RESOLVED: El Capitan repeatedly refuses to install - secret!

[mhschmieder]

I have spent the last hour trying to install El Capital, to no avail, as even after running the sudo command in Terminal a second time, I get far into the installation process until it balks again with the error "can't be verified" etc. (I don't remember the full message; something about corrupted installer file).

One of the "how to" pages that I had bookmarked, said to run the sudo command again if that happens, and if still no success, to re-download the installer from the App Store.

So, for over a half hour now, I have had the spinning progress indicator in the App Store and nothing in Activity Monitor for the "storeagent" process, and nothing in "Purchased" other than saying it was Downloaded (that is, referring to the previous download many months ago).

I am pretty sure this is an App Store bug, and for reasons unknown, Apple doesn't let you download their free OS a second time, but they simple hang if you try, with no user feedback of what is happening (i.e. nothing).

Any advice? Any way to tell if and how that installer file is actually corrupted? I did partition the SSD (in my optical bay) as GUID, and it identifies as bootable in Disk Utility.

[mhschmieder]

I tried reformatting and repartitioning the SSD yet again, followed by the sudo command on the Terminal. Same results, being told several minutes into the installer that it can't verify and it may have been corrupted etc. during download.

As the App Store still hangs if I try to download something it considers me to have already "purchased" and downloaded, I resorted to the Hackintosh website. We'll see how that goes.

It's crazy that Apple doesn't provide direct links anymore for something so prone to fail or corrupt during download due to size and other issues.

[mhschmieder]

Well, that's three hours I'll never get back, with nothing to show for it.

I get the same error message at the same point of installation, after unzipping the TAR GZIP file from Hackintosh, which is the same size as the one from the App Store but dated SEP 2015 vs. OCT 2015.

What to make of this? Clearly it's a red herring, indicating bad Apple software that doesn't correctly diagnose the actual situation.

The first guess would be insufficient disc space, but I have 80 GB free on my System SSD and the requirement is only for 8 GB.

I've run out of ideas. Do I need to clone my main hard drive instead, and use a new drive for El Capitan vs. target my current SSD system drive (with Yosemite) for the El Capitan installation? I could swear that the upgrade instructions say this is OK, but maybe that's "old news".

It's hard to find El Capitan advice; almost all web searches bring up ancient news for earlier releases or for Yosemite, and the steps I took were for Yosemite as I couldn't find equivalent instructions for El Capitan. Maybe there's a missing or different step now?

[mhschmieder]

Instead of OPTION-booting, I'm going to follow Apple's instructions for "upgrades" (as distinct from initial installations of a new computer or drive), and directly click the .app file for the Installer (the one from Hackintosh, for now, but maybe I should use the one from the App Store if they watermark them for each user/computer/drive).

Well, the "Verifying "Install OS X..." progress bar is all-the-way blue (to the right) but is stuck there and nothing further is happening. I'll try the original copy from the App Store now.

One more note: after my last truncated upgrade attempt from OPTION-boot, and rebooting regularly afterwards, internet behaviour is flakey and slow (lots of lag time, and lack of reactiveness to mouse).

Oh, while I was typing this, an error dialog finally came up, saying the installer file can't be opened because the identity of the developer can't be confirmed. So I'll try the original App Store downloaded copy now. Writing this in advance as details might be forgotten if I hit more snags.

[mhschmieder]

No luck. It was faster to do it this way than to OPTION-boot, but I got the same results -- though no pre-verification issues or authorship problems as with the Hackintosh copy.

I've gone back to the App Store and am trying once again to re-download it. Even though it's only 6 GB and we have the fastest available internet speed here, I guess I'll 4just have to risk running it overnight and assuming the lack of user feedback doesn't mean it isn't doing anything.

I hate doing that, because I couldn't stay awake past 2am last night for my backups to finish, and this morning there was an error message that the computer had rebooted itself due to a catastrophic error.

So I'm getting nervous about whether the SSD is about to go. Yet Disk Utility thinks it's fine. Not sure if that could cause a red herring during an El Capitan upgrade. Still thinking the error is something different than what is being reported.

[mhschmieder]

If anyone thinks this is unresolvable, let me know. That is, if you know that Apple disallows a second download of an OS X installer file.

Our I.T. department at work may have a "for real" installer disc from Apple, which I could borrow. Surely that would work, if the error is to be believed that the installer file has issues vs. the disc it is trying to install to?

Maybe I should upgrade my work machine from Yosemite to El Capitan first, and get I.T.'s help then clone the procedure for a re-do at home. But I have to first make sure that Oxygen XML Editor and Eclipse IDE are compatible with El Capitan (they weren't initially).

[mhschmieder]

It has also occurred to me that the new 10.11.6 update for El Capitan may have replaced the from-scratch installer (I know that Combo Updaters aren't the same thing, so that's not what I mean) for security reasons, and thus earlier installers for 10.11.0 may get rejected, with unhelpful messages.

My understanding has always been that you can only upgrade major versions to ".0" and then do point release updates from there.

[mikehalloran]

I ran into this recently on one machine but can't recall how I fixed it. Dang.

. My understanding has always been that you can only upgrade major versions to ".0" and then do point release updates from there

Only when the current release is .0.

The installer downloads the current version but, when there's an update, the App Store lags a few days. I don't know if the App Store download is 10.11.5 or 10.11.6. I can check in a few hours.

If you have a Dropbox acct or ftp server that can handle a 6G transfer, I can shoot you the installer. If you get it this way or via sneakernet, make sure the installer is zipped or you are unlikely to be able to open it on your Mac.

[stubbsonic]

I had that same issue with Yosemite, and it was like a ridiculous download roulette. I had to download it 4 times, and the 4th one worked. Not sure if it really was a download error, but whatever. It finally worked.

[mhschmieder]

I'm about to head to work now, and it's still spinning after "downloading" all night.

Also, I seem to remember this same scenario happening last year when I upgraded to Yosemite (late May 2015 as I recall), so maybe I can dig bag and find the forum postings for that upgrade.

Michael, thanks for the offer, and I do have a DropBox account, but probably at this point it makes sense to first check with my I.T. department at work -- especially as they may have encountered this issue on someone's machine there (probably 85% of our employees, at least, prefer Mac to Win).

[mikehalloran]

Sure. Today's download is dated 5/17/2016 — is likely 10.11.5. The compressed size is 6.2G if you want to upload it from a station at work.

Again, if you pull it from a work computer, make certain to compress it first.

[mhschmieder]

Mike, our I.T. department says it's a known red herring that Apple fails to document or help you prevent happening.

I'm about to install on my work computer from a Firewire drive they handed me. They said it's OK to bring it home overnight if I'm not confident of the installer copy that is on my machine.

Anyway, here's the secret formula that Apple fails to document: you have to set your clock back to 2015, or it sees the installer file as corrupted!

I'll report back after I have (hopefully) successfully upgraded my work machine, which has the same Late 2010 macPro specs as my home machine (except with factory memory and hard drive vs. hardware upgrades).

[mhschmieder]

I can already tell this is going to be a saga.

I can't even use the AppStore on my work computer because it has some default Yahoo email address in the Apple ID field, all greyed out, and won't release mouse or keyboard focus to that field, so it does no good to enter the password.

It took many tries to unlock the date/time, uncheck automatic time, and change the year to 2015. On the fourth try, it jumped to 31 December 2015 after all I did was change the last digit of the current date.

I then told the computer to shut down so I could OPTION-boot to the installer. The MacPro light is still on afterwards!

OK, just documenting each step as I go along, because it might help others.

[mhschmieder]

OK, I got past the gate. This is MUCH slower than using an SSD, but at least it appears to be working. It gives me a time estimate of 24 minutes to complete. Hopefully the same process will work at home.

I'll try to sort out the AppStore nonsense once it is done, as there are other required updates that I was hoping to do first.

[mhschmieder]

Installation completed, but initial startup isn't going so smoothly, as it is blocking me due to Apple ID issues.

Apple doesn't seem to realize that developers may use Macs both at work and at home, and that they might prefer (especially if they lose or change their job) to decouple the two via separate accounts. So you can only have one account, which is a problem.

Anyway, I do keep a record of account info, and due to having an unusual email address sometimes have to use my work address for certain accounts.

Not so with Apple, however, where I have been using my personal email for years. But you see, on ADC (Apple Developer Connection) I also use my personal email, in case of layoffs. Yet they have my work email for SOMETHING.

Previously, you had to use a typical forum-style name for the Apple ID vs. an email address or an actual name (a frustration I have with this forum too, as I signed on at a time when it rejected "real world" names -- I strongly dislike anonymity on the web and believe in standing behind what I say).

Now it won't let you continue with computer startup unless you change your Apple ID to an email address. But it says both are "already in use", so I'm in a Catch-22 quandry as I don't have any other email addresses to make use of (I tossed my Yahoo account for reasons not worth going into here).