createinstallmedia command for Sierra is broken

I am using Install macOS Sierra 12.6.06. The installer has been used to upgrade an El Capitan OS on an external drive.

Here, "untitled" is a freshly formatted GUID/HFS+ 16GB USB key.

Joes-Air:~ joe$ sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app

Password:

/Volumes/untitled is not a valid volume mount point.

Joes-Air:~ joe$

The error msg appears to be false:

Joes-Air:~ joe$ ls -la /Volumes

total 264

drwxr-xr-x@ 11 root wheel 374 Dec 9 17:43 .

drwxr-xr-x 32 root wheel 1156 Dec 1 22:54 ..

lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 1 Dec 9 17:23 AstroTera -> /

drwxrwxrwx 1 joe staff 131072 Jan 1 1980 AstroTeraWi

drwxrwxr-x 16 joe staff 612 Nov 29 03:52 Install OS X El Capitan

drwxrwxr-x@ 13 joe staff 510 Dec 9 17:20 OS X 10.11 Install Disk - 10.11.6

drwxrwxr-x 7 joe staff 306 Dec 9 17:42 SIerra

drwxrwxr-x 7 joe staff 306 Dec 1 16:49 i Catal

drwxrwxr-x 39 joe staff 1394 Dec 2 00:02 macOS Mojave 10.14 Install - 10.14.6

drwxrwxr-x@ 17 joe staff 646 Dec 9 17:20 macOS Mojave 10.14 Install - 10.14.6 1

drwxrwxr-x 6 joe staff 272 Dec 9 17:43 untitled

The problem is reproducible with other flash drives, other partitions on external hard drives.

This method and the other two in https://www.macworld.com/article/3092900/how-to-create-a-bootable-macos-sierra-installer-drive.html all fail

DiskMaker X 6 fails with an error that it can't eject the target volume to erase it.

Install Disk Creator fails with an error that it can't create an alias.

How do I make a bootable Sierra installer in 2020?

MacBook Air

Posted on Dec 9, 2020 4:05 PM

Top-ranking reply

HWTech

Community+ 2026

Level 9

70,202 points

Posted on Dec 9, 2020 9:47 PM

The macOS 10.12 installer has had an error for over a year now and Apple has declined to fix the error and instead decided to hide the problem by removing most of the links to the Sierra installer. You need to use this command before you can use the createinstallmedia command listed in the Apple article.

sudo  plutil  -replace  CFBundleShortVersionString  -string "12.6.03"  /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app/Contents/Info.plist

It is amazing that a large tech company like Apple refuses to apply a simple one character change to their installer after a year knowing there is a problem. This is proof that Apple has some internal issues. It is also amazing that they cannot make an OS & hardware independent method of creating a bootable macOS USB installer.

FYI in the future use the "Code Insertion" option when pasting Terminal commands & output for easier reading.

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createinstallmedia command for Sierra is broken

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