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Third attempt at creating a Sierra installer (I don't want to mess this up)

R

rib00

macrumors member
Original poster
MacBook Air 2017
Mac OS Monterey
Disk Utility 21.5

I am on my third attempt to create a USB installer for Mac OS. After my last attempts, 2 disks are limping along and the Mac balks at them at every chance. Could have been some user error on my part. Could have been drives near end of life.

So I have brand new USB thumb drive that I just bought.

I plan to put the Sierra installer onto the thumb drive.

I want to make sure that I do this correctly.

Step 1 - format the drive to HFS+.
Right now the USB thumb drive has a single partion and that partition has about 16 MB used. Should i try to figure out what is on there, maybe hidden files? Do the permissions on the drive matter?
it looks like there is one partition on the drive but maybe there is something else that is not visible in Disk Utility?
unmount:
diskutil unmount disk2
Select the name of the device instead of the name of the partition in Disk Utility and then press "erase."
When I do get to the point of actually formatting, should i use GParted v 1.5.0 on a Linux machine? Is there a reasonably chance that GParted is more reliable than Disk Utility? Or I could research how to use the command line. In my experience, command line provides better feedback on what went wrong.

I will edit with more steps.
 
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Assuming you have downloaded the macOS Sierra installer application to your Mac…
sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/<yourflashdrive> --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app --nointeraction
 
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The createinstallmedia tool will format the drive for you. As long as the Mac can "see" the drive (that is, as long as it's mounted under /Volumes) then it should all "just work".
 
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Bigwaff said:
Assuming you have downloaded the macOS Sierra installer application to your Mac…
sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/<yourflashdrive> --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app --nointeraction
Click to expand...
I ran that command. I replaced <yourflashdrive> with SeaGlassUSB
I went wrong somewhere
The only thing that I can think of is that maybe I should have put a / after <yourflashdrive>

terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInternalInconsistency exception'
Couldn't posix_spawn: error 35
***First throw call stack
...
edit: photo of Terminal with a lot of info @ https://imageshack.com/i/plyOCR09j
 
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tldr - I like installing as little software as possible.
---
I understand the suggestion to install additional software.
I appreciate the suggestion but I generally don't like the approach.
Reasons:
-it's good to learn how to do this without such reliance.
-there is some risk in installing a piece of software. As a side note, I am more comfortable with software that is open source and has a long history, like 10+ years, and is still being maintained.
-generally, graphical user interface software has the inferiority of not giving full feedback.
-I did try a piece of 3rd party software in this endeavor. But, I didn't personally have a lot of luck with it. It wasn't clear to me how to handle writing overwriting a USB thumb drive that had a disk image file on it.
---
that being said, I might give in.

Again, I much appreciate people on this forum. I have definitely learned some things here in the last few days.
 
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MacCheetah3 said:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/101578
Click to expand...
The new support page doesn't have detailed instructions for Sierra, the old one does https://web.archive.org/web/20200305223122/https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372
"Sierra:
sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app
"

"How to download and install macOS"
https://support.apple.com/en-us/102662
Sierra 10.12 http://updates-http.cdn-apple.com/2019/cert/061-39476-20191023-48f365f4-0015-4c41-9f44-39d3d2aca067/InstallOS.dmg

"App Store links and mas-cli Id's for macOS Installers from Lion to Sequoia" by @startergo
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...acos-installers-from-lion-to-sequoia.2378889/
 
MacCheetah3 said:

Create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support

You can use a USB flash drive or other secondary volume as a startup disk from which to install the Mac operating system. These steps are primarily for system administrators and other experienced users.
support.apple.com support.apple.com
Click to expand...
the problem that I ran into with the Apple support page is this,
"If it’s a disk image (.dmg) or package (.pkg) file, review the download instructions for details about how to get the installer from these files."
Yes, it is a .dmg.
Not sure what it means to "get the installer." I assume that it's making reference to 1) double click the .dmg; 2) double click the .pkg, go through the "installation," and then use a file or directory that has been created in the Applications subfolder.
 
I am not confident in what I used for the path in the command where I ran into the fail (or whatever you want to call it).

I am re-posting this image which shows the discs attached to my computer
In the center of the page, look at disk 2
Next, look at the command below that, in the middle, /Volumes/SeaGlassUSB
 
bogdanw said:
At the end of the page, note 2 https://github.com/Kruszoneq/macUSB#user-content-fn-2-f0d684fe5546931f6e8cc36e3e2b4258
Click to expand...
In my opinion, it's pretty "over the top" of Apple to NOT specify what OS you are downloading from them on the downloads page (where it lets you download several older OSes). I'd say that the best guess is that it's the final version for each.

The other question is whether the problem is specific to the MacUSB software or whether it goes beyond that.
 
bogdanw said:
Sierra issue detailed here https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...rs-from-lion-to-sequoia.2378889/post-32931561
Click to expand...
I have multiple complaints about the post
-The post sometimes uses vague terminology. Example: "older macOS's."
-it seems that the method uses 2 USB drives. Quote "another USB."

I think I can live with High Sierra if that is less labor intensive. Does that seem like a reasonable path?

Side rant: what is the obsession with the escape character in the Mac user community and Apple's support page? that is the "\"
 
I just ran into this issue myself, though it was giving me a different error, that my volume was not a valid mount point. Stewed with it for quite some time and found that I had to run this command in Terminal: sudo plutil -replace CFBundleShortVersionString -string "12.6.03" /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app/Contents/Info.plist

Give this a try and see what happens. There seems to be something wrong with Apple's image and a version mismatch that createinstallmedia does not like. Once I ran that command, I had no issues.
 
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If you downloaded the Sierra DMG from Apple, open it and drag Sierra to the Applications folder.

Before you attempt to create the installer, type the command in the Terminal as mentioned by @vindasal

Once finished, use the command from Apple how to create a bootable installer.

For some odd reason, the newer Sierra is not using the version 12.6.03 and only once it is set to that version, that's the only time you can create the bootable installer.
 
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