VMWare won't install OS X from installer from Network drive

[TECH198]

For convenience, i'm trying to install OS X from Network share, but can't get past the Welcome screen. The "Continue" button is dead.

However, if i try from external USB, its ok....  Its defiantly not a corrupted installer , because i just copied them installer to Network share.... I'd just thought i'd install from share as i don't need to hook USB drive up

I think I remembered having this issue in the past, but i don't think i ever found a solution as why this happens.

[ColoradoMarmot]

That's the recovery utility screen, so it's trying to download the installation media directly during the process, rather than from a local source.  I suspect it's failing because the recovery utility is looking for physical network adapters and the virtual ones aren't matching.

I'm curious though, how did you get the recovery partition into the VM without first running a local installer?

[nancyz]

Hi TECH198 ,

Its defiantly not a corrupted installer , because i just copied them installer to Network share....

Does that mean you put your installer on network drive? How did you share the image, AFP, NFS or other protocols?

[TECH198]

When Creating a new VM, i select Mac OS X installer over network share. At this point it makes temp file to install from, on local drive, it copies  in files to temp image.

Which then stalls on OS X Utilities..

So, the only difference is how the tmp is created.

This "stalling" at OS X Utilities screen does not happen when the source is usb. Shared via AFP

[TECH198]

Just to update, now i get this instead:

I think would be relevant, but my how can installer get "corrupted" just by sitting on a hard disk ?

I only installed on VM Mojave yesterday... and now today, just deleted it accidentally only to reinstall it in VM from same Network drive,, only get the above ?

Not only that, but even the one on my external drive now comes up with this..

This causes me to download it again from the App Store, but its only temporary as the issue will happen again, give it time. So re-downloading from the App Store is not a permanent fix, just a workaround.

dlhotka​ It's OS X Utilities.. not necessary recovery screen.

Once the "creating install media" finishes, i assume that is it .. its created as .sparseimage in VM drectory.. so physical network/source is no longer needed, as by this point it install from local drive temp. image

Unless i am missing something, and os x still needs physical network access despite this sparseimage, that could be why i get this issue..?

However, i don't think that would be it, because i tried from USB and get same issue... That same installer was only used yesterday.. and i decides to re-do OS X specifically to test this..

So, yesterday it worked, and now it doesn't

Workaround is to re-download from App Store, so you could argue its the image that's the problem, but if it keeps happening (and it will do), that is NOT the image, as how can it get corruped just sitting on a drive? specially a NAS, where its not been moved at all?

nancyz​  SMB  protocol.

[dariusd]

There are two separate problems here:

Problem #1. The macOS installer contains symbolic links (symlinks) and those need to be preserved in order for the Installer to function correctly.  It's unlikely that SMB will preserve those symlinks.  The symptom resulting from loss-of-symlinks is a *Continue* button which goes inactive when clicked, but nothing further happens, and the button does not return to an active state.  Using a symlink-preserving file-sharing protocol (or stashing the Installer .app into a .dmg file, and then storing the .dmg on your file share) should avoid this problem.  Future versions of Fusion will check for this up-front and will refuse to create an installer when the symlinks have been lost from the source.

Problem #2. A macOS installer signing certificate expired just yesterday (headdesk).  The symptom of this failure is an error message just like you've shown in your latest screenshot, the text of which says: This copy of the Install macOS (version) application is damaged, and can't be used to install macOS.

To work around this, in your macOS guest's installation environment (macOS Utilities), choose Utilities > Terminal, and run the command:

   date 102400002019

which will set the date to about 17 hours before the certificate expires.  Exit the terminal window and quit the Terminal application, then retry installation (... within 17 hours).  Remember to reset the clock after installation has completed!

[wila]

Yep... it's the "certificate expired issue" that pops up every few years with apple.

Certificate used to sign older Apple software expiring on October 24, 2019 | Der Flounder

I still don't understand why this continues to be an issue with the macOS platform whereas it is a non-issue on Windows.

Also the error message could be so much better if it just mentioned that the certificate that it was signed with has expired.

One thing I notice when signing a binary on macOS is that I do not have to provide a timestamping server whereas that is a requirement on windows.

So at least on windows if the certificate did not expire before it was time stamped it will continue to work, even after the expiry date of the certificate.

BTW, the other solution to this problem is to re-download all your apple installers.

--

Wil

[ReluctantUser89]

Hi,

If you are still receiving the error it maybe that the network adapter is enabled which is updating the date to today's date.  When the network adapter is connected it changes the date back to today's date.

Steps:

1. Uncheck "Connected" under "Network Adapter"

2. Open terminal and enter "date 121100002018"

3. Close terminal.

4. Now install the OS.

5. Check "Connected" under "Network Adapter"