OS X Mavericks installations fails after reboot, stuck. Safe mode does not help

Question

OS X Mavericks installations fails after reboot, stuck. Safe mode does not help

Quick Summary: Installation of Mavericks gets stuck after reboot, no safe mode boot, only recovery console works.

Update: Currently following procedure http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2570?viewlocale=en_US

I have upgrade 4 out of my 5 machines, but the most important iMac 27" mid 2010 went through with the installation and then got stuck on a grey screen with the apple logo and a spinning wheel for 6 hours.

A few restarts did not help.

Started from recovery a new download and install. But it ended up in the same end.

Trying safe mode/boot, but does not finish
Going back to recovery and try repair disk, does not help
Going to recovery using terminal resetpassword and then setting the permissions for all login accounts back, no good.
Going to recovery and using terminal to check /var/log of the mounted Macintosh HD.
log shows at the end "The installation was successfull"
System.log shows
- com.apple.kextd: Failed to send personalities to the kernel.
- Error: Couldn't send kext personalities to the IOCatalogue.
- Exited with code: 71
- Throttling respawn: Will start in 8 seconds.
Resetting NVRAM/PRAM and reboot, waiting so far stuck but I still hear some disk activity, waiting a little bit longer.

Any help?

Posted on Oct 23, 2013 11:30 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Oct 23, 2013 11:32 AM in response to patrick.weichmann

1. Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC).

2. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions - Lion/Mountain Lion

Boot to the Recovery HD:

Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.

Repair

When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported then click on the Repair Permissions button. When the process is completed, then quit DU and return to the main menu. Select Restart from the Apple menu.

3. Re-download and reinstall Mavericks.

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Answer 2

Oct 23, 2013 11:51 AM in response to Kappy

Dear Kappy,

The procedure seems to be outdated, so I continued with the little bit newer one that I followed earlier. But so far repairing disk, resetting permission and resetting nvram/pram did not help.

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Answer 3

Oct 23, 2013 11:58 AM in response to patrick.weichmann

I could not update the original post so I have to post here:

The NVRAM/PRAM reset did not help.

Latest attempt was to boot into Safe Mode (Verbose) using left Shift + CMD + V and the MAC got stuck at

Waiting for DSMOS...

flow_divert_kctl_disconnect (0): disconnecting group1

this is after it says macintosh HD was mounted as root_device and com.apple.launchd saying has started and that it will log to /dev/console.

After that I get some /dev/rdisk0s2 (NO WRITE)

some bootcachecontrol messages about unable to open Merged.playlist and Login.playlist and added 32-bit shared cache to the low priority batch

VMS Swap Subsystem is ON and then the 2 messages mentioned first

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Answer 4

Oct 23, 2013 12:04 PM in response to patrick.weichmann

Resetting the NVRAM/PRAM was somewhat of a mistake, as it did away with me being able to go into recovery console.

Holding ALT did not present any boot options and it just boots into the regular partition where it gets stuck.

I have no USB Stick with the Mavericks and CMD+R did also not help. Looks like I have to create a usb boot disk and then try again.

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Answer 5

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Oct 23, 2013 12:16 PM in response to patrick.weichmann

Outdated in what way, exactly. If it is I can't fix it if you don't tell me where it needs fixing.

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Answer 6

Oct 23, 2013 12:23 PM in response to Kappy

Dear Kappy,

I think I misunderstood the SMC part and confused it with NVRAM/PRAM.

I followed the instruction about the SMC reset for intel Based iMacs.

Recovery Mode is not available to me anymore as I followed the instructions from Apple support, mentioned in my updated main entry to this discussion.

Reinstallation without the SMC reset did not help. I think it could be the memory expansion or the canon printer drivers? There is not much more to this iMac.

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Answer 7

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Oct 23, 2013 12:28 PM in response to patrick.weichmann

Do you have a Recovery HD from your previous systems?

Boot Using OPTION key:

1. Restart the computer.

2. Immediately after the chime press and hold down the

"OPTION" key.

3. Release the key when the boot manager appears.

4. Select the desired disk icon from which you want to boot.

5. Click on the arrow button below the icon.

Look for another Recovery HD, although you need the OS 10.9 one if it's available. If it's not, then you will need to start over from scratch by erasing the drive then reinstalling 10.9.

Install or Reinstall Mavericks, Lion/Mountain Lion from Scratch

Be sure you backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive because the following procedure will remove everything from the hard drive.

Boot to the Recovery HD:

Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.

Erase the hard drive:

1. Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.

2. After DU loads select your startup volume (usually Macintosh HD) from the

left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.

3. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Optionally, click on

the Security button and set the ZeroData option to one-pass. Click on

the Erase button and wait until the process has completed.

4. Quit DU and return to the main menu.

Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion: Select Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion and click on the Install button.

Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible

because it is three times faster than wireless.

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Answer 8

Oct 23, 2013 12:39 PM in response to patrick.weichmann

Update:

SMC reset, no help
remove additional 8 GB RAM from bottom slots, no help
currently downloading Mavericks and preparing an USB install disk, as I lost access to the recovery partition after the NVRAM/PRAM reset

I really do not want to completely erase the computer and start from scratch as it will take a long time and I have had access to the full data using recovery console and terminal.

There does not seem to be a lot of information regarding the com.apple.kextd error above or the verbose safe mode messages.

According to the support kb that I received from Apple Support I still have the following to perform:

Use a an archive and install and then the erase install. But the download is not yet finished.

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Answer 9

Oct 23, 2013 12:51 PM in response to patrick.weichmann

small update: recovery partition boot now possible again, put my old mountain lion boot disk via USB and then I believe the error to have been the bluetooth keyboard that did not send the characters like the other times.

So I was presented the macintosh hd, the recovery partition and the usb install disk as an option.

Always hate to be not sure if you pressed a key, especially on bluetooth gear.

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Answer 10

Oct 23, 2013 12:59 PM in response to patrick.weichmann

Ok after another reboot into recovery console I do see a new message that I have not seen before:

com.apple.kextd: Cache file /System/Libaray/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/Startup/IOKitPersonalities_x86_64. ioplist.gz is out of date; not using.

The other 4 messages with com.apple kextd are the same.

I believe these messages not to be the issue:

I have found that my iMac has canon drivers, but I don't think this to be the issue.
I have seen that I have some version of VMware Fusion on it!!!!!
When I upgraded to mountain lion, did the install not put all the virtualizers into some other folder and marked them as inappropriate. I only got bombarded by parallels on the other systems that it won't work with Mavericks without updating and you could kill the virtual machines, but I have never seen something about VMWare Fusion. Maybe I find out something
The next thing is TeamViewer.

Can I disable the VMware Fusion and Teamviewer even though I cannot log into safe mode, but from recovery console and terminal?

Oh, and the download of mavericks is finished, lets create the usb disk.

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Answer 11

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Oct 23, 2013 1:01 PM in response to patrick.weichmann

Use a an archive and install and then the erase install. But the download is not yet finished.

There is no such installer option. Hasn't been since Leopard.

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Answer 12

Oct 23, 2013 1:05 PM in response to Kappy

Dear Kappy,

What do you mean there is no installer option?

I have been doing it ever since. You just download from App Store the Mavericks and do not execute it, then search for the location and open it and in it there is the dmg to be used etc.

See here for a description:

http://www.macworld.com/article/2056561/how-to-make-a-bootable-mavericks-install -drive.html

I'm going to try method 3 that they recommend now.

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Answer 13

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Oct 23, 2013 1:09 PM in response to patrick.weichmann

There is no Archive and Install option. The installer does not perform and archive and install. What it does is quite different.

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Answer 14

Oct 23, 2013 1:17 PM in response to patrick.weichmann

Ok, Mavericks installer disk using macworld's approach worked perfectly, currently installing an old 2008 MacBook with it or at least trying.

Finally something cool again from Apple to create the disk so easy.

But I did not solve my problem so far.

Now I went into /Library/LaunchDeamons and move VMware and Teamviewer away but I think I also will move the others, i.e. I found out that on that machine I also have Virtual Box installed.

The boot is going on now and I still hear some disk activity which is great to hear. But let's see.

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Answer 15

Oct 23, 2013 1:43 PM in response to patrick.weichmann

I have exactly the same problem. Nothing worked so far …

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