macOS 10.13.4 Causing Installation Log Failures

Hi Adam I didn’t experience your errors BUT when I upgraded to 10.13.4 last night I got a notification from the App Store that there is another update to 10.14.5! I can only assume that another update means that something isn’t working as well as Apple wants. As my iPhone 6S updated its OS without my asking it to (I always leave at least a week before updating). Thus the control of updating IS being wrested away from us users and firmly in the court of Apple’s patrician (I don’t include our distaff as I’m a gentleman:) propeller-heads; this is borne out by a news item (that I haven’t verified yet) that Apple is disabling iPhones which have had their screen repaired by a third party! They DON’T want us messing around with “their” shiny technology:((

Are you enrolled in the beta program? 10.13.5 went into beta right after the release of 10.13.4 (this is how these things pretty much always work).

Not sure about iOS, as I’ve never had an iOS device update without

  1. Asking me
  2. Making me entering my device password

I did have an iPad that was on iOS 10 for many months after 11 was released.

No, not in the beta program. Was very surprised at being forced updated, can’t remember it ever happening before.

This is one reason why I prefer to never do an “automatic” update of the Mac OS, even one “within” the same Mac OS. For OS 10.13.4, given that it had bene a while since OS 10.13.3 was released, and with 7 beta versions of OS 10.13.4, I did a clean, fresh installation of V10.13.4.

With V10.13.5 (now at its second beta), I will most likely download the Combo Updater, and do the update myself. Like the clean installation above, that gives me way more control over the upgrade process.

I would double check that, the only way to have macOS 10.13.5 is to be in the beta program. The latest release is 10.13.4, which came out March 30th.

2 posts were merged into an existing topic: macOS 10.13.4 Warns Users about 32-Bit Apps

Misunderstanding, I don’t have 10.13.5 installed. 10.13.4 was force installed over 10.13.3.

12 posts were split to a new topic: About the “Install system data files and security updates” checkbox in App Store prefs

5 posts were split to a new topic: Apple pushing OS updates

I found the solution here: macOS 10.13.3 Update FAIL · GitHub

Simply follow this:

Restarting again failed and showed the installation log. This time instead of hitting “Restart”, I selected “Startup Disk…” from the menu. This time when I selected the main hard disk it booted successfully, and has been fine ever since.

Sorry for the bump but this happened to me again this week. I am running macOS 10.13.6 and noticed that Security Update 2018-003 had been downloaded. I did not run it at once. The next day after shutting down and trying to start up the installation log appeared just as it did for people postponing the 10.13.4 update. So whatever the underlying problem is, it continues.

Edited to clarify. Here are my App Store preferences:

My complaint is not that the security update tried to install automatically, because my preferences allow security updates to be installed; my complaint is that it failed with a very confusing notification.

Well it’s happening to me suddenly too, on my iMac Pro running 10.3.6. I had installed the Security Update 2018-003 10.13.6. I started experience periodic loss of power to my Drobo 5D drive only to have it start back up on its own in a minute or two. It may be an intermittent problem with the power brick and a replacement has been ordered.

However, after this, I noticed general sluggish behavior of the Mac and decided to restart. I got the aforementioned Log and message that the installation couldn’t be completed. I restarted 3 times and got the log all three times. Finally, like others, I opted to reinstall the system. Before doing so I did try to reset NVRAM and the SMC, and ran Disk First Aid, scanned with ClamXAV and Malwarebytes, and everything else I could think of. Reinstalling did work, but it has continued to happen. After another Drobo power failure/restart (hurry up FedEx!!) today and another reinstall I started looking for more info and found this discussion.

I don’t know much about reading the logs, but I did notice one section in it that read:

Dec 16 19:45:28 iMac-Pro ReportCrash[611]: Time Awake Since Boot: 66 seconds
Dec 16 19:45:28 iMac-Pro ReportCrash[611]:
Dec 16 19:45:28 iMac-Pro ReportCrash[611]: System Integrity Protection: disabled

I’ve never knowingly disabled SIP, and I verified it was Enabled by checking it in Terminal. Perhaps that happens on every boot? I wish I knew what else to look for in the logs, but most of it is meaningless to me. the whole ReportCrash[611] section is quite long and involved.

I’m going to make a note to try holding down Option at boot and try to choose the main startup volume again as suggested here.

Actually, that option only controls background security related updates (e.g. XProtect, MRT & Gatekeeper data). Security Updates that show up in the Mac App Store Software Updates have only been allowed to take place automatically once when Apple felt the need was dire.

Yes, you will need to do that in order to take any next step. Make sure to disconnect all peripherals except wired keyboard and mouse before attempting the update. If that fails, boot into Safe Mode and try there or download the standalone update and run that.

-Al-

That’s what I thought too, then this happened with the Security Update 2018-003 waiting on the App Store and it was forced as well, making me wonder. Anyhow, my main complaint is that the update failed. There is an underlying bug there in the type of installation that runs automatically on a restart or startup, and Apple should fix that. Especially since the situation can cause people to take all kinds of drastic actions, because it looks so scary to the non-expert user (first time it happened, back on 10.13.3, I did a bare metal OS install and then individually installed all my apps, data and settings from disk clone backups. Took half a week. Then Adam posted about it and I felt like an idiot.)

It happened to me again last week. When starting up the computer some kind of system update failed. I think it was 10.13.7. After retrying in vain a few times and getting the same message I went in to Disk Utility from the meny and chose my Startup Disk as a last resort and restarted. which actually seemed to stop the install loop. I was afraid to restart the computer for a few days after that but did finally (by mistake forgetting about the problem) and it restarted ok without trying to install.

The only problems I’ve been having recently are with Time Machine backups failing sometimes since I don’t do them regularly since I don’t use the computer at home so much. In addition my hard drive was very full, with around 9 gb of 500. After that episode I trashed a bunch of stuff and freed up about 80 gb and backed up, after which I successfully installed 10.13.7 (I think it was).

Yesterday I installed Mojave, and it seems you no longer can see what system installations you’ve recently previously done, which is why I’m not positive about the version numbers.

Edit: I corrected above so it reads 10.13.7.

Yeah, that worked for me too, last week, saving me from the installation failing loop.

I don’t disagree and I suspect if Apple knew the root cause they would have done so by now. Despite the number of users reporting the problem here, it still appears to be a minority and doesn’t match my experience, nor that of several dozen others who I know successfully installed it the first time the tried.

The only way it might get fixed is for users having the issue to contact Apple so they can determine what those users have in common. I’m going to guess that most such users have an older Mac out of warranty and hesitate to call. I would also guess that Apple isn’t willing to devote much in the way of engineering assets to an older OS on older equipment.

I Had the same problem today. OSX 10.13.6. The description of the preliminary misbehaviour is spot-on.

Had this happening 2 times by now, quite scary actually as it’s something I had not seen happening before. Is this rather solely related to a software error that might be fixable or could it be related to a failing ssd, etc…?