBigSur.iso (containing OC EFI), and "bootdisk: ide2".

 

Once the above was booted, installation was onto an NVMe drive that was first formatted (erasing a previous M.2 drive that was used as a Catalina backup drive) before running the BigSur Installer. After BIg Sur was running, the new EFI was set up on the BigSur drive's EFI partition. Next, the BigSur VM was edited:  ide0 and ide2 entries were commented to disable and "bootdisk: ide2" was replaced with "boot: d". Now, the BigSur EFI partition is directly booted.

Edited July 11, 2020 by iGPU

[iGPU]

This post raises 2 issues: Cinebench 20 speed in Catalina vs Big Sur (trivial), and 'host' vs 'Penryn'.

 

***

 

I'm presently running Big Sur under 'Penryn' VM setting (since I cannot yet get 'host' to boot), while previously, Catalina was run under 'host' VM setting. When testing Cinebench 20, the score in Big Sur is about 500 lower than I was seeing in Catalina.

 

So to keep things equal, I used the same VM and EFI settings for Big Sur to boot into Catalina. When I run Cinebench 20 under these conditions, I again get a 500 greater score in Catalina (17700 to 17800) than in Big Sur (17200 to 17300). I ran these tests several times over several boots.

 

So while Cinebench 20 is (presently) slightly slower under Big Sur, the 'Penryn' setting does not run any slower than 'host' with Catalina.

 

***

 

The above similarity in speed in Catalina when running under either 'host' or 'Penryn', makes me wonder how significant is either setting in our VM. I've read such statements as those below, which doesn't clearly indicate one being necessarily superior to the other:

 

"For homogeneous clusters and single host setups, use the 'host' option. For mixed clusters, use the lowest available CPU version, so if one host is Penryn and the other Nehalem, use Penrym on both."

 

"The 'host' option is good, but not the most efficient because it might enable options that can be emulated but that your cpu does not support. The guest system can then be slowed down anytime it tries to use one of those features that needs emulation."

 

Supposedly, to see the differences between the host and the guest, one can type:  grep flags /proc/cpuinfo | uniq, which gives on my system:

fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc rep_good nopl nonstop_tsc cpuid extd_apicid aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq monitor ssse3 fma cx16 sse4_1 sse4_2 movbe popcnt aes xsave avx f16c rdrand lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw ibs skinit wdt tce topoext perfctr_core perfctr_nb bpext perfctr_llc mwaitx cpb cat_l3 cdp_l3 hw_pstate sme ssbd mba sev ibpb stibp vmmcall fsgsbase bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 cqm rdt_a rdseed adx smap clflushopt clwb sha_ni xsaveopt xsavec xgetbv1 xsaves cqm_llc cqm_occup_llc cqm_mbm_total cqm_mbm_local clzero irperf xsaveerptr wbnoinvd arat npt lbrv svm_lock nrip_save tsc_scale vmcb_clean flushbyasid decodeassists pausefilter pfthreshold avic v_vmsave_vmload vgif umip rdpid overflow_recov succor smca

 

But my VM for the guest has these arguments:

-cpu Penryn,kvm=on,vendor=GenuineIntel,+kvm_pv_unhalt,+kvm_pv_eoi,+hypervisor,+invtsc,+pcid,+ssse3,+sse4.2,+popcnt,+avx,+avx2,+aes,+fma,+fma4,+bmi1,+bmi2,+xsave,+xsaveopt,check

 

I don't understand how the above command lists unique items, since many are in common to both host and guest, such as: aes, avx, avx2, bmi1, bmi2, popcnt, xsave, xsaveopt (assuming that the VM properly used the argument flags for the guest).

Edited July 12, 2020 by iGPU

[iGPU]

This web site has interesting, and well-thought out, commentary on Mac related issues (and also interesting essays on art).

 

In this post, the writer discusses Apple Silicon matters as well as better describes the problem with kexts in Big Sur.

 

On at least 2 other forums, I've read how many people have been trying to install kexts into Big Sur using Recovery Mode. In turns out, the Recovery Mode method is only for 3rd-party kexts to be used by Apple Silicon Macs. For our Hackintoshes and real (Intel) Macs, kexts intended for Intel-based machines are simply to use essentially the same installation methods as with Catalina, which OpenCore is handling for us with its updates.

Edited July 12, 2020 by iGPU

[fabiosun]

OT

do you know people with a 3990x using hackintosh?

i was researching on kernel code the usual 64 cores /threads limitation we have on all osx till catalina

i cant find this core limitation in big sur kernel..

have you some info about this?

[iGPU]

Today while testing kext loading, I seemed to have found an anomaly. Kext files that only contain Info.plist in their contents are not being loaded.

 

I posted on the active OpenCore forum here, so I'll not repeat the details in this post.

[iGPU]

1 hour ago, fabiosun said:

OT

do you know people with a 3990x using hackintosh?

i was researching on kernel code the usual 64 cores /threads limitation we have on all osx till catalina

i cant find this core limitation in big sur kernel..

have you some info about this?

 

I too cannot find any info. However, I rather doubt any new Apple Silicon computers for the coming year will have more cores/threads than the just released MacPro7,1. I would think the first Apple Silicon machines will be less expensive models. So I'd be surprised if Big Sur supported more cores than any machines currently produced.

[fabiosun]

8 minutes ago, iGPU said:

 

I too cannot find any info. However, I rather doubt any new Apple Silicon computers for the coming year will have more cores/threads than the just released MacPro7,1. I would think the first Apple Silicon machines will be less expensive models. So I'd be surprised if Big Sur supported more cores than any machines currently produced.

 

I have always checked in disassembled kernel max cpu init as pikeraplha said some time ago to check from my old dual xeon 2696 V4 dual rig.

 

This is "how to.."

1.) otool -tVj /S*/L*/Kernels/kernel > kernel-disassembled.txt
2.) open kernel-disassembled.txt
3.) Search for: “_ml_init_max_cpus:”
4.) Look for: “cmp rcx, 0x3f”

 

0x3f means 63 (counting from 0 we have 64 cores/threads)

I think if Big Sur is really new and built for apple silicon cpu..maybe they have unlocked this part

 

[fabiosun]

About Enermax Liqtech TR4 II

 

I have bought one from amazon and also one from warehouse

The unused one has the opening of the box on the short side while the warehouse one on the long side. The one used has the instruction booklet with the copyright of 2018 on the last page The new one does not have this indication. Are there also different models of the second version of this AIO?

[iGPU]

40 minutes ago, fabiosun said:

About Enermax Liqtech TR4 II

 

I have bought one from amazon and also one from warehouse

The unused one has the opening of the box on the short side while the warehouse one on the long side. The one used has the instruction booklet with the copyright of 2018 on the last page The new one does not have this indication. Are there also different models of the second version of this AIO?

 

I'm ignorant of changes within version II. I would assume production changes do occur.

 

Mine was a new, shrink-wrapped box that I'd bought at a local MicroCenter shop in the first part of April this year.

[fabiosun]

@iGPU I can't find any unboxing of this II version

so I can't say..but two models I have received have different boxes

 

on serial code I see 2020-05

 

Edited July 12, 2020 by fabiosun
added pictures

[iGPU]

1 hour ago, fabiosun said:

@iGPU I can't find any unboxing of this II version

so I can't say..but two models I have received have different boxes

 

on serial code I see 2020-05

 

 

Sorry, while I normally keep all boxes, I threw away the Enermax box since I'd modified it and there was no chance of returning it.

 

The code 2020-05 probably means it was produced in May of this year, so more recent production than mine.

[iGPU]

Thunderbolt 4 was announced by Intel a few days ago. It seems this will be in parallel with USB4.

 

USB4  was to include Thunderbolt, but it's not clear from their table that it does.

[Driftwood]

ASRock TRX40 Creator official 1.70 firmware - looks like it includes the 1.68 beta test we had a few weeks before this release.

 

 https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/TRX40 Creator/#BIOS

 

Edited July 13, 2020 by Driftwood

[Driftwood]

Big Sur Beta 2 Install. Had a few problems prior to seeing the latest BIOS fw from ASRock for the TRX40 Creator, but things seem to getting there. Still under Penryn CPU, investigating Host boot amongst other things.

 

 

 

 

[meina222]

15 hours ago, fabiosun said:

OT

do you know people with a 3990x using hackintosh?

i was researching on kernel code the usual 64 cores /threads limitation we have on all osx till catalina

i cant find this core limitation in big sur kernel..

have you some info about this?

I have the 3990x/GB Designare TRX40 running a very similar setup to what's in this thread (Proxmox hosted VM + OpenCore), but I am still on Catalina 10.15.5. I used different resources to get it running (Nick Sherlock's excellent guide and self-tutoring myself on Proxmox and pass-through). I registered recently as this thread has some good info, so my 1st post is in response to your question. 

 

To your question: I still haven't tried Big Sur as I have a pretty stable and working build now, but I see beta 2 is available, and resources are becoming more available on how to get it up, so I will try it in the next few days and inform you on the max CPU/core limit.

 

I boot 64 cores in Catalina, but never tried 128. For multi-core loads, MacOS will definitely benefit from more physical vs logical cores even at the lower clock of the 3990x, but you will see very sub-linear scaling beyond that for most real-life loads. I don't have many benchmark data points beyond compiling Proxmox's pve-kernel (under Linux) and geek-benching under Linux and MacOS alike. For reference, multi-core geekbench 5 of the 3990x at stock is in the 27200-27500 range in MacOS vs 37000 in latest stable linux kernel (5.7.x) and maybe around 35000 on earlier LTS kernels. You can already see the decreasing benefit. The 3970x is a pretty sweet deal for its price.

[fabiosun]

1 hour ago, meina222 said:

To your question: I still haven't tried Big Sur as I have a pretty stable and working build now, but I see beta 2 is available, and resources are becoming more available on how to get it up, so I will try it in the next few days and inform you on the max CPU/core limit.

.

 

Thank you for this and welcome here.

You can find others usuful  informations here:

https://www.macos86.it/topic/2509-guide-trx40-osx-bare-metal-proxmox-setup62-1-updated-29-06-2020/

And see some videos here about our trx40 chip

https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCN_fzD5ZSF8W3kaVWLUd5Aw/videos?disable_polymer=1

 

Waiting for your progress in big sur installation to see if cores limit is in it also as old Osx system

maybe it could be useful also for you efi i used to install it from scratch.

you can find and download using @Gengik84 app VM assistant you can find in download area of this forum

 

[Driftwood]

On 7/10/2020 at 3:14 PM, fabiosun said:

was curious about acquantia problem with Big Sur because I have not with it.

problems for first beta 1 was related to the bootloader and vm config (kernel and cpu type).

And at @iGPU

 

We are still having problems getting away from Penryn in Big Sur and trying to use CPU Host (& Mac Pro 7,1). Penryn works fine, Host hangs on boot (and wont install) with AsRock boards.

 

So @fabiosun can you describe how you managed to get beta 2 working with host cpu. And you say the Aquantia was working? Im sure the Aquantia is not supported in Big Sur beta 2 as of yet...

 

Also please could you show me your exact 'args' section in your vm conf (without the OSK of course) 

 

If you could provide a bit of detail in your OC config.plist (.60 ) it may help. Many thanks

Edited July 13, 2020 by Driftwood