I have a MacBook Pro early 2015 running macOS Big Sur and am trying to use startosinstall to install macOS Catalina or High Sierra onto an external SSD. I want to be able to distribute macOS to multiple SSD's and quickly so don't want to have to go into Recovery mode to carry out the install.
I've been trying to use startosinstall to do this and have been using the following code
/Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall \
--volume /Volumes/macOS \
--agreetolicense \
--nointeraction
to get this working which appears to run but gets stuck on Preparing to run macOS Installer... indefinitely.
I've tried looking in the logs and I get the following error messages:
2021-02-18 08:31:56+00 MacBook-Pro osinstallersetupd[4322]: Failed to load IAMiniSoftwareUpdate.framework. Error: (null)
2021-02-18 08:31:57+00 MacBook-Pro osinstallersetupd[4322]: Failed to load IABridgeOSInstall.framework: dlopen(/Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app/Contents/Frameworks/OSInstallerSetup.framework/Versions/A/Versions/A/Frameworks/IABridgeOSInstall.framework/IABridgeOSInstall, 1): image not found
2021-02-18 08:31:57+00 MacBook-Pro osinstallersetupd[4322]: Install was requested to a disk that was not evaluated. Blocking on evaluation.
2021-02-18 08:31:57+00 MacBook-Pro osinstallersetupd[4322]: Target is not convertible to APFS: You may not install to this volume because it can not be converted to Apple File System.
2021-02-18 08:31:57+00 MacBook-Pro osinstallersetupd[4322]: Target is not convertible to APFS: You may not install to this volume because it can not be converted to Apple File System.
2021-02-18 08:31:57+00 MacBook-Pro osinstallersetupd[4322]: Disk disk5s2 is not suitable because DMError: -69837
2021-02-18 08:31:57+00 MacBook-Pro osinstallersetupd[4322]: Target is not convertible to APFS: You may not install to this volume because it can not be converted to Apple File System.
2021-02-18 08:31:57+00 MacBook-Pro osinstallersetupd[4322]: Target is not convertible to APFS: This volume is not formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
2021-02-18 08:31:57+00 MacBook-Pro osinstallersetupd[4322]: No available package ref for compatibility update. Ignoring.
2021-02-18 08:31:57+00 MacBook-Pro osinstallersetupd[4322]: No available package ref for compatibility update. Ignoring.
2021-02-18 08:31:57+00 MacBook-Pro osinstallersetupd[4322]: No available package ref for compatibility update. Ignoring.
2021-02-18 08:31:57+00 MacBook-Pro osinstallersetupd[4322]: Unable to get fs for (null)
2021-02-18 08:31:57+00 MacBook-Pro osinstallersetupd[4322]: Unable to get fs for (null)
2021-02-18 08:31:57+00 MacBook-Pro osinstallersetupd[4322]: Unable to get fs for (null)
2021-02-18 08:31:57+00 MacBook-Pro osinstallersetupd[4322]: Unable to get fs for (null)
2021-02-18 08:31:57+00 MacBook-Pro osinstallersetupd[4322]: Unable to get fs for (null)
2021-02-18 08:31:57+00 MacBook-Pro osinstallersetupd[4322]: Unable to get fs for (null)
2021-02-18 08:31:57+00 MacBook-Pro osinstallersetupd[4322]: Operation queue started
Whats slightly strange is the Target is not convertible to APFS: You may not install to this volume because it can not be converted to Apple File System error message since I made sure that I converted the volume to APFS before running the install. This is then followed by Target is not convertible to APFS: This volume is not formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled).???
I tried adding —converttoapfs NO to the install command but this doesn't seem to change anything.
Formatting as MacOS Extended (Journaled) retrieves the following error message Error: This Mac can only install macOS on APFS-formatted drives.
Does anyone have any idea what I can do to get this working on my active macOS system?
