Problems upgrading to macOS Mojave on MacBook Pro 2018

Robin, you have a valid point, and what you are saying is totally correct, when it comes to unique setups, installations, etc.

What I think you have overlooked here is, some of these people complaining, have erased their internal storage, be it SSD, or Fusion Drive, and still had the installation fail. Since I haven't personally gotten my hands on a newer Mac e.g. 2016+ MacBook / pro with the new ports, and chipsets, I really can't comment here. My best experience here would be to assess anyone having issues with a 2015, or older Mac having problems, simply because I don't have the hands on experience with the newer hardware. I forgot to mention last night that, another friend from my main online community also is part of Macadmins, I'm not really familiar with it, but he said there's been quite a few issues reported there as well. However, because they're more of a private community, I've been told Google is kept out of there, so search results don't really show anything.

There is one more method I would personally try, if I was having issues, but its's up to the individuals here to try, as it would be a bit time consuming based on specific setups. Note, this isn't limited to Mojave, either. The process of which I'm referring to is creating a master install to a drive, then cloning that install to the internal drive of the said Mac. This is how Apple ships the os on new Macs. They create a master install, and image it to the Macs at the manufacturing plant. Otherwise it would take to long to run the installer each time a new machine is produced.

To answer your first question, clone an install bypasses any issues the installer might have. 2, it usually saves time, especially when cloning an install where everything is setup.

To answer your other question about why the average Mac user should bother with this, because I grew up with an Apple community where your average Mac user, was also a professional of some kind, and they commonly knew how to take care of their computers and perform technical stuff as needed. Because of this, that's the genetical expectation I've developed for any Mac user now, and while every single person may not know a lot of tech stuff, it's a good thing to learn.

The only other thing grasping at straws is too swap the 2 rams around.

I still think a genius appointment or phone conversation with support is worthwhile.

There might be something overlooked here.

Also it is an official route into getting it sorted.

As I said before there has not been a large failure on installs and unless this is flagged up the new builds will keep coming without a full installer.

But yeah, the kernel panic is caused in bridge os, not mac os, as described in the error logs. Bridge os is used to integrate the T2 to the main chip, right? That’s why I’ve concluded that it’s a hardware problem, not a software one, as not everyone is facing kernel panics. Quality control is not necessary, after all.

I'm on a 2018 i9 MBP, and I'm not able to upgrade from High Sierra to Mojave either. Part of the installation is executing while I'm still logged into my admin account, and everything seems fine at first, but after logout, the MBP will restart after a while, then sit idle for a short period of time, and then the normal boot process starts, and High Sierra is back, working as before.

When I tried this the first time, there were actually two reboots, so I assume that the installer tried to do something else at first. Can't say. I tried a couple of times, with and without WiFi, with Little Snitch and XFENCE enabled & disabled etc. Always the same result: no installation.

I will wait for the 10.14.1 update, then I will try to upgrade again, and if that doesn't work, I will boot into single-user/recovery (CMD-SR) and run `nvram -c` and `pmset -a restoredefaults`, and then try upgrading again. If that doesn't work, I will contact Apple Support.

Since this was mentioned before: yes, I have had T2 bridgeOS panics on my MBP too, those after wake-from-sleep, but I had no problem fixing that myself. In my case it was a combination of FileVault and power management settings: I have set macOS to destroy the FileVault keys when going into safe sleep (hibernation), which you should do, because otherwise there's no use in enabling FileVault in the first place. Now `pmset -g` still showed some scenarios in which the MBP would wake, namely womp, powernap, networkoversleep, acwake, tcpkeepalive etc., so I assume that for some reason (e.g. power nap, network activity) macOS wanted to wake the MBP from hibernation, but the FileVault keys were destroyed, and since I had disabled normal sleep completely, the machine was then sitting around with the lid closed waiting for FileVault password input, which at some point resulted in bridgeOS panics and instant hard reboots after opening the lid.

I have now disabled all of the stuff that could lead to wake-from-hibernation, and I've also enabled normal sleep again, just in case the MBP still wakes for some other unforseen reason. I haven't had bridgeOS panics for weeks.

Please note that this only covers the wake-from-sleep bridgeOS panics, not the crashes during normal operation. (I haven't had those.) So I don't think that there's a hardware error with the T2, I only think that Apple don't really know what to do with this chip, how to correctly program it, so it will function without hiccups.

Does the Mojave installation catastrophe have anything to do with the T2? Maybe the T2 is a factor, but I can't say.

Under these circumstances, I would have provided the exact same troubleshooting steps as apple. Sometimes it's the best way to identify problems by starting with a clean slate. As long as the data is backed up, nothing is lost but some time, now considering what type of environment the Mac is in, time lost can mean lost money, others it doesn't matter.

It has been my experience that upgrades don't always work out correctly, regardless of OS.

In this situation, I think there have been people on this thread that have started from a clean slate, and the install still failed.

Was the USB tethering personal hotspot going out to the internet with its own WiFi connection through a router, or through your cellular data plan?

Did you ever try to install with the computer WiFi turned off and the computer isolated from the internet (not connected to a Personal hotspot)? (This would have to use an already downloaded Install file, or through a bootable USB drive.)

I wonder what the deal is with the computer's WiFi and this installation? I had the "WiFi hardware not detected" error problem, AND my Network System Preferences pane was empty and I could not add anything even when I clicked the plus sign. Also, I had no network preferences whatsoever in the Library > Preferences folder.

You won't be given a swap unconditionally. They'll want to run various diagnostics and collect various logs to send to their engineers - if it's a software problem, the you'll have to wait for a fix. If they determine that it's your hardware, then APPLE will decide to either repair or replace. In any event, they'll most likely have to keep your machine which means that you'll probably want to go through the inconvenience of removing all of your sensitive data. It goes without saying that you'll definitely want to back everything up on an external which you probably already do. This is why have delayed taking my machine in because High Sierra runs just fine leading me to believe that it's a software problem which two senior advisors have already opined.

...and interestingly Ann, those who have never upgraded from their pre-installed OS’s do not appear to have that infamous syscntl file - just those who have upgraded along the way. This fact should strongly suggest to the Apple engineers from where the problem originates, then evolves, and migrates. Having said all this - did you happen to find the infamous file on your new 2018 MBP? So happy to hear that you’ve been able to resolve your issues. (Mine has been running beautifully with Mojave since renaming the file and with my Red Sox only one game away from the winning the World Series - Life is Good!)

Which is why I recommend against time machine and prefer a manual restore. Yes I'll make a time machine backup, then then I put the stuff back manually. I've also found that problems from items gone bad are often resolved this way too.

Just thought I would post:

I did a clean install of Mojave to my 27" iMac yesterday (late 2015 model.)

I was having a minor issue where I couldn't figure out if it was due to the in place upgrade, or a bug in messages.

Anyway, I reinstalled from the recovery partition, I simply reformatted, and everything is good. Turns out I don't think the bug is Mojave specific, as I've seen it before in older versions of macOS.

The problem was: the "Notify me when my name is mentioned" checkbox wasn't staying selected past messages.app being quit, and re-opened.

I did want to mentioned to anyone here planning on doing a clean install, that Mojave takes about the same time as any other version of the macOS to install. I had my Time machine backup ready to go, and manually grabbed stuff from the correct locations that I needed to restore, and it was mostly done in about 2 to 3 hours. This morning, I've mainly spent the time reinstalling the apps from the App Store, and re-entering serials for my commercial products.

Beyond that, starting off clean for another year with Apple.

Also, wanted to mention to this with a Fusion Drive, as long as it's Apple supplied, you won't have any issues with Mojave, and APFS. My drive erased with no issues, and is identified in Disk Utility as an APFS Fusion Drive.

So, While I haven't found what exactly was causing the issue yet, I DO know, that, it wasn't my install of Mojave.

Please report this to Apple's feedback site: Feedback - macOS - Apple

This may be the way to get their attention. (I am still not 100% satisfied that I haven't done something to my system with Terminal script that may come back to bite me. However, the Mojave installations I have accomplished are functioning well.)

It's either one. You can either do the delta update though software update, or you can download the whole install app from the App Store. That's how macOS is now. There are also options to download the combo update from apple as you could with previous versions.

I did the update through software update, as I had recently did a clean install of 10.14 to two Macs.

iFrog41 - My apologies, I should have read the entire thread before making my post; I just noticed that dmauch had solved his issue by using the terminal app to find the sysctl.conf file and renaming it. I, too have that file and renamed it per the instructions (created back in 2010). I haven't yet tried to do the upgrade to Mohave again, but will this weekend. We'll see...