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Stuck in vicious upgrade loop

I am in a frustrating upgrade loop that I can't seem to get out of despite trying a lot of things.

The problem started when I attempted to upgrade from Mojave to Catalina...all seemed to be going well until I got to the Catalina install reboot phase, at which point I got an error telling me that I didn't have enough disk space (even though it allowed me to start the process).

Since then, I have tried the following:

Boot in to recover mode, re-install Mojave. It won't let me do this either, as I only have 4GB remaining and it says it needs an additional 7.4GB.
I have tried to free up disk space from Terminal window, which is accessible from Utilities in Recovery Mode. No matter what I remove, the amount of free disk space never goes down, which is I suspect due to Time Machine not allowing things to be actually deleted.
I found some documentation on how to clear up space using the tmutil command line, but this is not available from the command line in recovery mode.
Tried rebooting in to Safe Mode, which it won't do(just ignores the Shift key on boot). It boots normally and when I log in, it attempts the Catalina upgrade process again, which ends at the same disk space error.
Tried booting in to Target mode, but it is a MacBook Pro and no matter what cable I try to connect to it (USB-C to USB-C, USB-A to USB-C, USB-B to USB-C), nothing seems to see the disk on the Target Macbook Pro. If I can get in to Target mode, I may be able to free up enough space to allow the upgrade to continue, or the Mojave recovery install.
Tried zapping PRAM...also does not appear to work although this should have no effect.

Does anyone know of a way from Recovery Mode command line to prevent the Catalina upgrade process from attempting to continue? This would seem to be the most straightforward path, then I can clean up my TIme Machine backups and have enough space to install.

I cannot see any path out of this absent formatting disk at this point, which I really want to avoid. Any help or new ideas would be appreciated.

MacBook Pro

Posted on Oct 9, 2019 3:55 PM

Top-ranking reply

brenden dv

Community Specialist

Posted on Oct 13, 2019 9:54 AM

Hey there gregoryfromburlingame,

Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities. I understand you’re having some issues completing the install of macOS Catalina. I’ll be happy to help with this.

It sounds like you have a Time Machine backup which is great. If this was recently backed up, you should be able to boot into recovery and restore your computer from your Time Machine backup. Take a look at this article for info on how to do this:

Restore your Mac from a backup

You could also erase what’s on your Macintosh HD from recovery, then complete the install of macOS Catalina. After doing that, you could bring your info over from Time Machine but it’s important you make sure the Time Machine backup is recent so you don’t lose any personal data.

You could also boot into recovery and install macOS on an external drive with these steps:

How to create a bootable installer for macOS

Once it’s installed, you can boot to that drive and use Migration Assistant to migrate your data from your Mac to the external drive. This would allow you to save your data. Then you could erase the Macintosh HD, install the update, and Migrate your data back from the external drive to your Mac. These articles have more info:

How to select a different startup disk

How to move your content to a new Mac

If you have concerns about your data in any of these scenarios, you can always reach out to Apple Support to help using this link:

Contact Apple Support

Cheers

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Stuck in vicious upgrade loop

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