he “not valid mount point” problem?

Eau Rouge wrote:

Yosemite, El Capitan, High Sierra and Mojave can all create bootable USBs, the problem is confined to Sierra.

One workaround people have found is to use the old expired Install macOS Sierra.app to make a bootable USB, and after it has been created just to swap in the Install macOS Sierra.app of the new installer.

Thank you, Eau Rouge; this method was in the back of my mind, but I had yet to try it. I see that others were also successful using this method. After spending a couple hours going through my data backups, I found that I had indeed saved a copy of the old Sierra installer .app on an external hard drive. I also had an old flash drive that was a Sierra installer drive, and it has the old installer. Aside from having squirreled away a copy of the installer, I don't know what other people will be able to do (aside from getting it via torrent, which is risky) if they need to reinstall with Sierra.

I built an installer on a USB flash drive and confirmed a successful install from start to finish. I then created a DMG of the drive in Disk Utility; a disk image which can be used to save time from having to wait for the installer to be built and then swap out the Install macOS Sierra.app file. I also tested this method, and it works flawlessly to recreate the drive using the Restore function in Disk Utility. This is actually the method that people had to use pre-Mavericks (10.9.x) as the createinstallmedia utility was first included with the Mavericks installer. I may do a write-up on the Restore method later, but I will probably create a new thread and link to it from this article since it sort of strays from the original title.

Thanks again for the help, Eau Rouge and HWTech. I greatly appreciate it.

ezbless

As you know the certificates for macOS downloads expired in October 2019, and Apple had to renew these for their OS downloads. They did, even letting Yosemite to be downloaded once again.

Yosemite, El Capitan, High Sierra and Mojave can all create bootable USBs, the problem is confined to Sierra.

Disk Maker and Disk Creator use the createinstallmedia command under the hood of a pretty GUI, so that is why they don't work.

I have taken this issue with the Sierra download to the Community Operations forum and have been assured they have taken it to the software engineering department, that was over two months ago and we are no further forward. I even got one smart guy suggesting I wasn't naming my USBs correctly, even though I mentioned I was perfectly capable of creating bootable USBs using the other OS's. so perhaps they don't want to acknowledge the problem.

One workaround people have found is to use the old expired Install macOS Sierra.app to make a bootable USB, and after it has been created just to swap in the Install macOS Sierra.app of the new installer.

Are you trying to create a macOS USB installer? If so which OS are you trying to create?

You need to make sure you are providing the proper paths for the command. Also make sure you are using the volume name for your USB stick (best to just drag & drop the USB volume onto the Terminal instead of typing the path so it autofills the correct path for you.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

I believe the macOS 10.12 Sierra installer is broken when it comes to creating a bootable USB drive since I've received this error as well when I tried it a couple months ago. If you can run Sierra, then your computer should be able to run High Sierra as well.

I, too have the same problem with the macOS Sierra installer. It would appear that Apple has effectively declared war on its users who want or need to use an older OS version than the current version. Many have referred to this as 'planned obsolescence', and after seeing the direction that Apple has been going with things lately; I have to agree.

I tested this issue as follows:

1. 2017 MacBook Pro running macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 - Result: '<VolumeName> is not a valid volume mount point.'
2. 2011 iMac running OS X Yosemite 10.10.5 - Result: '<VolumeName> is not a valid volume mount point.'
3. 2012 MacBook Pro running OS X El Capitan 10.11.6 - Result: '<VolumeName> is not a valid volume mount point.'

I additionally tested the issue by using Install Disk Creator (v1.3 (1); v 1.4 (3) ) and DiskMakerX (v6rc5):

• Install Disk Creator - "An error occurred. Try ejecting the destination disk and reinserting it, or rebooting. It probably couldn't be unmounted to erase it."

• DiskMakerX - "Sorry, your OS X Install app or DMG may be incomplete. Delete your install application, then download it again from the App Store."

Here are my results from Apple's sanctioned use of the createinstallmedia command line tool in Terminal:

As you can see, the error, "/Volumes/1012 is not a valid volume mount point.", is showing in Terminal.

In each of the scenarios above, the latest version of the macOS Sierra installer (10.12.6) with unexpired certificate (2029 expiration) was used. I double-clicked the .app file and confirmed that it launches normally and successfully to permit an upgrade install to proceed (only on OSes older than 10.12). It should also be noted that I used a total of three separate USB flash drives. As a bonus, I was able to successfully create the High Sierra and Mojave installers without issue on the same three flash drives.

I am going to also test this theory with my OS X El Capitan (10.11.6) installer as well, and I will report back with my results later. But for now, what else can we conclude except that Apple has declared war with its ultra-aggressive campaign of planned obsolescence??

ezbless wrote:

I, too have the same problem with the macOS Sierra installer. It would appear that Apple has effectively declared war on its users who want or need to use an older OS version than the current version. Many have referred to this as 'planned obsolescence', and after seeing the direction that Apple has been going with things lately; I have to agree.

I think it is just pure laziness and not really thinking things through. At least this is the impression I get when I try to deal with anyone at Apple. I also think the Apple employees are severely hampered by internal rules & politics. I've given up contacting Apple directly except for the most severe of issues. While my contacts try to be helpful rarely is there any resolution.

I personally cannot download any macOS installer (except for El Capitan & Sierra) from within Catalina since Catalina/App Store blocks it as it considers the system up to date. If Apple really cared they would provide all their macOS installers so that can be downloaded from outside the App Store like they do with El Capitan & Sierra and provide them in an easy to "burn" format so people can create the installer of their choice (especially if they only have one Mac).

DiskMakerX - "Sorry, your OS X Install app or DMG may be incomplete. Delete your install application, then download it again from the App Store.• "

Check to make sure you have the full installer downloaded to the "Applications" folder. A lot of times the Applications folder will just contain the stub installer (about 20MB). If you only have the stub you may find the rest of the installer on the root of the drive in a folder name something like "macOS Install Data".

As you can see, the error, "/Volumes/1012 is not a valid volume mount point.", is showing in Terminal.

In each of the scenarios above, the latest version of the macOS Sierra installer (10.12.6) with unexpired certificate (2029 expiration) was used. I double-clicked the .app file and confirmed that it launches normally and successfully to permit an upgrade install to proceed (only on OSes older than 10.12). It should also be noted that I used a total of three separate USB flash drives. As a bonus, I was able to successfully create the High Sierra and Mojave installers without issue on the same three flash drives.

The macOS 10.12 Sierra installer is broken at least when creating a bootable USB drive. Apple has been made aware of the issue, but so far it has not been fixed.

I am going to also test this theory with my OS X El Capitan (10.11.6) installer as well, and I will report back with my results later. But for now, what else can we conclude except that Apple has declared war with its ultra-aggressive campaign of planned obsolescence??

The macOS 10.11 El Capitan installer appears to work fine for me.

While I haven't had issues actually making the other macOS USB installers I have had issues running them from USB (High Sierra and Mojave). I have found a work around by creating a bootable recovery mode USB drive from the broken HS & Mojave installers so it acts just like Recovery Mode.