Mac Firmware Updates – Applying Firmware Upgrades Manually

If you know your way around a terminal follow this guide to get it solved. First off, make three checks; first that you are on Mac OS X High Sierra (Build 10.13 or greater), that your Multiport Adapter reports a firmware version below 2.33 (around 1.53 is old), and finally that the folder "/System/Library/CoreServices/Firmware Updates" is empty.

At a high-level, I guessed that I would find the firmware update package in an old Mac OS Combo Update file. Hunch turned out to be right, and I was able to install the firmware update. Lets trace those steps so you can do the same.

First up, kick off the download (around 1.5gb) of the macOS Sierra 10.12.6 Combo Update: https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1931

At the same time, ensure Homebrew & XCode utils are installed on your system from brew.sh

Install pbzx, for extraction of update pkg Payloads.

brew install xz && brew link xz
git clone https://github.com/NiklasRosenstein/pbzx.git
cd pbzx
clang -llzma -lxar -I /usr/local/include pbzx.c -o pbzx
#Install pbzx to path
mv pbzx /usr/local/bin/

Once the download has completed, mount & extract the update dmg.

open macosupdcombo10.12.6.dmg 
#Expand pkg contents to tmp folder.
pkgutil --expand /Volumes/macOS\ Sierra\ Update/macOSUpdCombo10.12.6.pkg /tmp/sierra/
cd /tmp/sierra 
#Extract payload contents to current directory
pbzx -n macOSUpdCombo10.12.6.pkg/Payload| cpio -i

Move the firmware update package from the extracted files to a local path, we'll use the user's home directory.

mv System/Library/CoreServices/Firmware\ Updates/USB-C\ Multiport\ Adapter/adapterupdate1.pkg ~/

Finally, execute the installer and reboot. Before you execute the installer - ensure that the Multiport adapter is plugged in, with nothing else plugged into it. Ensure that you have power connected to one USB-C port, and the Multiport adapter to the other. Apple's article recommends doing USB-C power-pass through, this did not work for me. You can try different configurations if this doesn't work.

#Kick off the install
sudo installer -pkg ~/adapterupdate1.pkg -target /
#Then reboot
sudo reboot

If all went well, System Information should report your USB-C Multiport Adapter is at firmware version 2.33.

Short answer: No, there's nothing you need to worry about eficheck.

First of: eficheck is not a blocker, at least in its current state. Also I wouldn't call it an annoyance as it's supposed to be a security feature on supported system and the prompt it generates only appears once and remembers your decision whether or not you want to send data about your EFI to Apple.

Coming back to your question, eficheck shouldn't affect your system in anyway. I'm currently running High Sierra on my MacBook5,1 patched with the High Sierra Patcher Tool and it runs fine. Executing eficheck manually from the Terminal just throws the following error:

ReadBinaryFromKernel: No matching services found. Either this system is not supported by eficheck, or you need to re-load the kext
IntegrityCheck: couldn't get EFI contents from kext

Meaning the tool cannot read the EFI anyway.

I guess the same would apply to your MacPro3,1, I'm not entirely sure though. But even assuming it does, it wouldn't block anything and I doubt it would prompt you the message because your EFI firmware likely isn't modified anyway. And even if eficheck gets triggered for some reason: you could just click the prompt away once and it never comes back again.