Well this isn’t good. I can’t seem to login to my computer this morning. It reboots fine. I get to the login screen, but when I put in my password the progress bar moves ahead a few pixels and then just stops. The computer freezes solid. So solid there’s no mouse, caps lock doesn’t toggle, and the time stops updating.
Tried safe mode which didn’t work either.
Well, I don’t really know what to do. If I knew more about the internals I could probably fix whatever is wrong in recovery mode Terminal, but I kinda don’t.
I can get in Recovery Mode just fine. I ran Disk Utilities repair stuff on all the volumes. There were warnings about things not being the expected size. I ran it again, they were all gone.
Reboot - same effect.
I have a second user account on this machine that was setup for testing so its the most basic user account (not startup things) and it does the exact same thing - gets maybe 1/10th of the way on the progress bar and the whole entire computer locks up.
In Recovery Mode Terminal I got a list of APFS snapshots on my Data volume and there were a lot. So I painstakingly deleted every one of them using terminal commands (couldn’t get the tmutil to work - it complained about frameworks and dylibs).
Well I have no idea what to do.
If I try to reinstall Tahoe, it has me unlock my drive and then it says, “The volume cannot be downgraded.”
So it won’t even let me do that.
This plan to install Tahoe on the external drive is also not going to be quick because for some reason it’s saying it will take 4 hours and 27 minutes. And worse, it’s been saying that for at least 10 minutes now. I can’t tell if it’s doing anything at all. No indication of if it’s downloading… at what speed… how things are going.. Nothing.
I guess we aren’t supposed to know about anything at all anymore.
To make matters worse, I’m still a bit sick.
So yeah. This is awesome.
Down to 4 hours and 2 minutes.
This is ridiculous. My internet is not this slow. I don’t know why it’s this slow.
I thought maybe I’d go on my wife’s computer and figure out how to get the Tahoe installer downloaded and build the external bootable drive over there because maybe it’d download faster, etc.
Except I can’t find a Tahoe standalone installer.
I found some softwareupdate command line tool that is supposed to download it. So I tried that. It gives an error.
I search for the error and I find threads going back years about how it doesn’t work for people with the same error. No one knows why.
Awesome.
Good job, guys.
Time estimate suddenly dropped to 52 minutes. The progress bar is at 100%.
Fuck this. Time for lunch.
15 minutes later and it’s still at 52 minutes.
Neat.
About a minute remaining.
Sure Jan.
It still says theres about a minute remaining.
Can’t even tell if it’s doing *anything*.
Still about a minute remaining.
However in the Installer Log window I found there’s a progress visible that’s at 0.92011 time remaining: -1.
Good stuff.
It finished! And then it rebooted… progress bar went a little way up with the Apple logo. Sat there awhile. Then it rebooted again. So far not entirely unexpected…. Except…. It booted back into my normal system.
Wtf.
Tried logging in and nope - still hanging. No progress.
Rebooting holding power button to pick the external drive. Select it. Press the button. It does… nothing. Press it again. Nothing.
Go into Recovery mode, tried changing Startup Disk to the external drive and it says, “macOS needs to be reinstalled.”
WHAT?! I literally just did that on this drive!
So I go back to Recovery mode and tried the installer again and now the external drive is greyed out!?!
And it says, “This volume cannot be used since it has a secure token without any users.”
What the hell is going on here?
It appears I’m now too stupid and old to understand Apple’s bullshit.
Maybe I should switch to Linux.
@bigzaphod This all sounds like an absolute saga, have been watching the updates all day.
I hope you're able to get it resolved.
@bigzaphod I long ago gave up trying to make sense of, or trusting, the estimated times given by, well, pretty much any Apple process: downloads, installs, whatever.
But it has definitely gotten worse.
It sucks that you're having to deal with this at all, let alone while still sick. Hope you're able to make some real progress soon.
@bigzaphod If it’s any consolation, there is one positive result:
Reminding me that a) I had several local code branches that had not been published and could be lost, so I took care of that; b) it's been *months* since I last ran a full clone of my mac — so I dug out that drive and am running one now.
@bigzaphod It just works*
*mileage may vary
@bigzaphod I feel your pain and am following along waiting for when you do finally figure it out. Sorry you are also sick during this stressful time.
Have you tried this? I have no idea if it will work, but you said you already tried the command line method, so I went looking for other options:
https://mrmacintosh.com/how-to-create-a-macos-tahoe-usb-boot-disk-installer-in-5-min/
@bigzaphod Fingers crossed you find a solution. No suggestions I’m afraid.
Ooh a thought, Apple Support?
Most of my critical data is either in iCloud or on my MAS.
If I have issues I back local data to the NAS flatten the Mac and then usually do o a manual rebuild. Takes me maybe 24 hours but I have a really great Mac for months. Then again I keep lists of what apps I have installed, backup configs etc where I can. Paranoid much. Nitten once, never again.
Keep us posted.
@bigzaphod @dmnelson I was going to suggest the same thing -- that can chug away while you continue to work on other methods of resurrecting your primary.
Pity the MBP's aren't exactly cheap, be a good excuse to buy a new machine.
@bigzaphod I had this problem on my wife’s iMac, and it ended up being the hard drive I keep attached for Time Machine. I believe it became corrupted. I’ve since swapped that for an SSD (thankfully before price hikes).
Anyway, if you happen to have a Time Machine drive attached, power off, unplug it, then try getting back in and see if that works.
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