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Graytness

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 22, 2017
3
0
Am I an idiot for not creating a backup before installing beta software on my computer? Yes, I am.

Now that we have established my idiocy, I am hoping someone can help me get my Macbook Air working again. I have been running the High Sierra since public beta 3, I believe. I have updated each time a new public beta was released. Yesterday, I saw that public beta 6 was released and chose to update once again. After downloading the newest public beta, I hit restart. When the computer restarted, it said that I did not have the ~11 GB required and continued to boot as normal. I proceeded to clear up a little over 12 GB of space and attempted to initiate the installation again.

When the computer restarted, it looked like it was installing fine until I was greeted with a screen that read "macOS could not be installed on your computer" and below that "the path /system/installation/package/OSinstall.mkpg" appears to be missing or damaged. If I click restart, the same thing happens.

I then booted up in recovery mode and tried reinstalling macOS. I click through a couple of screens and then it asks me to unlock my HD. I enter my password and it unlocks. Then when I click the HD, it says "You may not install to this volume because it is currently being encrypted." I left the computer on all night and it still says the same thing.

What should I do now?
 
Were you doing an installation while your drive was encrypting? Did you turn on FileVault with APFS recently?
 
Were you doing an installation while your drive was encrypting? Did you turn on FileVault with APFS recently?

To my knowledge, the drive was not in the process of encrypting. I never saw the option to turn on FileVault with APFS.

I was updating as usual. When it restarted, it said there wasn't enough space. I freed up some space and hit restart and install again. That is when I was greeted with that message that it couldn't be installed on the computer.
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Were you doing an installation while your drive was encrypting? Did you turn on FileVault with APFS recently?

In the past hour, I was able to access the terminal in recovery mode. I ran
Code:
diskutil apfs list
and it next to encrypted it said Yes (Locked). I was able to unlock the drive. Then I tried
Code:
diskutil apfs decryptVolume
which seems to work. Then when I ran a list again it says "Encryption Progress: 38% (Paused) (Unlocked).

I was feeling hopeful for a minute when it said it was decrypting. Now? Not so much.
 
SSD on 2013 (I think) MacBook Air

I'm having the same exact issues. (2013 MacBook Air) My drive is always set to be encrypted but have had no problem with any DP installs so far with High Sierra.

Absolutely cannot get installed so far.

I'd love some help if anyone has ideas.
 
Hey all -

I was experiencing the exact same issue on my 2011 MPB that I’ve upgraded with a 500 GB SSD. From the comments here, I was able to finish the install and could not have done it without your help.

Here’s what I did.

The trick seemed to be booting into safe mode (hold shift on start-up). This allowed me to log into the encrypted hard drive and get to a crippled version of my system.

From there, I used terminal and used the same commands used above

“Diskutil apfs list”
“Diskutil apfs decryptVolume”

After sitting 20 hours on my AC unit decrypting, this morning it was finally done.

From there, still in safe mode, I downloaded the latest Mac High Sierra beta from the AppStore. Half an hour later, I’m back in the game.

Thanks to you all. I made an account to comment specifically on this thread and hope the method works for you.
 
Had the same issue with my MacBook Air. Here's what I did to resolve it:

Thought of connecting to my old iMac via Thunderbolt with the MBA in target disk mode to salvage the data before wiping the SSD. Realized this wasn't going to work when I connected everything, then realized I upgraded the MBA to APFS.

Thought of installing the High Sierra beta from recovery mode onto an external hard drive, then booting the iMac up to that drive and then copying the data. Realized that seemed quite foolish to bring another computer into the mix, so I just installed the beta to the external drive, then booted up with intentions of moving my data to a blank partition. During the setup process, as always, I was asked if I wanted to migrate data from another drive. What the heck, I thought, let's give this a try. Gave my password for the internal SSD, then told it to migrate everything from the internal SSD to the external drive now running High Sierra. Got into my account just fine.

Rebooted into recovery mode, wiped the internal SSD, then reinstalled High Sierra and told it to migrate the newly migrated files from the external drive to the internal SSD. It'll be done likely by tomorrow morning, and I'll be back up and running.
 
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