best way to do clean install

[smashprod]

It looks like the security info in my system software is corrupted, and I've been told the only way to fix it is to do a clean install. I've got a 5,1 Mac Pro with a Metal-capable Radeon RX 580 graphics card that's been flashed for Mac (so I can use my boot screens).

What is the least painful way to do this? It's my main work computer with DP, Pro Tools, Sibelius, etc. on it, so I'm totally dependent on it.

P.S. the way I found out about the problem with my security info was that Disk Warrior was giving me an error message, and Alsoft told me to go into Recovery Mode and disable the security part of my system (csrutil disable), and that fixed it.

[mikehalloran]

Disk Warrior has been useless for years. It doesn’t fix anything and finds non-problems. It excels at fixing purposely corrupted directories during magazine reviews and that’s it. None of this stops fanboys on MacRumors from claiming that it fixes bad drives — a claim that DiskWarrior never makes because it can’t.

It’s a solution looking for problems that haven’t existed since OS 10.3.


Back to your question. If you have older apps that still function but the installers no longer do, a Clean Install is not possible. An example: Office 2008 still works over Mojave (if you don’t mind the massive memory leak) but the installer last worked over Yosemite. The only workaround is Migration Assistant for all your applications.

Reinstall Apple apps from the App Store. Easy.

Otherwise, reinstall all your applications using the latest installers. Make certain that you add these to your Security settings within 30 minutes after installation. You will be doing this a lot:
https://motu.com/techsupport/technotes ... igh-sierra

Move all your work files (documents, music, movies etc.) using a) Migration Assistant (easy) or

b) zip all your folders, copy them over to the new drive and expand. This eliminates permission and privilege issues, really important with DP, Office and many other file types. Do not just drag and drop from one System drive to another. Again, Migration Assistant just does this.

[smashprod]

Sounds like a nightmare. Disk Warrior is finding a problem with the security info, but I'm not finding any other apps having difficulty. Maybe "fixing" it isn't so important. What does "csrutil" turn off anyway??

[mikehalloran]

Disk Warrior is finding a problem with the security info,

Nope. It found something in the Root which is sandbagged beginning El Capitan to prevent those files from creating security problems. That you have to disable SIP (csrutil) to get at it tells me that, whatever it is, poses no security risk.

System Integrity Protection (SIP) in macOS protects the entire system by preventing the execution of unauthorized code. The system automatically authorizes apps that the user downloads from the App Store. The system also authorizes apps that a developer notarizes and distributes directly to users.

It's like all those supposedly corrupt preference files that DW continually finds and warns you about. Those never cause harm to your system and, if an app can't read one, it creates another. DW finds non-problems and cannot repair anything nor can it recover files except by directory repair which doesn't work on SSDs. BTW, it does not support APFS. There are disk recovery apps that do work on SSDs but they are expensive, slow, no guaranties that the data will be useful…

Have a good Time Machine Backup. Want to rebuild your directory? Do a Safe Boot and let the MacOS handle it. Learn about APFS Snapshots.

[smashprod]

Generally when I want to repair my APFS startup directory I boot into single user mode and run /sbin/fsck-fy. I’ve only been using DW on HFS disks, of which I still have many. I figured it was still the best tool for that job.

Thanks for the info on SIP. It certainly doesn’t sound like anything’s wrong with my system.

[mikehalloran]

Generally when I want to repair my APFS startup directory I boot into single user mode and run /sbin/fsck-fy. I’ve only been using DW on HFS disks, of which I still have many. I figured it was still the best tool for that job.

Thanks for the info on SIP. It certainly doesn’t sound like anything’s wrong with my system.

Much better is this— good idea to run after any Security Update or install that makes the Mac sluggish.

Reset Launch Services

1. Open Terminal and run these commands:
2. sudo /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -seed -lint -r -f -v -dump -domain local -domain system -domain user -domain network
3. killall Dock
4. sudo mdutil -E /
5. Restart your Mac

[smashprod]

I have used Clean My Mac or Onyx to reset the launch service database, but I thought that was only useful if documents start getting associated with the wrong applications?