macOS installer cannot be loaded

[pm-r]

About the only way to clean it up may well be to wipe the drive clean and reinstall from scratch.

Do I dare mention here or ask if Disk Utility in Mojave and/or Catalina still has the developers debug menu option available that will show all volumes partitions etc. ie: show Invisibles, show All volumes etc.), and an option to delete any surplus volumes.

That would make a quick and easy way to get rid of any of the Surplus stuff.



- Patrick
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[MacInWin]

Patrick, not a developer debug menu (Isn't that in Safari?) but it does have a "View" option in the upper left corner of the default window where you can select to View Only Volumes or All Devices. Selecting "All Devices" shows all hardware but it does not show any detail of unmounted devices. I think the installer is unmounted when booted into the OS, so it's only shown at the "Option" boot screen as a potential boot drive. Frankly, setting the default boot drive should have been enough. If it's not, the installer did something else internal to the system that may require a full erase and reinstall.

Here is an image of DU on my Catalina MBP:


You can see the View option upper left corner, and a stack of externals in the sidebar that are not mounted, but being seen by the OS. However, if you look at the main window, there are two volumes showing, Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD - Data, plus a third small one called "VM" and two not mounted whose names don't show. I don't know what is in "VM" but from using "diskutil list" in Terminal I got this result:



So it would appear those two unnamed are "Preboot" and "Recovery." I'm wondering if the installer sets something in one or both of those two to control the boots required during the installation (and in the process, sets the default boot volume). Curiously, the container named VM shows in DU as mounted but is not shown in /Volumes at all. Wonder where it is mounted?

 

[MacInWin]

UPDATE: I found this at eclecticlight.co:

A bootable Catalina APFS container normally contains at least five APFS volumes:

• the read-only system volume, by default on the internal disk named Macintosh HD, which forms the root of the boot file system,
• the writable data volume, by default on the internal disk named Macintosh HD – Data, which is normally hidden from view at /System/Volumes and accessed via firmlinks,
• Preboot, a small volume of around 40-50 MB,
• Recovery, the Recovery Volume, of around 500 MB,
• VM, containing virtual memory caches, which is upwards of 20 KB depending on use.

Clearly, VM can get much larger than 20KB. Wonder if OnyX purges that in maintenance? And what the impact would be?

 

[MacInWin]

OnyX did not change the VM Volume size. That size is dynamic, so there really is 1GB of *something* cached there. This may take some research to find out what's going on.

 

[pm-r]

This may take some research to find out what's going on.

Interesting info Jake, and certainly a lot more involved from Disk Utility in Mavericks.

Here's what I get with the Developer Debug menu item enabled:
(the Grayed out volumes are either unmounted by myself with DU or normally invisible.)






- Patrick
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[MacInWin]

OK, apparently Apple created VM as a partition/volume back in history at some time. It's mounted at /private/var/vm for those interested. Mine is just over 1GB in size because there is a file called "sleepimage" there. If you are interested in sleepimage you can read more in this article from 2011: How to Remove the Disk-hogging Sleepimage File from Your Mac | TechRadar I have no idea what the impact is of removing it, but I did try removing it, got a warning about overriding the root/wheel permissions. I went ahead and rm'd it, then followed the article about using pmset to turn it off. But then I got cold feet about it and reversed the pemset setting back to what it had been and the sleepimage file immediately reappeared with a timestamp of the instant I turned it back on. Might do more research to see what the downside of not having it really is.

As for the OP, this whole thing just reinforces my thinking that the aborted upgrade installation has left your system in an ambiguous state--neither upgraded nor back to original.

 

[pettycash]

I wiped out the HD and reinstalled High Sierra, upgraded to Catalina. The issue was gone now. Thanks. So how do I sync music and book, etc., from Catalina to iPad without using iTunes please?

 

[MacInWin]

Open Music. Connect your iPad. It should show in the sidebar. There should be a box for Sync settings. Open that, then click on the Music tab. Select what you want to sync. Click "Sync" in the lower right corner. Sit back, it will take a while. I don't do books, but I suspect it works in a similar fashion.

 

[ferrarr]

You can sync through the Finder as well. It has all the tabs for General, Music, Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts, Audiobooks, Books, Photos, Files, Info. Everything that iTunes used to do.

 

[pettycash]

Does it essentially work the same way as iTunes, e.g., is it always a one-way sync and cannot do the reverse from iPad to MBP?

 

[MacInWin]

The prompt says "Sync music onto ....Phone" so I guess it goes one way. But getting it the other way could work if you connect the phone, don't sync, but just open it and all the music should be available. Click on one, then from the top bar, do a Select All. Then you may be able to import all from the phone to the MBP Music. For just a few, or a new, I don't know what you would have to do.

 

[ferrarr]

Does it essentially work the same way as iTunes, e.g., is it always a one-way sync and cannot do the reverse from iPad to MBP?

No, it most likely won't work from the device to the computer. It's a DRM thing.

 

[MacInWin]

It's a DRM thing.

?????? How does DRM figure in the sync process? DRM should affect both ways, if it has any impact al all.

 

[pm-r]

No, it most likely won't work from the device to the computer. It's a DRM thing.

Hmmm...??? That seems highly unlikely as it was basically Steve Jobs himself who launched an attack against the DRM stuff. I would suspect that Apple and their OSs still supports and honours that fact.


- Patrick
======

 

[ferrarr]

Sorry, I'm assuming the music was just copied to the device. If the music was purchased, there is no need to transfer it from the device, It can be downloaded by the purchaser, to the computer.

 

[chscag]

I believe iMazing 2 has been updated for Catalina. Sending music from his device to his Mac should work providing he's using the right software. That's why we recommend iMazing 2 as a must have app. And since it's on sale right now, it's a good time to purchase it.

 

[pettycash]

I tried to sync songs and books from MBP to iPad with Catalina, but only the songs got synced and the books could not get through and all the books originally on the iPad were removed. Does anyone know why books cannot be synced and what should I do?

 

[MacInWin]

@pettycash, how did you try to sync books? Given that iTunes has been divided into three separate apps, Books, Music, TV, the process is completely different. Books are synced through Finder. Your iPad should show up in Finder when attached, and when you select it, you see a set of things you can work with, with Books being one. However, the only option I see is "Sync books onto <<device>>" so I don't know if you can move books from the iPad to the Mac. However, you can select which books on the Mac to sync to the iPad.

As for the removed books, do you have a recent backup of the iPad with the books in it? You can restore from there and get them back. On the other hand if you have the books on your Mac, then Finder should sync them to the iPad if you enable it.

 

[pettycash]

Hi Jake, I did exactly what you described in your first paragraph. In hindsight, I could not see any book populated to the MBP for me to select from. Thus, although I selected all books to sync, nothing ended up being synced. Strange, there was no such problem with songs and I could see and selectable songs to sync.

Further, I was trying to sync from MBP to iPad and I understood it did not work in reverse.

 

[MacInWin]

Just to be clear, you opened the Books app on the MBP and there were no books there? That means you have no books on the Mac. And the sync then synced that "no books" to the iPad. Were the books ever on the Mac, and do you have them in a backup that you can restore them? Do you have a backup of the iPad with the books there?