El Capitan installation stops at 2.0 shell immediately

Discussions about using Mac OS X guests (on Apple hardware) in VirtualBox.
ergo
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El Capitan installation stops at 2.0 shell immediately

Post by ergo »

Hello,

I want to install El Capitan in Virtualbox 5.0.16 for testing use.El Capitan is my host system too.
In several postings I have found a script to create El Capitan.iso.
But the installation process stops showing the 2.0 shell within less than a second.
I followed the hints like to change the chipset to PIIX3 or tried to edit the startup.nsh for to add some recommended published lines. Perhaps I did.n’t quite get it, because the edition of this file failed.

Another solution was reported to start the installation with Yosemite or Mavericks and then after successful installation start an upgrade process.
Unfortunately I have an installation dvd of Snow Leopard only. With this there is another problem, because the virtualized hard disk isn’t recognized just at the beginning of the installation and so this installation fails too.

There were several reports that El Capitan is not well supported by Virtualbox and another reason for problems should be that Apple changed MBR to GPT. I have read other postings in this board but didn’t find a real solution for me. According to other reports the virtualization of El Capitan worked well obviously after having created the iso file successfully.

So has anybody some hints how to manage the boot failure described above and maybe can post a helpful script of commands?

Thank you in advance.
Perryg
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Re: El Capitan installation stops at 2.0 shell immediately

Post by Perryg »

Post the guests log file ( as an attachment ). Right click on the guest in the Main Manager then click show log. Save and post as an attachment. Compress if it is too large to post.
ChipMcK
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Re: El Capitan installation stops at 2.0 shell immediately

Post by ChipMcK »

ergo wrote:I want to install El Capitan in Virtualbox 5.0.16 for testing use.
Check out Installing El Capitan in Virtualbox
ergo
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Re: El Capitan installation stops at 2.0 shell immediately

Post by ergo »

Thank you for replies.

@ Perryg: You will find the vbox.log added. Hopefully this can help to identify the problem.

@ChipMcK: Thanks for the links.I had read them before and tried to follow the hints. As far as I understood that what worked was installing Yosemite and then upgrading to El Capitan. As I mentionend above I have Snow Leopard only left so a rather old OS. I intended to install it and then try an upgrade step by step to El Capitan. But there was an install problem (harddidk *.vdi was not reconized) as I have described, so it failed too.
Attachments
VBox.log
Logfile El Capitan Install Error
(111.15 KiB) Downloaded 153 times
mpack
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Re: El Capitan installation stops at 2.0 shell immediately

Post by mpack »

Well, I can see one problem right away :-
VBox.log wrote: 00:00:02.045711 Host RAM: 4096MB total, 1442MB available
...
00:00:02.171666 RamSize <integer> = 0x0000000080000000 (2 147 483 648, 2 048 MB)
00:00:02.172059 VRamSize <integer> = 0x0000000001400000 (20 971 520, 20 MB)
You are telling the VM to use more RAM than you have available on your host. RAM isn't simulated, it needs to actually exist and be available without slamming the host. As an aside, I don't know how well a modern GUI OS will run with just 20MB of graphics RAM.
ChipMcK
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Re: El Capitan installation stops at 2.0 shell immediately

Post by ChipMcK »

ergo wrote:As far as I understood that what worked was installing Yosemite and then upgrading to El Capitan. As I mentionend above I have Snow Leopard only left so a rather old OS. I intended to install it and then try an upgrade step by step to El Capitan.
Why did you not do as the OP did? The OP installed Yosemite in the VM, then install El Capitan.
Why muck with Snow Leopard? Download Yosemite from store and create an .ISO from it.
socratis
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Re: El Capitan installation stops at 2.0 shell immediately

Post by socratis »

I hate sometimes to be the bearer of bad news, but unless you increase your host's RAM, it is not going to work. El Capitan needs at least 3GB to breathe (at a minimum level). You have 4GB total, minus 3GB for your host... => not enough. No matter how hard you're willing to hit your head on the wall, it's not going to work. Ever.

Now, the problem that you started with. This is a known problem with the El Capitan installation media. While the previous OSX versions were able to extract the important files and construct a bootable ISO, this is not the case with El Capitan. It fails consistently. Thank Apple for that.

So to sum it up... You can't do it. Unfortunately...
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ergo
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Re: El Capitan installation stops at 2.0 shell immediately

Post by ergo »

Thank you for every reply.

@ mpack:

1.
Concerning RAM: I tried with different values with no positive result.

Using 2046MB works fine in Virtualbox for a windows guest and the use of 2046MB was underlined green in Virtualbox for OS X, so my conclusion was that should be ok for a host having 4GB RAM installed. At last I have read that 2GB are recommended for OS X guest.

2.
Concerning the VRAM, yes indeed, I didn’t realize that this should be to small.
I changed to the possible maximum of 128 MB - with the same error.

So all I tried failed until now.


@ChipMcK:

Yeah, I would have gone the way from Yosemite to El Capitan, but I couldn’t, because I have Yosemite install.app no longer unfortunately.
And it is no longer available in the Apple store. Maybe there are still other unofficial resources to get it, but I wouldn’t like to use them.


@socratis:

Uff, so game is over!? And in conclusion: Upgrading my RAM wouldn’t help then of course?!

What a pity - yes, then thanks to Apple.
ChipMcK
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Re: El Capitan installation stops at 2.0 shell immediately

Post by ChipMcK »

ergo wrote:Yeah, I would have gone the way from Yosemite to El Capitan, but I couldn’t, because I have Yosemite install.app no longer unfortunately.
And it is no longer available in the Apple store. Maybe there are still other unofficial resources to get it, but I wouldn’t like to use them.
Apple changed the certifications on all the install OSX applications two/three weeks ago.
I downloaded Yosemite, Lion, Mountain Lion and Mavericks installers last week.
mpack
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Re: El Capitan installation stops at 2.0 shell immediately

Post by mpack »

ergo wrote: Concerning RAM: I tried with different values with no positive result.

Using 2046MB works fine in Virtualbox for a windows guest and the use of 2046MB was underlined green in Virtualbox for OS X, so my conclusion was that should be ok for a host having 4GB RAM installed.
I wasn't making a suggestion, I was explaining that it is incorrect to assign memory you don't have. It isn't a matter of trying different amounts.
socratis
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Re: El Capitan installation stops at 2.0 shell immediately

Post by socratis »

And just for completion... I was trying to update the OSX on OSX thread and I got really frustrated that I didn't have a "nice" way to do a clean install from an ISO, like the previous versions. But, lo and behold, there are plenty of smart people out there! So, here are the instructions to create a bootable ISO from the Installer.app. Haven't tried it yet. I will report back when I do. Mind you, there are two ways to do it. Similar, but not exactly the same...

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/ ... fo-vmware/
Do NOT send me Personal Messages (PMs) for troubleshooting, they are simply deleted.
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ChipMcK
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Re: El Capitan installation stops at 2.0 shell immediately

Post by ChipMcK »

socratis wrote:And just for completion... I was trying to update the OSX on OSX thread and I got really frustrated that I didn't have a "nice" way to do a clean install from an ISO, like the previous versions.
Looks a lot like How to make a bootable OS X 10.10 Yosemite install drive
socratis
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Re: El Capitan installation stops at 2.0 shell immediately

Post by socratis »

Unfortunately, this works only with a USB or similar media, it does not create an ISO file. Anyway, I tried the two suggestions in the previous link. I didn't really like the fact that the first script was creating a fixed size drive vs. a sparse drive in the second script. But the second script suffered from several issues, so I kind of combined them. Here's the result:

Code: Select all

# ==============================================================
# 10.11 How to make an ISO from the "Install OS X El Capitan.app"
# ==============================================================
echo 
echo Mount the installer image
echo -----------------------------------------------------------
echo $ hdiutil attach Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg -noverify -nobrowse -mountpoint /Volumes/install_app
hdiutil attach Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg -noverify -nobrowse -mountpoint /Volumes/install_app

echo 
echo Create ElCapitan blank ISO image with a Single Partition - Apple Partition Map
echo --------------------------------------------------------------------------
echo $ hdiutil create -o /tmp/ElCapitan -size 8g -layout SPUD -fs HFS+J -type SPARSE
hdiutil create -o /tmp/ElCapitan -size 8g -layout SPUD -fs HFS+J -type SPARSE

echo 
echo Mount the sparse bundle for package addition
echo --------------------------------------------------------------------------
echo $ hdiutil attach /tmp/ElCapitan.sparseimage -noverify -nobrowse -mountpoint /Volumes/install_build
hdiutil attach /tmp/ElCapitan.sparseimage -noverify -nobrowse -mountpoint /Volumes/install_build

echo 
echo Restore the Base System into the ElCapitan ISO image
echo --------------------------------------------------------------------------
echo $ asr restore -source /Volumes/install_app/BaseSystem.dmg -target /Volumes/install_build -noprompt -noverify -erase
asr restore -source /Volumes/install_app/BaseSystem.dmg -target /Volumes/install_build -noprompt -noverify -erase

echo 
echo Remove Package link and replace with actual files
echo --------------------------------------------------------------------------
echo $ rm /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/System/Installation/Packages
rm /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/System/Installation/Packages
echo $ cp -rp /Volumes/install_app/Packages /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/System/Installation/
cp -rp /Volumes/install_app/Packages /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/System/Installation/

echo 
echo Copy El Capitan installer dependencies
echo --------------------------------------------------------------------------
echo $ cp -rp /Volumes/install_app/BaseSystem.chunklist /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/BaseSystem.chunklist
cp -rp /Volumes/install_app/BaseSystem.chunklist /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/BaseSystem.chunklist
echo $ cp -rp /Volumes/install_app/BaseSystem.dmg /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/BaseSystem.dmg
cp -rp /Volumes/install_app/BaseSystem.dmg /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/BaseSystem.dmg

echo 
echo Unmount the installer image
echo --------------------------------------------------------------------------
echo $ hdiutil detach /Volumes/install_app
hdiutil detach /Volumes/install_app

echo 
echo Unmount the sparse bundle
echo --------------------------------------------------------------------------
echo $ hdiutil detach /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/
hdiutil detach /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/

echo 
echo Resize the partition in the sparse bundle to remove any free space
echo --------------------------------------------------------------------------
echo $ hdiutil resize -size `hdiutil resize -limits /tmp/ElCapitan.sparseimage | tail -n 1 | awk '{ print $1 }'`b /tmp/ElCapitan.sparseimage
hdiutil resize -size `hdiutil resize -limits /tmp/ElCapitan.sparseimage | tail -n 1 | awk '{ print $1 }'`b /tmp/ElCapitan.sparseimage

echo 
echo Convert the sparse bundle to ISO/CD master
echo --------------------------------------------------------------------------
echo $ hdiutil convert /tmp/ElCapitan.sparseimage -format UDTO -o /tmp/ElCapitan
hdiutil convert /tmp/ElCapitan.sparseimage -format UDTO -o /tmp/ElCapitan

echo 
echo Remove the sparse bundle
echo --------------------------------------------------------------------------
echo $ rm /tmp/ElCapitan.sparseimage
rm /tmp/ElCapitan.sparseimage

echo 
echo Rename the ISO and move it to the desktop
echo --------------------------------------------------------------------------
echo $ mv /tmp/ElCapitan.cdr ~/Desktop/ElCapitan.iso
mv /tmp/ElCapitan.cdr ~/Desktop/ElCapitan.iso
If you're not in the folder where the installer resides, you need to adjust path of the installer in the first command. There is feedback on what's going on, except the part where the packages are being copied, due to the fact that 'cp' doesn't give any feedback.
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ChipMcK
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Re: El Capitan installation stops at 2.0 shell immediately

Post by ChipMcK »

socratis wrote:If you're not in the folder where the installer resides, you need to adjust path of the installer in the first command.
I made assumption that "#!/bin/bash" was missing first line and tested the resultant ISO with VMWare Fusion v7.1.3 and VirtualBox V5.0.14. Neither had troubles.
socratis
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Re: El Capitan installation stops at 2.0 shell immediately

Post by socratis »

Well, technically, you're correct, it should have been there (the "#!/bin/bash"). But since it is the default shell in OSX, you can leave it out. But, again, for 100% compliance it should have been there. To quote part of the article in http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8967 ... cript-file
The part after the #! tells Unix what program to use to run it. If it isn't specified, it will try with bash (or sh, or zsh, or whatever your $SHELL variable is) but if it's there it will use that program.
Do NOT send me Personal Messages (PMs) for troubleshooting, they are simply deleted.
Do NOT reply with the "QUOTE" button, please use the "POST REPLY", at the bottom of the form.
If you obfuscate any information requested, I will obfuscate my response. These are virtual UUIDs, not real ones.
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