Forced upgrade to Sonoma: can it be stopped?

kostby wrote:

In Recovery, after erasing your primary SSD drive, (re)connect to a WiFi network, then insert your bootable Monterey USB stick. Then wait a moment or two until Monterey appears as a device, select it, and proceed with the installation. It took about an hour to install from my ancient USB flash drive.

Yeah. That all worked fine. Not quite as fast as the Sonoma install, however. 😄

Then I selected the latest Time Machine backup device (a USB-connected 7200rpm HDD), and it restored about 275GB in about 90 minutes.

That would be nice. I have a 1 TB and it took overnight to restore. I'm going to have to redo it though. Spotlight isn't working. Last time I had this kind of Spotlight problem was when I tried to install an additional OS version. I had to wipe the hard drive to fix it.

In Recovery, after erasing your primary SSD drive, (re)connect to a WiFi network, then insert your bootable Monterey USB stick. Then wait a moment or two until Monterey appears as a device, select it, and proceed with the installation. It took about an hour to install from my ancient USB flash drive.

Then I selected the latest Time Machine backup device (a USB-connected 7200rpm HDD), and it restored about 275GB in about 90 minutes.

I got the Sonoma upgrade prompt this morning. (iMac, Intel i9, Monterey 12.7.2) I had previously turned off ALL updates including Check for Updates ... but my system still checks anyway!

Actually I got 2 upgrade prompts: one for Sonoma, another just said Updates Ready to Install. Both had only an "X" in the upper left corner of their respective boxes. But I found that if you hover the mouse over each box, the word "Details" appears.

Based on what I read previously in this thread and others, I carefully clicked on "Details" in the Sonoma upgrade box; it took me to a web page about Sonoma, which I then closed. Similarly when I clicked on "Details" in the "Updates are Ready" box. Closed that one also.

I then closed Firefox and shut down the iMac. Then restarted.

Nothing got upgraded. It looks like I escaped the auto-upgrade, at least this time.

So, hovering & clicking "Details" appears to be the way to avoid the upgrade.

BTW, I also checked the following folders and there was no evidence of any Sonoma download:

/Applications

/System/Volumes/Update/MobileAsset/Assetsv2

/System/Library/AssetsV2/com.apple.MobileAsset_MacSoftwareUpdate

BDAqua wrote:

If still need be…

Open Terminal and run each of these one at a time

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

sudo /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -seed -lint -r -f -v -dump -domain local -domain system -domain user -domain network

killall Dock

sudo mdutil -E /

sudo mdutil -i on /

Rebuilding a drive index can take a long time, so be prepared to wait whether you do it through the System Preference panel or the command line.

Thanks for the list. I'll try all of that. But I'm not hopeful. I did all of that on my new computer after I had tried to install both Ventura and Sonoma. The only thing that worked was a wipe and reinstall. At least now I'm ready for it and I have the Air to use. The other day I only had the 2017 Intel. That was painful.

Knock on wood ... this has not happened to me (...yet). But I did a bit of investigating on my own iMac today (Intel i9, Monterey 12.7.2).

I have two accounts, both admin, let's call them A and B. The A account is the first one created when I installed the iMac and is where I do all my truly system admin work (installs, updates, etc.)

In the A account, when I checked Software Update the only option I had enabled was Check for Updates. I disabled (unchecked) Check for Updates, the text greyed out, I clicked OK and no longer had any indication of any available updates, Sonoma or otherwise. Also, the System Preferences icon on my Dock lost its little red indicator showing any updates available.

Rebooted the iMac, logged back into account A, there was no red indicator on System Preferences; I opened Software Update, there was no text or graphics whatsoever about any updates. It was clearly not checking anything. Cool, I thought.

Then I logged out of account A and logged into account B. Lo and behold the System Preferences icon on that Dock had its little red indicator showing, as did the Software Update icon in System Preferences. When I opened Software Update I found that both Check for Updates and Download new updates when available were both checked. (I had probably not unchecked them previously.) I unchecked both ... and this time the text for Check for Updates remained black (it did not grey out even though it was unchecked). I went in & out of this a few times and despite disabling Check for Updates the system checks anyway.

I then logged out of account B and went back to account A. NOW, even in account A, although Check for Updates is unchecked, the text is also black (not grey) and the system checks for updates regardless. I suspect the black text is an indicator that checking for updates is actually still enabled. (I also shut down & restarted to see if that made any difference; it did not.)

So, clearly something is amiss in the system's settings (at a minimum regarding Check for Updates).

Among other things, it proved to me that each user account has its own full set of preferences. And it would appear that if you have multiple user accounts on a Mac you should make sure to disable Software Update in all accounts.

I think I'd uncheck download new updates when available.

Have seen over in Sonoma the same

Suggested to this User and maybe to yourself to download the Full Version of Sonoma manually - Terminal

Keep it in the Applications folder and never actual launch Sonoma

Only meant as a possible workaround while Apple Investigates this issue

PS - Major Winter Storm with bitterly cold 70 kmp winds coming

i.tom wrote:

Same today, 13 Jan 2023, after a system restart I had the forced upgrade from Monterey to Sonoma despite my settings being not to allow automatic updates. I'd been swithering about updating to Ventura too. Ha ha. Well done Apple.

Well, now's your chance. An easier option is to just erase the hard drive and restore the OS from recovery. But if you do that, your only restore option is Ventura. 😄 In all fairness, I have been using Ventura on my 2023 Air for several months now. It's not awful. It does fix the Finder Airdrop lockup bug. And the Finder-based UI for a USB-connected device is much improved. Those are the only two noticeable improvements from Monterey.

However, I am disappointed in the Time Machine restore. It wasn't 100% successful. iCloud is confused. I had to re-download all of my e-mail. Spotlight is broken. I'm going to have to redo it all as it it was a new machine. Hopefully Recovery will allow me to restore Monterey this time. How ironic that this is the only time I've really needed to use Time Machine.

I haven't seen this prompt; I have an M1 Pro MBP running Monterey (12.7), but years ago I used a DNS blocker on my LAN to block access to Apple's update servers because their update notifications were becoming just too frequent, pushy and eroding my control.

I wonder if I bypass my DNS server and leave my Mac exposed (as it were) whether it might also decide to update itself.

[Edited by Moderator]

MartinR wrote:

Is there a way to check (or better yet, set) softwareupdate settings via Terminal? So far, my research has not come up with any Terminal commands to do that.

If only softwareupdate --ignore had not been deprecated!

It doesn't matter. It's been definitively proven that Apple can, and will, ignore those settings. Upgrades to Sonoma are required. End users do not have any option other than restoring the system after the upgrade back to whatever it was before.

Alas, I got a bit impatient. I wasn't happy with the state of my iCloud settings and tried to fix something that apparently either wasn't broken or wasn't any more broken than it is normally. This is why I have a separate admin account. I just deleting my user and I'm setting it up again.

MartinR wrote:

Nothing got upgraded. It looks like I escaped the auto-upgrade, at least this time.

So, hovering & clicking "Details" appears to be the way to avoid the upgrade.

I can confirm that a verify similar thing happened on my Ventura machine the other day. I did exactly as you describe and I'm still running Ventura.

But I would not go so far as to say that this procedure could have avoided the upgrade. I know when I got upgraded, I didn't hover over the notification and click details. But I also know that I never had that chance. The Sonoma notification was accompanied by a restart now or later notification. The span between seeing the notification and then running Sonoma was far too fast. There was no way to have downloaded Sonoma in that timeframe. My internet just isn't that fast. As I have said elsewhere, I couldn't have installed it either. My SSD simply isn't that fast. I had only ever done minor upgrades on this computer and only manually. This was the only automatic update and restart that had ever happened and it happened in a tiny fraction of the time than any other update had ever occurred.

BDAqua wrote:

I think I'd uncheck download new updates when available.

Unchecked long ago. This setting was most definitely ignored.

Also confirming that I was forced an update today. I am on an Intel i7 Mac Mini 2019. I did NOT intend to update to Sonoma just yet due to software issues with Logic Pro using legacy software but was planning on doing it later. Tonight the same notification popped up like always asking if I wanted to upgrade to Sonoma (from Monterey). And again I clicked "no" as usual. Whilst in an open project in Logic, a notification suddenly pops up that my Mac will restart in 60 seconds with a countdown. I had no alternative choices. Then Mac went through it's 10 minute update which appeared normal. I thought maybe I missed a system update. When everything came back online, I was suddenly flying over Sonoma county with vineyards below. This is infuriating! Now a handful of legacy plugins I had purchased to use with Logic no longer work and a series of projects I had saved in Logic no longer open because those legacy plugins are missing or can't be found. Thanks a lot Apple!

"You can never be too rich, or have too many backups."

Because stuff happens...

In my haste to restore my Apple Silicon MacBook Pro last night, I inadvertently erased the USB-C stick clone, instead of the primary SSD while attempting to erase and restore it.

So I discovered that I also had to create a bootable Monterey USB stick, because Recovery insisted on installing Ventura on that computer, not Monterey.

So, still restoring data from the 2nd backup device (of 4 other devices, including both Time Machine and Bombich backups.)

Same today, 13 Jan 2023, after a system restart I had the forced upgrade from Monterey to Sonoma despite my settings being not to allow automatic updates. I'd been swithering about updating to Ventura too. Ha ha. Well done Apple.