A collection of useful MacOS commands and tools for hardware debugging and sysadmin operations.
'c. zach@iMac
,xNMM. ---------
.OMMMMo OS: macOS 12.6.1 21G217 x86_64
OMMM0, Host: Hackintosh (SMBIOS: MacPro7,1)
.;loddo:' loolloddol;. Kernel: 21.6.0
cKMMMMMMMMMMNWMMMMMMMMMM0: Uptime: 1 hour, 23 mins
.KMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMWd. Packages: 288 (brew)
XMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMX. Shell: zsh 5.8.1
;MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM: Resolution: 5120x1440
:MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM: DE: Aqua
.MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMX. WM: Rectangle
kMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMWd. Terminal: tmux
.XMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMk CPU: Intel i9-10900K (20) @ 3.70GHz
.XMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMK. GPU: AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT
kMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMd Memory: 17884MiB / 32768MiB
;KMMMMMMMWXXWMMMMMMMk.
.cooc,. .,coo:.Building and maintaining a "Hackintosh" is a choice that many make for the cost benefit.
You are given the freedom to choose your own supported components, and you just might end
up with a machine that's more capable at a fraction of the cost.
However, this can come with the trade-off of time. There is an initial time-to-setup, and there is ongoing
maintainence time if you choose to upgrade MacOS.
The way that I understand the need for this ongoing maintenance during OS upgrades is that
a custom bootloader (such as OpenCore) needs
to account for various changes MacOS has made with the way that it interacts with hardware.
Specifically, this is interpreted from the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) Specification.
Much of your time creating a "perfect Hackintosh" will consist of making various patches for your hardware,
including patches to ACPI tables known as SSDTs and patching the Mac kernel through kernel extensions, referred to as kexts.
Most of these patches require obtaining either the device-id or the acpi-path of the device you're targeting.
Documentation you will find online usually refers you to use the IO Registry Explorer app that comes with Mac.
However, this becomes a very time-consuming process, and simply does not provide the information or data
(in the format that you need) efficiently enough, if at all.
Curating a collection of tools, commands and processes, we can greatly speed up our time to:
- Query relevant information from the devices that we need
- Debug kernel extensions via the system log
- Download the latest release of
Xcodeand the matching version ofAdditional Tools for Xcodefrom https://developer.apple.com/download/all/
Note: You will need an Apple Developer account for this
This will provide you with various tools, and update already-existing tools that are essential to hardware debugging on MacOS. - Download the latest release of
gfxutilfrom: https://github.com/acidanthera/gfxutil/releases
This is a CLI tool used for listing and filtering PCI and ACPI device paths
Logs since last boot
log show --predicate 'process="kernel"' --style syslog --source --last boot --color always --info --debugLogs since last boot, case-insensitive search for "Radeon"
log show --predicate 'process == "kernel" && eventMessage CONTAINS[c] "Radeon"' --style syslog --source --last boot --info --debugComplete graphics/display info
/System/Library/Extensions/AppleGraphicsControl.kext/Contents/MacOS/AGDCDiagnose -aFind Display Stream Compression enabled/status
/System/Library/Extensions/AppleGraphicsControl.kext/Contents/MacOS/AGDCDiagnose -a | grep -E '(DSC Enable|DSC Status)' | cut -d : -f 4,5Get device-id of GPU
GFX_PCI_NAME=$(gfxutil -f display | grep -v IGPU | awk '{ print $3 }' | rev | cut -d / -f 1 | rev) ioreg -l | grep "${GFX_PCI_NAME:-GFX0@0}" -n4 | grep "device-id" | cut -d = -f 2 | xargs | sed 's/^<//;s/>$//'Show currently loaded device property data
ioreg -lw0 -p IODeviceTree -n efi -r -x | grep device-properties | sed 's/.*<//;s/>.*//' > /tmp/device-properties.hex &&
gfxutil /tmp/device-properties.hex /tmp/device-properties.plist && bat /tmp/device-properties.plistGet PCI path to only discrete/dedicated GPUs
gfxutil -f display | grep -v IGPU | cut -d = -f 2 | xargsVerify if PCI bridge is working for GPU, will only output if GFX0@0 has acpi-path property
GFX_PCI_NAME=$(gfxutil -f display | grep -v IGPU | awk '{ print $3 }' | rev | cut -d / -f 1 | rev) ioreg -lrn "${GFX_PCI_NAME:-GFX0@0}" -k acpi-path -d 1Get formatted ACPI path for device
ioreg -lrn ${PCI_NAME:-MCHC@0} -k acpi-path -d 1 | grep acpi-path | cut -d : -f 2 | sed 's#^/##;s#\"$##;s#/#.#g#;s#@.*.#\.#g#' | sed 's#@[0-9a-f]*\|@[0-9]*##g#'Get current OpenCore version
nvram 4D1FDA02-38C7-4A6A-9CC6-4BCCA8B30102:opencore-version | awk '{ print $2 }'Show loaded kernel extensions
kextstatGet Device UUID
ioreg -rd1 -c IOPlatformExpertDevice | grep IOPlatformUUID | cut -d = -f 2 | xargsEnable debug mode for all Lilu-based kexts
-liludbgallThere are a few common ways of installing software/applications on Mac. One of which is a PKG installation.
The difference between the PKG installation and the more common DMG method is that the DMG method
usually packages everything it needs into a single folder and will be placed into your Applications folder.
The PKG method however contains scripts and targets for files/directories on your system that will be created.
When a PKG does not contain its corresponding uninstall script, this speaks trouble. All of those files and
directories can now be considered "dangling" if left unused, floating around on your system consuming space.
Fortunately, you can use the output of the command below to determine any files/directories to remove.
Show files/directories created by PKG installer
pkgutil --pkgs | grep "${PKG:-microsoft.teams}" | xargs -n1 pkgutil --files