If you're running any release from macOS 10.13 to 10.9, you can upgrade to macOS Big Sur from the App Store. If you're running Mountain Lion 10.8, you will need to upgrade to El Capitan 10.11 first. If you don't have broadband access, you can upgrade your Mac at any Apple Store. Learn more about how to upgrade. Use your Mac's arrow keys to select the OS X El Capitan installer on the USB flash drive, then press Enter or Return on your keyboard. Your Mac will start up from the USB flash drive that contains the installer. This can take some time, depending on the speed of the flash drive as well as the speed of your USB ports. The new Mac OS X El Capitan will be released by the end of June of 2015, and the hardware system requirement can be enormous. Your hardware should be able to run the latest Mac OS X El Capitan if it has OS X Yosemite or OS X Mavericks: these two are the basic hardware requirements you should consider.
yes yes, El Cap 10.11 is oooold (circa 2009 and earlier machines); and, yes yes, I'm answering my own question (but the correct question with a crappy 'did you make your usb like this link' has been archived)
a Mac Pro from back then is still a useful machine, and I like sharing information (especially when I have to waste a half of a day figuring out why--hopefully this info will still help someone)
my old work around was to use an old El Capitan 11.15 installer to make the usb, but that trick stopped working (noting I grabbed the newest 2019 cert version of El Capitan from http://updates-http.cdn-apple.com/2019/cert/061-41424-20191024-218af9ec-cf50-4516-9011-228c78eda3d2/InstallMacOSX.dmg)
Apple Support El Capitan Portal
sudo /Applications/Install OS X El Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install OS X El Capitan.app --nointeraction
looks like all is going well, but then when it's done with the 6.2GB, it tosses the error:
Erasing Disk: 0%... 10%... 20%... 30%...100%...
Copying installer files to disk...
Copy complete.
Making disk bootable...
Copying boot files...
Failed to copy kernelcache, 'prelinkedkernel' couldn't be copied to '.IABootFiles'.
Apple Support El Capitan
Done.
Apple Support El Capitan
***SOLUTION***
make sure you're using the whole usb as one parition (and if you are, just try using a different brand usb); e.g. setup the usb like this (assuming it's /dev/disk4):
Apple El Capitan Install
ok ok, I still wanted a triple installer for MacOS, so I forwent the first partition being windows (as windows can only see the first partition of a removable device); so, if you don't want to use the whole usb, you must at least make the El Capitan installer the first partition (don't ask me why, this is just how it is now for 10.11, but 10.13 and 11.0 don't need to be the first partition); e.g. setup your usb like this:
Posted on Feb 25, 2021 12:07 PM
