OSInstall.mpkg appears to be missing or damaged

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.