Thanks for thorough reply with helpful suggestions. I plan to tackle this task soon.
Re: usb. Agreed, except vBox still does not have boot from stick. I only have used DVD5 media. The hard part will be getting the VM settings correct.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Convert the High Sierra installer app to an ISO - UPDATE: SUCCESS!!!
- Thread starter br0adband
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Re: usb. Agreed, except vBox still does not have boot from stick. I only have used DVD5 media. The hard part will be getting the VM settings correct.
That worked very well, THANK YOU. One little hitch that I had to work out. The last command to convert."hdiutil: convert failed - Resource temporarily unavailable". Google indicated maybe I need to umount disk2. That didn't work for me, a restart fixed it. Now I have an .iso waiting for me to find time to make a VM (with fingers crossed!).
You can detach it. You don't need to restart. So I added 1 more line to the instructions to detach it and some others to burn the dvd.
So first make to bootable iso with the following commands (mostly the same as br0adband's but with a detach command added):
hdiutil create -o /tmp/HighSierra.cdr -size 5130m -layout SPUD -fs HFS+J
hdiutil attach /tmp/HighSierra.cdr.dmg -noverify -mountpoint /Volumes/install_build
sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/install_build
mv /tmp/HighSierra.cdr.dmg ~/Desktop/InstallSystem.dmg
hdiutil detach /Volumes/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra
hdiutil convert ~/Desktop/InstallSystem.dmg -format UDTO -o ~/Desktop/HighSierra.iso
and then you can rename HighSierra.iso.cdr to HighSierra.iso.
You can then use this to burn it to a dual layer dvd:
sudo hdiutil burn /Users/YOURNAME/Desktop/HighSierra.iso
where you replace "YOURNAME" with the username for the account you are logged into at the time.
and then boot to startup manager with option key to select the dvd and install High Sierra from it.
I don't think it will fit on a single layer dvd though.
I have same problem as DAV777 in #22. After installing onto HDD it rebooted and looped back to CD boot (iso boot). I removed CD and it boots to UEFI prompt. Changed the boot order to HDD first and I get Boot failed and then UEFI shell.
In Disk Utility I partitioned but maybe there was a boot record option I overlooked, I'll run through it all again and look more carefully at DU.
One thing I am uncertain about is a number of sites referring to install of recent macOS on vbox is one cpusetid & 5 setextradata commands. Should those be used? I figured they are for tuning the VM, perhaps they are wrong because I don't think prior macOS vbox installs used UEFI, but I could be wrong about that.
Adding to this post: This is sounding sort of like br0adband's post about apfs & hfs confusion. In DU, I choose MacOS Extended Journal & GUID partition. When done and choosing info is shows partition as not bootable. I presumed it was made bootable during install, but that doesn't seem likely. I can post a screen shot of DU info if it would help figure this out.
In Disk Utility I partitioned but maybe there was a boot record option I overlooked, I'll run through it all again and look more carefully at DU.
One thing I am uncertain about is a number of sites referring to install of recent macOS on vbox is one cpusetid & 5 setextradata commands. Should those be used? I figured they are for tuning the VM, perhaps they are wrong because I don't think prior macOS vbox installs used UEFI, but I could be wrong about that.
Adding to this post: This is sounding sort of like br0adband's post about apfs & hfs confusion. In DU, I choose MacOS Extended Journal & GUID partition. When done and choosing info is shows partition as not bootable. I presumed it was made bootable during install, but that doesn't seem likely. I can post a screen shot of DU info if it would help figure this out.
Last edited:
Question: I downloaded my installer.app using my wife's Macbook that was previously updated to High Sierra & APFS. I presume that when one requests a download of the app everyone gets the same thing. But is it possible that I got the app from a machine already running HS with APFS that the installer.app I am working with is different then one that is downloaded on a machine running HFS? I suspect I'm grasping at straws here but I'm not really that savvy regarding the inner workings of the macOS.
I see that I can get to the terminal from DU. Since the boot record never seems to be written I am wondering if it is possible to manually create one, similar to the old DOS cmd fdisk -mbr?
I see that I can get to the terminal from DU. Since the boot record never seems to be written I am wondering if it is possible to manually create one, similar to the old DOS cmd fdisk -mbr?
Can't speak for VirtualBox issues, I don't use it myself, just VMware. Since Apple decided to push out the "supplemental update" earlier today I figured I'd just grab the entirely new installer .app and recreate the ISO and see what happens, it's currently downloading and I'll report back on my progress using the steps I outlined in post #13 but I don't expect any issues.
915MB "supplemental update" is a pretty huge thing so, instead of potentially mucking up the VM I've been experimenting with I'll just create another one entirely and go from there.
As for the fdisk -mbr thing, macOS has a command known as bless which is what does what's currently done with a command in Windows called fixboot (there's also a fixmbr command which is identical to the fdisk -mbr of old). fixboot looks at the bootloader and tells it where the current actual Windows installation is then inserts the proper target destination for it so it can boot. bless is used in macOS to designate the startup disk, basically, but I haven't had much success getting it to work in this situation with High Sierra.
There was a command called systemsetup years ago that could do something similar but that command no longer exists in macOS so, after I got frustrated with all the failed attempts I just went back, scrapped everything I had laying around, started over again with a fresh Sierra 10.12.6 VM, grabbed the High Sierra installer .app, did the steps in post #13, got a new ISO (5.2GB) and then did it all again and it worked, more or less.
Now I'll be doing that once again with this updated ISO I'm about to create when the download is done and see what happens.
915MB "supplemental update" is a pretty huge thing so, instead of potentially mucking up the VM I've been experimenting with I'll just create another one entirely and go from there.
As for the fdisk -mbr thing, macOS has a command known as bless which is what does what's currently done with a command in Windows called fixboot (there's also a fixmbr command which is identical to the fdisk -mbr of old). fixboot looks at the bootloader and tells it where the current actual Windows installation is then inserts the proper target destination for it so it can boot. bless is used in macOS to designate the startup disk, basically, but I haven't had much success getting it to work in this situation with High Sierra.
There was a command called systemsetup years ago that could do something similar but that command no longer exists in macOS so, after I got frustrated with all the failed attempts I just went back, scrapped everything I had laying around, started over again with a fresh Sierra 10.12.6 VM, grabbed the High Sierra installer .app, did the steps in post #13, got a new ISO (5.2GB) and then did it all again and it worked, more or less.
Now I'll be doing that once again with this updated ISO I'm about to create when the download is done and see what happens.
You mentioned bless earlier but it went right over my head, I didn't realize it was a command rather than a concept. Thank you for reminding me.
Interesting you are starting a new fetch of HS. I just finished doing that using a Sierra VM, going to create another .iso - maybe it is different, maybe not....
When I'm in DU, I see that my HDD is shown as not bootable. It also shows the mount point of HDD as /Volumes/"name of HDD" rather than /. Maybe it is correct, I just don't know. Or maybe that is why it fails. Nothing in /.
Anyway, I cloned my working Sierra VM and am going to see if it will update. Since it is a VM, I have my doubts.
I am using vBox 5.1.26 and ran across a comment that Oracle has a test build of 5.1.29 that may work with the way Apple implements EFI boot. That is a bit further out on my radar, I don't have a spare x64 machine laying around so I hate to make radical changes to a system that works fairly well. This whole thing is pushing me closer to springing for a real iMac.
I appreciate your comments.
So I grabbed the latest High Sierra installer .app with the supplemental aspects already integrated and had no issues converting that to an ISO and creating a new VM from it, everything worked fine straight through start to finish. I might toy around with VirtualBox at some point in the future but I've always had success with VMware so I've never had any reason to use anything else.
I played around a little with this last night. I don't think we'll ever have a single layer DVD, the .pkg files themselves are around 4.7GB. Add in BaseSystem, and you're at the 5.2GB mark mentioned by br0adband. When I get a chance, I'm going to see if I can create a dual layer. I don't know if I have any anymore, but I'll check!
Not sure what this focus on dual layer is all about: if you have a file or files that totals more than what fits on a DVD5 aka 4.7GB single layer DVD you don't have any choice but to burn the content to a DVD9 aka 8.5GB dual layer DVD if your intention is to store or use optical media.
That doesn't mean the ISO has to be 8.5GB in size, however - all that matters is the total size of all the content you want to burn is more than 4.7GB so it'll require a dual layer DVD to burn it to optical media.
The only reason I do this whenever a new macOS version is released is because I do a lot of testing work in VMware and since VMware doesn't really boot from a USB stick (there was a method once but they altered the base code of the virtual machine and it just doesn't work anymore, this was way back with version 7 or 8) then that means using an ISO is the only solution. There was one point around version 9 where it would actually read a .dmg and boot from it (for one single specific point-version of VMware) but as soon as they pushed out the very next update that ability was removed or broken for some reason. I left messages with VMware multiple times about it and they just never considered it a priority so it was never resolved.
Anyway, so far this is a working solution for me as laid out in post #13 of this thread, I'm guessing/hoping it works for others as well. As for issues when it's actually burned to optical media, I don't even own any blank media at this point in time (I have a nice LG external burner that's even got M-Disc support as well) and with the cost of dual layer blank DVD media being so high even to this day I doubt I'll be buying any anytime soon.
That doesn't mean the ISO has to be 8.5GB in size, however - all that matters is the total size of all the content you want to burn is more than 4.7GB so it'll require a dual layer DVD to burn it to optical media.
The only reason I do this whenever a new macOS version is released is because I do a lot of testing work in VMware and since VMware doesn't really boot from a USB stick (there was a method once but they altered the base code of the virtual machine and it just doesn't work anymore, this was way back with version 7 or 8) then that means using an ISO is the only solution. There was one point around version 9 where it would actually read a .dmg and boot from it (for one single specific point-version of VMware) but as soon as they pushed out the very next update that ability was removed or broken for some reason. I left messages with VMware multiple times about it and they just never considered it a priority so it was never resolved.
Anyway, so far this is a working solution for me as laid out in post #13 of this thread, I'm guessing/hoping it works for others as well. As for issues when it's actually burned to optical media, I don't even own any blank media at this point in time (I have a nice LG external burner that's even got M-Disc support as well) and with the cost of dual layer blank DVD media being so high even to this day I doubt I'll be buying any anytime soon.
I'm certainly not blessed. But according to your posts #13 & #15 you were not successful with that either, so I guess I will put that on the back burner. Seems like I'm mostly bashing my head against a brick wall but sure learning a lot of stuff about internals of macos.
You mention latest HS installer .app. I was downloading a bit after the time you posted that. My converted .iso from that time is the same size (5379194880) for both of my downloads (I did not do a bit/bit compare). So I don't know if I received the one with the 'supplemental aspects' or not.
Maybe it's just because vBox isn't playing nice w/ MAC. If you have anything to add I'm all for trying it but looks like it is a dead end here.
Thanks for the tips you've given.
H.S. now working on vBox, even w/o a blessing 
For anyone still struggling:
Performed initial run booted from .iso, partitioned disk & when it boots at the end of the run, it starts all over again with same routine.
Eject .iso & restart VM.
You get the EFI shell prompt, let it time out & type exit
That takes you to vBox boot manager.
Select Boot Maintenance Manager -> Boot from File.
Here, I failed to take good notes. I had 2 choices (both choices showed the UUID of a disk). After selecting, one choice was a blank screen, the other choice was contents of /Volumes and I chose 'macOS install data'.
I drilled down through ' locked files' and choose boot.efi
Then reboot.
The install then proceeded, took about 20 minutes to get H.S. up and running.
One hiccup froze VM at world map & 'Welcome, register & setup'.. I am guessing this was due to my bluetooth keyboard/mouse running off of a usb dongle. I plugged in a usb keybd and reset the VM and off it went. When it asked to ID the keyboard, I switched back to the BT keyboard.
One thing I don't understand is the screen to sign in w/ apple ID failed, something about this computer cannot be registered, or something to that effect. Perhaps due to one of the entries made in vBox for 'extradata'?
Thanks to all who's comments helped push me along the path.
For anyone still struggling:
Performed initial run booted from .iso, partitioned disk & when it boots at the end of the run, it starts all over again with same routine.
Eject .iso & restart VM.
You get the EFI shell prompt, let it time out & type exit
That takes you to vBox boot manager.
Select Boot Maintenance Manager -> Boot from File.
Here, I failed to take good notes. I had 2 choices (both choices showed the UUID of a disk). After selecting, one choice was a blank screen, the other choice was contents of /Volumes and I chose 'macOS install data'.
I drilled down through ' locked files' and choose boot.efi
Then reboot.
The install then proceeded, took about 20 minutes to get H.S. up and running.
One hiccup froze VM at world map & 'Welcome, register & setup'.. I am guessing this was due to my bluetooth keyboard/mouse running off of a usb dongle. I plugged in a usb keybd and reset the VM and off it went. When it asked to ID the keyboard, I switched back to the BT keyboard.
One thing I don't understand is the screen to sign in w/ apple ID failed, something about this computer cannot be registered, or something to that effect. Perhaps due to one of the entries made in vBox for 'extradata'?
Thanks to all who's comments helped push me along the path.
The converted ISO will always be exactly the same size because of the command used to create it:
That makes it the given size (5,379,194,880 bytes) by default, but it might not actually contain that much data because of free space, etc.
As for the inability to be registered, I have no idea, never seen that error before but I never ever put in my Apple ID during the installation so, it's entirely possible it could do that with one of my attempts but that's just one potential aspect I ignore by not doing it to begin with. I rarely ever actually keep myself signed into the Apple account anyway, I sign in when needed and then sign out, just like I never stay logged into Google stuff except on my smartphone, never on my laptop.
Code:
hdiutil create -o /tmp/HighSierra.cdr -size 5130m -layout SPUD -fs HFS+JThat makes it the given size (5,379,194,880 bytes) by default, but it might not actually contain that much data because of free space, etc.
As for the inability to be registered, I have no idea, never seen that error before but I never ever put in my Apple ID during the installation so, it's entirely possible it could do that with one of my attempts but that's just one potential aspect I ignore by not doing it to begin with. I rarely ever actually keep myself signed into the Apple account anyway, I sign in when needed and then sign out, just like I never stay logged into Google stuff except on my smartphone, never on my laptop.
H.S. now working on vBox, even w/o a blessing
For anyone still struggling:
Performed initial run booted from .iso, partitioned disk & when it boots at the end of the run, it starts all over again with same routine.
Eject .iso & restart VM.
You get the EFI shell prompt, let it time out & type exit
That takes you to vBox boot manager.
Select Boot Maintenance Manager -> Boot from File.
Here, I failed to take good notes. I had 2 choices (both choices showed the UUID of a disk). After selecting, one choice was a blank screen, the other choice was contents of /Volumes and I chose 'macOS install data'.
I drilled down through ' locked files' and choose boot.efi
Then reboot.
The install then proceeded, took about 20 minutes to get H.S. up and running.
One hiccup froze VM at world map & 'Welcome, register & setup'.. I am guessing this was due to my bluetooth keyboard/mouse running off of a usb dongle. I plugged in a usb keybd and reset the VM and off it went. When it asked to ID the keyboard, I switched back to the BT keyboard.
One thing I don't understand is the screen to sign in w/ apple ID failed, something about this computer cannot be registered, or something to that effect. Perhaps due to one of the entries made in vBox for 'extradata'?
Thanks to all who's comments helped push me along the path.
Will give this a try. Had a similar issue with Ubuntu installed with UEFI. Had to change a file to boot the UEFI image.
Thanks for the instructions.
I managed to get High Sierra running in VirtualBox 5.1.28. However it will not update to recently released supplemental update. It will download fine in App Store, Safari or Terminal but after restart it simply boots back into High Sierra without updating.
I tried the boot.efi trick but it failed with the message "boot.efi not found" and crashed.
According to VirtualBox forum it seems Apple made some changes to update process and VirtualBox hasn't been updated to work with the new process.
It seems I could work around the problem by creating new ISO every time Apple releases new update but that is lot of work and I'm hoping someone has a better idea?
I managed to get High Sierra running in VirtualBox 5.1.28. However it will not update to recently released supplemental update. It will download fine in App Store, Safari or Terminal but after restart it simply boots back into High Sierra without updating.
I tried the boot.efi trick but it failed with the message "boot.efi not found" and crashed.
According to VirtualBox forum it seems Apple made some changes to update process and VirtualBox hasn't been updated to work with the new process.
It seems I could work around the problem by creating new ISO every time Apple releases new update but that is lot of work and I'm hoping someone has a better idea?
I don't understand how the file system format of the ISO/DVD matters as to whether it will "boot on computers formatted as HFS+, no APFS." Unless Apple stupidly loads a different version of Core Storage based upon the file system that the OS resides on. There is noting hardware-specific in a Mac that makes it able to boot off of an APFS volume (contrary to what you've intimated/said in other posts) with the exception that Apple no longer supports 32-bit CPUs and the new version of Core Storage is 64-bit only.
It may be related to the bootloader if you can't make a bootable ISO that is APFS formatted. Perhaps the bootloader used to make a bootable ISO doesn't support APFS.
This is incorrect. Computers which have not had the firmware updated via the 10.13.x installer cannot boot from APFS volumes.
Firstly, let me say I’m pretty darned inept at this, and the idea was gleaned from an earlier post that was not detailed. So If this comes off as “pretty darned inept”, don’t mock me. I warned you...
Is it possible that... When booting and attempting to install to an APFS drive, the tool(s) needed to complete the conversation is/are compressed in an archive container that must be decompressed/extracted in order to do its job?
Further, since the tool must be able to format a raw drive or convert from another format, it can’t (at least for now) unpack the needed conversion tool onto the target drive. This would explain the increased size needed for a USB Installer, and it would explain why read-only media won’t work for APFS. The tool(s) must be able to unpack itself and run from the install media, and apparently it requires a pretty large amount of space.
I’m thinking the tools needed for an hfs drive are already in uncompressed format and don’t need to be expanded (at least on a physical media), or are small enough to be expanded in RAM. Anyway, on the surface, it appears that at present, the installer needs working scratch space where APFS drives are concerned.
I don’t see why however, that an hfs+ drive couldn’t be created initially and simply converted to an APFS afterwards. It doesn’t seem to be a destructive process since one can upgrade the file system without losing data.
Can’t you just make it a 2 part install for physical drives?
1. Install as HFS+
2. Convert drive to APFS (assuming that’s possible outside of the install process)
It seems to me, that if this is the case, and if the tools could be extracted and pointed to prior to the install, there should be an avenue for the possibility of a bootable Blu-ray installer at some point.
Anyway, if I’m off base... My apologies for thinking aloud...
Is it possible that... When booting and attempting to install to an APFS drive, the tool(s) needed to complete the conversation is/are compressed in an archive container that must be decompressed/extracted in order to do its job?
Further, since the tool must be able to format a raw drive or convert from another format, it can’t (at least for now) unpack the needed conversion tool onto the target drive. This would explain the increased size needed for a USB Installer, and it would explain why read-only media won’t work for APFS. The tool(s) must be able to unpack itself and run from the install media, and apparently it requires a pretty large amount of space.
I’m thinking the tools needed for an hfs drive are already in uncompressed format and don’t need to be expanded (at least on a physical media), or are small enough to be expanded in RAM. Anyway, on the surface, it appears that at present, the installer needs working scratch space where APFS drives are concerned.
I don’t see why however, that an hfs+ drive couldn’t be created initially and simply converted to an APFS afterwards. It doesn’t seem to be a destructive process since one can upgrade the file system without losing data.
Can’t you just make it a 2 part install for physical drives?
1. Install as HFS+
2. Convert drive to APFS (assuming that’s possible outside of the install process)
It seems to me, that if this is the case, and if the tools could be extracted and pointed to prior to the install, there should be an avenue for the possibility of a bootable Blu-ray installer at some point.
Anyway, if I’m off base... My apologies for thinking aloud...
Last edited:
As of June 17 2019, make the cdr size 6000m or you will get an error "The copy of the installer app failed". Kudos to user @hunter3740 on Apple Discussions forum for explaining the error. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6965642?answerId=28526071022#28526071022