Upgrading 10.6.8 to El Capitan (10.11)

HWTech wrote:

> You should still be able to boot older versions of macOS that are

> compatible with your hardware.  Any firmware updates should not

> prevent you from using an older OS.

That's the info I was asking about, i.e., whether I could reboot my original 10.6.8 if I wish to go back, i.e., I need it as a fallback path.

> Before you attempt to upgrade macOS make sure to have a good backup.

As I said I would be doing this update to a COPY of my "real" system. I would never update the OS without having backups to revert to. And if it weren't for that firmware concern I would have never posted.

Just as a proof of concept I intend to do this on a USB drive, i.e., clone (using Carbon Copy Cloner) my "real" 10.6.8 to the USB, update that 10.6.8 USB to 10.11 using a bootable 10.11 USB, and if it all works, clone the 10.11 back to a free internal 60GB disk parition (after I make one avaiable). Guess I need to downlad a version of CCC (4.1.24) that runs on 10.11 to to do that clone back since I believe there's that recovery partitioan to take into account (hope 60G is big enough for all this, i.e., one half of my 120G SSD - my real 10.6.8 is in the other half).

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Eau Rouge wrote:

> If you want to keep Snow Leopard on your mac then install El Capitan on

> another drive or partition.

See above.

> One thing to note is I am not sure you can use Terminal in Snow Leopard

> to create a bootable USB installer as it does not understand the

> createinstallmedia command, you can only try.

Some preliminary experiments shows createinstallmedia will launch under 10.6.8. That's consistent with Apple's article "How to get old versions of macOS" (HT211683) which says which OS's can be installed from which OS's., i.e., which Install OS X ...app's will launch.

> As for the firmware it shouldn't affect your Snow Leopard install.

> My Mac Pro, although not running Snow Leopard, is running Lion, El

> Capitan, Sierra, Mojave and Catalina.

> Each OS installs its own firmware, and I have no problems booting

> between the various OS's.

Again, that's the reassurance I'm looking for. Thanks.

> Download El Capitan using this method.

> How to get old versions of macOS – Apple Support

> - - -

> It is also possible to create a bootable USB installer disk using the

> Install OS X El Capitan.app in the Applications folder and the

> createinstallmedia command in the Terminal app. 

Which is precisely what I want to do! Indeed in my original post I referenced the Apple doc HT201372 ("How to create a bootable installer for macOS") which explains all that. It's that article that mentioned about the firmware in the first place which sent me off trying to verify if that was going to be problem rebooting into my original (and untouched) 10.6.8.

Thanks guys for the prompt replies. It's reassuring that I can fall back to my original system. I hope I don't have to because what's forcing me to "upgrade" is mainly because I'm having more and more problems with my browser(s). I still use Firefox 48.0.2 since it's the last FF that works on 10.6.8. But more and more websites are now failing to work correctly. Case in point, these forums. I can't even log into discussions.apple.com! None of my other browsers (e.g., old Chrome) work either. So I am forced to use a Safari on my iPhone 5s (who's iOS is itself is also out of date - yet another story). As best as I can tell I cannot quote here using the discussions.apple.com iPhone UI. Hence the old style quoting convention I am using above. And no, I didn't type all this on that 5s's dinky little keyboard. I created this on my computer, put it in my email, and picked it up on the iPhone. What a pain!

I finally got back to this "project". The short answer for the result of attempting to create a bootable El Capitan USB is it failed.  While the createinstallmedia inside of Install OS X El Capitan.app launches in 10.6.8, it fails near the beginning trying to erase the destination DMG. Here's the output:

---------------------------------------------

Ready to start.

To continue we need to erase the disk at /Volumes/Untitled 1.

If you wish to continue type (Y) then press return: y

Failed to start erase of disk due to error (-9999, 0).

A error occurred erasing the disk.

---------------------------------------------

So I think createinstallmedia just cannot run on 10.6.8 even if does launch. Would have been nice if the documentation said that!

So giving up on that path I tried to actually install El Capitan on to the USB instead of creating a bootable installer USB. The short answer here is it too failed. It starts the install and apparently part 1 show a progress bar and then reboots. Part 2 after the reboot again shows another progress bar but this time only a small amount of progress before the screen goes all grey and displays a circle with a line through it. I guess you can't do an (update) install to a flash drive! So blocked again.

Finally, out of desperation and the last attempt, I cloned my 10.6.8 to a hard drive partition and tried the update install again. Part 1 was the same as with the USB, shows a progress bar and reboots. After the reboot, just like the USB install, another progress bar is displayed. Also like the USB case it make a small amount of progress and then again another all grey screen. But unlike the USB case, no circle with a line through it.

Now it's usually against my better principles to allow a screen to show no progress, no nothing, without just forcing a reboot. But given this was may last attempt I decided to let it go. I had other things to do anyhow and I did hear some disk activity so what the heck? 

I think it was about 40 minutes later the machine rebooted and what do you know, El Capitan came up asking for my Apple ID!. After I gave it that I could log into one of my accounts.  Pretty rude of it for not giving me any feedback ! Is that normal?

So it looks like I finally have a running El Capitan :-) And it's 10.11.6. I didn't yet check if there are any updates. Since the other accounts seemed to work I got up enough courage to log into my REAL account. There were some problems there but that's to be expected since some (most?) of my software launched at startup isn't 10.11 compatible.

I then rebooted back into my Snow Leopard account. It seemed initially no real damage was done. But as time went on I did find a few "problems" (5 of them) but they all were fixable.

That's it so far so I now downloading critical updated apps that I use that are 10.11 compatible. Top priority is Carbon Copy Cloner so I can back up this thing. Next is XCode and the developer tools.

Some research leads me to believe XCode 8.2.1 is the version for 10.11.6. But could someone confirm that? Or should it be XCode 8.2? And does that also install the command line tools too? Developer tools does have a separate download for Command_Line_Tools_macOS_10.11_for_Xcode_8.2 (but no 8.2.1 if I recall). Do I need to download that too? I think I also read that the tool xcode-select will cause the (appropriate?) command line tools to be installed. Should I use that instead for the tools.

In response to Eau Rouge:

> Snow Leopard can't make the bootable USB installer...

According to Apple's "How to get old versions of macOS" (HT211683) the highest I can install from 10.6 is 10.11. So I should be able to make a bootable USB from the InstallMacOSX.dmg it references for download.

> El Capitan is now a very old OS and some of the problems with Safari you experience

> in Snow Leopard will possibly still be experienced in El Capitan as the older versions

> of Safari

I don't experience any problems with Snow Leopord Safari because I never use it. My browser of choice is Firefox. It's not being able to go past version 48 which is the main driving factor pushing me to do this. It's having more an more problems with sites, like the example I said in a previous post, i.e., this site, forcing me to do all these exchanges on an iPhone. Other sites include Apple's store, youtube problems (albeit not too serious), and an ever growing list of others.

> Your 2010 Mac Pro can upgrade to macOS High Sierra or macOS Mojave, if you want to

> upgrade to Mojave the mac needs to have a 'Metal' capable graphics card installed.

Yeah, I know that :-(

> If you want to upgrade to High Sierra (10.13) or Mojave (10.14) you would need to

> install Mac OS X El Capitan first

> Then open Safari and read this article,

> How to get old versions of macOS – Apple Support

> Although I am not entirely sure if the links for High Sierra or Mojave which redirect

> you to the App Store will

> open the download page correctly, again all you can do is try.

Heh, that's the article I just mentioned above. Apple's HT articles fortunately do display ok in my FF 48.!

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In response to HWTech:

> I do not recommend dual booting on your main internal drive.

> - - -

> In your case you only have a 120GB SSD which is barely enough room for a

> single OS to operate properly.

> - - -

> Plus you usually want to avoid completely filling an SSD since it can cause an SSD

> to run slower and wear out much faster.

I should have mentioned a another detail why 60 GB is more than enough. I always keep my home directory on another drive. The boot disk is keep entirely distinct. The reasoning behind this I can boot different OS's and still use my same home directory. My home directory is on a 2 TB hard drive in my Mac Pro. The 60 GB boot SSD drive is using only about half of the 60 GB. That half includes some additional stuff like a few user libraries, etc. generated by some apps I use. I use /Applications very sparingly for stuff I install (or unless the app requires it be in /Applications).  So, after 10 years, still 50% space available, i.e., leaving plenty of space for paging. And on that topic, I have 24 GB of RAM just to try to minimize paging and hopfully some of the wear and tear of the SSD. In hindsight, 24 GB might have been a bit of overkill!

So at this point Snow Leopard plus any additions is taking about 50%. Assuming 10.11 (or whatever) is a bit bigger I still think that 60 GB is still more than enough to hold it without pinching it's toes.

> Except for possibly an LTS version, Firefox no longer supports macOS 10.11.

It is my understanding FF's up to at least 78 supports all Mac OS's between 10.7 and 10.11. It's using 10.6 that's keeping me from going forward to one of those. If I recall correctly, sometime between versions between 50 and 65 Maozilla changed the addon architecture invalidating the majority of their addons, a bunch of which I use. :-( Sort of defeats the whole reason to use FF but that's off topic! I would probably end up using one of those 50 to 65's.

> I don't know if you can upgrade from 10.6 directly to 10.13 or not as I have heard

> that 10.11 may be required first.

That "How to get old versions of macOS" (HT211683) article says no for going directly to 10.13. Have to get to 10.11 first.

> Keep in mind booting such an old system using USB may be extremely slow if the Mac

> only has USB2 ports.

Yes, I know that. I waited this long. Waiting a little longer is not a problem. :-)

Test reply since my actual reply doesn’t appear.😮