El Capitan Public Beta Installation Failing

App & System Services Core OS Beta macOS

Created Jul ’15

Replies 99

Boosts 0

Views 18k

Participants 6

I am trying to install the Public Beta version of El Capitan and after about 10-15 mins of trying to install, a message pops up that says "no packages were eligible for install" and the installation fails. Here's what I've tried so far:

Rebooting with CMD + R:

I do not have a Time Machine backup.
Disk Utility: I have my internal Mac HD listed, "Apple disk image" with "OS X Base System", and then about 10 or so "untitled" disk images. I ran First Aid and everything checks out.
Reinstall OS X: my only option here is to proceed with the installation of El Capitan. When I try from this screen a message pops up saying it needs to verify my computer's eligibility. When I click Continue an error occurs: "An error occurred while preparing the installation. Try running this application again."

I'm on a mid (or late) 2009 MacBook Pro 15". I don't think Internet Recovery is available in my model—CMD + ALT + R brings up the same OS X Disk Utilities app that CMD + R brings up.

Here's what I'm thinking:

Is there a correlation between the "no packages were eligible for install" error and the error that occurs when it's trying to verify my computer's eligibility? If so, is this something on Apple's end that could be fixed?
If the above is a 'no' and there's no way to move forward with the El Capitan install...
1. Could I insert an OS install disk that comes with Macs and install that OS and still keep all of my files? (Or will this be a clean install?)
2. If not, is there a way to revert back to Yosemite while still keeping my files?
3. If not, is there a way to backup my files to an external HD from Terminal, then do a clean install of an OS?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Boost

tywebbooooo OP

Jul ’15

OK. But for others reading this thread here are instructions for making a bootable usb for the public beta:

Format an 8 GB or preferably a 16 GB USB3 drive* which should be called Untitled and formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). The installer should be called Install OS X El Capitan Public Beta.app and should be in your Applications folder.

Run this in terminal and wait about 20 minutes:

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan\ Public\ Beta.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan\ Public\ Beta.app --nointeraction

You can boot up from it by selecting it from the startup manager you get when starting your computer and holding down the option key.

If the installation creates a core storage logical volume you can revert it to get partitions back to normal by running these 2 commands in terminal.

diskutil cs list

and then

diskutil coreStorage revert lvUUID

where lvUUID is the last lvUUID reported by the previous Terminal command.

Then restart for everything to get back to normal after you have run these commands in Terminal.

----------------------------------------------------------------

* - note if your usb is too slow or too small you may get an error "Mount of outer dmg failed" because it did not copy over the invisible files that make the usb bootable. So it is better to use a 16GB USB3 rather than a 8GB or USB2.

Max108 OP

Jul ’15

Frustrating.

The last thing I can think to suggest until you have a working OS X at your disposal again is to run the following commands to make sure createinstallmedia did it's job.:

cd /Volumes/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite

ls -A

Max108 OP

Jul ’15

Good addition.

christhomp OP

Jul ’15

Output:

.ISBootFiles .Trashes

.IAPhysicalMedia .fseventsd

.Spotlight-V100 Install OS X Yosemite.app

christhomp OP

Jul ’15

Sorry about that first response... I put the command in incorrectly. I edited my reply with the correct output.

christhomp OP

Jul ’15

Ok, thanks. What exactly should the ls -A command output here?

Max108 OP

Jul ’15

The output looks okay now. I don't know why that hasn't worked. A much more comprehensive guide, complete with Q&A is here:

osxdaily.com/2014/10/16/make-os-x-yosemite-boot-install-drive/

Max108 OP

Jul ’15

Actually, you could try:

diskutil repairDisk disk2

christhomp OP

Jul ’15

Ok- I'm going to go by my friend's office tomorrow to try and make the USB drive again. In the meantime, if you can think of something else to try, let me know. For what it's worth, it's a USB 3.0 stick (I just bought today), and my MBP is USB 2.0.

christhomp OP

Jul ’15

Just tried diskutil repairDisk disk2 and it's still not showing up. I'll try again tomorrow. Thanks again for your help.

Max108 OP

Jul ’15

It may be that it isn't disk2 anymore. You can troubleshoot that yourself by now I'm guessing.

It didn't occur to me that your MBP was too old to support USB3 - Yes, that could well be it.

christhomp OP

Jul ’15

Ok- I'll go out and buy a USB2.0 stick tomorrow and try this all again.

Max108 OP

Jul ’15

Try the diskutil repairDisk diskXbecause there's a small chance it could compensate for USB3->2 issue.

Also you may not have to buy one. I, for instance, have about 6 8GB+ sticks lying around that I never use anymore... Someone will probably give you one 🙂

Max108 OP

Jul ’15

USB 3 is meant to be backwards compatible, but that must only be for general purpose: I guess there's some low-level bootability related hardware-software handshake that isn't happening in your situation of using the 2009 MBPs USB 2 bus with a USB 3 drive.

christhomp OP

Jul ’15

Ok, here's an update. I created a new bootable USB2.0 stick, as well as reformatted and recreated the USB3.0 stick I already had from yesterday. I booted up from the USB2.0 drive just fine, and proceeded to install Yosemite. I received an error

"This copy of the Install OS X Yosemite.app application can't be verified. It may have been corrupted or tampered with during downloading."

I tried doing utildisk repairDisk disk2 and that did not fix the issue.

So, I erased Macintosh HD, rebooted, and tried again. Same error.

I shut down, removed the USB2.0 stick, inserted the USB3.0 stick, and it was available to boot from. I booted up with it, tried the install, and still got the same error.

I started doing a little research and found this fix: I went to Terminal, typed in date, and the output was Jan 3, 2001 (with a random time). I typed:

date 0715012015

Format: date [MM][DD][hh][min][YY]

I tried the install again and it worked. It's currently got 10 minutes remaining. I will post again once it's complete.