I installed High Sierra DP4 (17A315i) with install_1013_DP4_17A315i.sh three days ago, but like I said earlier; Apple removed the opt-in checkbox from the installer. The result was that my HFS volume was converted to APFS. Without a single warning. And that is not something that you want. Not when you use a legacy boot loader like Chameleon and RevoBoot.
I worked around this installation problem, by added a new environment variable to install_1013_DP4_17A315i.sh so this should no longer be an issue, but I also wrote another helper script (checkAPFSSettings.sh) to check and change the required settings in the macOS Install Data folder. Just to be certain that the APFS conversion won’t be done automatically.
Not a real problem for me, since I make backups on a regular basis, but that was not so nice from Apple. Without a single warning. Anyway. I removed the APFS container and reformatted the SSD. After that I ran a newly developed helper tool (i) for RevoBoot and copied the kernel and extensions from InstallESD/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg to the newly formatted SSD. The latter as a test. To see if I could boot with the kernel and extensions, without getting the ‘too many corpses’ error. The other required kexts were copied from /Extra/Extensions on another volume.
The next step was to copy the backup of ‘macOS Install Data’ to the volume and reboot, but this ended with the dreadful:
The path /System/Installation/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg appears to be missing or damaged.
I checked /var/log/install.log and found this:
OSInstaller[569]: Mutable product: Looking for automation file at /Volumes/HS/macOS Install Data/minstallconfig.xml OSInstaller[569]: Ignoring stale automation file /Volumes/HS/macOS Install Data/minstallconfig.xml (time since IA = -6834.911950) OSInstaller[569]: Looking for automation file at (null) OSInstaller[569]: Install will not be automated. OSInstaller[569]: Install will not be automated, automation is required to proceed. OSInstaller[569]: Failed to open installer document
Ah ok. That is a simple problem to solve. If you know what to do with it. And I do so I opened macOS Install Data/OSInstallAttr.plist to find this:
<key>IAEndDate</key> <date>2017-08-02T04:17:08Z</date>
Right. That is a problem. I fixed it by running:
date -v -2H "+%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ"
I used the output as replacement and that was it. The next reboot fired up the installer, because now it no longer ignores InstallInfo.plist (see below):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>Additional Installers</key> <array/> <key>Additional Wrapped Installers</key> <array/> <key>Diagnostics Image Info</key> <dict> <key>URL</key> <string>AppleDiagnostics.dmg</string> <key>chunklistURL</key> <string>AppleDiagnostics.chunklist</string> <key>chunklistid</key> <string>com.apple.chunklist.AppleDiagnostics</string> <key>id</key> <string>com.apple.dmg.AppleDiagnostics</string> <key>sha1</key> <string></string> <key>version</key> <string>10.13</string> </dict> <key>OS Installer</key> <string>OSInstall.mpkg</string> <key>Payload Image Info</key> <dict> <key>URL</key> <string>InstallESD.dmg</string> <key>id</key> <string>com.apple.dmg.InstallESD</string> <key>sha1</key> <string></string> <key>version</key> <string>10.13</string> </dict> <key>System Image Info</key> <dict> <key>URL</key> <string>BaseSystem.dmg</string> <key>chunklistURL</key> <string>BaseSystem.chunklist</string> <key>chunklistid</key> <string>com.apple.chunklist.BaseSystem</string> <key>id</key> <string>com.apple.dmg.BaseSystem</string> <key>sha1</key> <string></string> <key>version</key> <string>10.13</string> </dict> </dict> </plist>
After this it could find OSInstall.mpkg again and I am back up with High Sierra 10.13 (17A315i). Man. What a great day.
Ergo. The next time that you see this: OSInstall.mpkg appears to be missing or damaged error, you should check /var/log/install.log (which is stored on a ramdisk and thus it will be gone afterwards) and check if the IAEndDate is the problem.
Update: High Sierra DP-6 (17A344b) comes with a new setting for this in OSInstallAttr.plist:
<key>Should Fail If Stale</key> <false/>
Thanks Apple!
p.s. Hey. It might be me, but I didn’t see a mouse pointer in the installer. It wasn’t there. Probably something that we should fix.
Hi Pike,
Confused on what to do to avoid an automatic apfs conversion? What are the steps again?
Thanks
Boot with -s and run the script.
Thats easy enough. Thank you.
I am stuck at this point. there seems to be nothing about a -s command… how to I get to make these changes you suggest.
The -s boot argument is used to boot in single user mode.
What was the fix for?
Didn’t I explain that already? Search for “Ergo”.
haha now i see it..It seems the “code box” didn’t appear previously on me so i asked 😀
in beta 6 what I should do?
Sorry. I don’t understand what you are trying to ask here. Did you install DP-6 or are you stuck during the installation process of DP-6?
I am doing a clean install of DP-6 the first part of the copying files goes very well, but the second part its stop on the “OSInstall.mpkg appears to be missing or damaged” message i check the date on the terminal and its correct.
I do not have this problem with beta 5 everything goes alright.
Maybe this will help you to understand my problem.I tried again and I noticed this message came before the error message I mentioned before “an error occurred while verifying firmware”.
Oh ok. You should check the FirmwareFeatures (they changed, again) or user the latest Clover version – someone told me that it works with DP-6.
I can confirm FF= 0xE80FE136 auto injected by Clover r4179 works for direct install of DB6 by running “Install macOS High Sierra Beta.app” on SMBIOS MacPro6,1
Thanks very much for your hard work! 🙂
Velbekomme 😉
Hi. I’m getting the error on the final release version downloaded yesterday Sept 26 2017. Any ideas what I can do? I’m trying to install on a MacBook air 2011
Is the error related to APFS? You should check: /var/log/install.log
p.s. You may need to update your EFI ROM firmware first.
Hi! I’m installing high sierra 10.13 on my PC and I got “OSInstall.mpkg appears to be missing or damaged” error message! I’m trying to install macOS on a 500gb HDD, I have no idea where and how to find that log. What should I do to fix this problem? Enter the “-s” bootflag and then? Should I open the terminal and write ” date -v -2H “+%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ” ” ? The problem is that when I get that error message I’m unable to do anything else than restart.
That depends on the problem. You first need to open a terminal window from the main menu in the installer, and look into: /var/log for the log file.
how to edit the Attr.plist ? this file is saved as root and it says read only file system.
This tip saved me from a restore after I allowed OS X to install the 10.13.2 update unattended over the weekend.
I never realized how difficult vi is to work with on OS X although!
Thanks a lot, I had the date misconfigured in the BIOS and it was higher than the current one, with your fix it worked perfectly
You just saved my day, thanks so much!