Using Terminal in Recovery Mode

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Freeflight Author

Level 1

11 points

Using Terminal in Recovery Mode

In Recovery Mode on a Mac mini6,1 Terminal does not recognise the software update command

Mac mini, macOS 10.14

Posted on Dec 28, 2023 6:44 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

HWTech

Level 9

68,684 points

Dec 28, 2023 8:07 PM in response to Freeflight

That is because the macOS installer is very limited and has very few commands available to be used.

What exactly are you hoping to do? If you need to update the OS, then just select the "Install macOS" or "Reinstall macOS" option. Assuming the version of macOS listed is the same major version or newer than what is currently installed on the boot drive.

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Answer 2

HWTech

Level 9

68,684 points

Dec 28, 2023 9:29 PM in response to Freeflight

At what point during the install did the system hang?

I wonder if maybe the Mini's hard drive is failing. You can try running the Apple Diagnostics to see if any hardware issues are detected. Unfortunately the diagnostics rarely detect issues and some Macs may encounter an error when trying to boot the diagnostics (Cannot Load EFI/Drivers/TestSupport.efi) which is an Apple bug/compatibility issue. You can check the health of the internal drive(s) by using a bootable Linux USB stick. I can provide instructions if you want assuming the Apple Diagnostics do not report any isues.

You can try installing macOS to an external USB3 drive to see if it will complete. When doing this, sometimes when the installer reboots the Mac.....the Mac may try to boot to the internal drive instead of the external drive. If this happens, force a reboot and do an Option Boot by holding down the Option key immediately after the startup chime so you can select the external drive to boot to finish the installation of macOS. You want to select the new macOS boot drive and not the USB installer. Sometimes if the internal drive failure is severe enough, it can even affect performance when booting to external media.

A Mac Mini 6,1 appears to be a Mac Mini (Late 2012) model.

Do you have access to another Mac from 2007 to mid-2020? If so, then you can use that Mac to create a bootable macOS USB installer which would help to eliminate any possible networking issues when reinstalling macOS through recovery mode.

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Answer 3

Freeflight Author

Level 1

11 points

Dec 28, 2023 8:59 PM in response to HWTech

I've been trying to upgrade my Mac mini6,1 from Mojave to Catalina. The install has failed/hung in Recovery mode (Command (⌘)-R) as well as in an attempt to reinstall Mojave or even Mavericks (Option-Command-R and Shift-Option-Command-R). I thought I'd be able to use Terminal in Recovery mode to download and install Catalina. From your reply it seems I can't do that. My Mac mini is pretty much bricked, so my next step will be to try and restore Mojave from a Time Machine backup (although in mid-restore, with 4 hours 47 minutes to run, the screen has gone dark and I can't reactivate it - so I'll give it 5 hours and see what happens). If that fails, I'll try to make a bootable installer - either Catalina if I can, or Mojave if I can't - and see if that will work. Oh, it does take some time. Next step might be to throw the mini out of the window and buy a new machine.

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Answer 4

Freeflight Author

Level 1

11 points

Dec 29, 2023 7:48 PM in response to Freeflight

After the download, during the install. It didn't reach the configuration window, just froze after it said 23 mins to go.

Subsequently, I tried to update via the Recovery process, first to Catalina, then back to Mojave. The downloads failed in both cases.

AFAIK, the drive (reasonably new 500GB SSD) is in excellent condition. I've been using DriveDX for some time, and it has appeared to be reliable - it has spotted a number of pre-fail problems on a couple of older external HDDs that I was able to replace before failure.

Yes the mini is a 6,1 late 2012. I have a macBook7,1 from mid-2010 which I've hacked to run Catalina. I'm now in process of creating a bootable Catalina USB installer on it.

AS mentioned, I'm in the midst of restoring the Mac mini from a Time Machine backup (12 minutes to go, it says...). It appears to be progressing ok, but obviously back to Mojave. When the restore is complete, I'll try the Catalina USB installer rather than the network-based Recovery process.

Thanks very much for your responses and comments so far. Much appreciated.

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Using Terminal in Recovery Mode

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