Problems upgrading to macOS Mojave on MacBook Pro 2018

I was on the phone with two tiers if Apple support today, around 1300-1400 ESDST. A representative confirmed to me that in their office a number of iMacs had problems upgrading to Mojave and that there had yet to be an official response from Apple even though the issue was widespread.

I know that it doesn’t make sense that what works in High Sierra doesn’t for Mojave. I’m just perplexed by this problem on brand new, 2 month old macs! If these problems were on a 2012 or 2013 rMBP I would understand.

But if a fresh install works without using a backup, then it must be the backup. I don’t know what else it could be. I wish we all could get together and attempt solving these problems in person but of course that isn’t possible.

I like solving these problems. I think most of us on these forums do.

I have diagnosed this: crappy company which doesn’t care about its customers as people will buy their products anyways. Apart from this, it’s the T2. T2 has some defect which seems to cause kernel panics in the bridge os. At least that’s what I’ve concluded from the error logs. I might be wrong, of course.

The Mojave problem is not limited to 2018 MacBook Pros. I had no problem upgrading my 2.6 GZ model. I had no problem upgrading my 2016 MacBook. However, my 2.6 GZ mid-2012 MacBook Pro has failed to update five times. The most recent failed update attempt was guided a second level Apple tech. As I posted yesterday the first level tech I spoke to yesterday stated that they were having problems with their in-house non-pro iMacs. Apple is aware of the issue but as with recent issues they have failed to make a public statement.

You have actually hit on the truth. Apple does not know how to fix the problem. I received a callback from Apple regarding my inability to upgrade my 2012 2.6 GZ i7 15 inch MacBook Pro. I had spent a good bit of time with them Sunday morning. We worked for just under two hours last night using screen share. Our attempts were unsuccessful. There is obviously a problem with the installer file.

After reading all the different feedback from people here and the different issues being experienced I got to thinking about something I don't think I've seen anyone mention here.

In the course of Apple's history, they've used components from different manufacturers. For example people here may have different models of macs that fail, but someone else with the same model doesn't have issues.

Has anyone here taken inventory of which manufacture of compointens such as wirelss eithernet, usb, etc your mac has.

There have been times in the past where Apple has had issues based on drivers of certain hardware components based on a specific manufacturer. I think a good idea might be for people having issues to go deeper then they may have and send apple information about their hardware on a compoient and manufacturer level rather then the mac model alone.

That's why I raised the point, yourself and others here, have tried many times to install / upgrade.

If you've gotten to the point where you tried a clean install by erasing internal storage, and removing all connected devices but a mouse and keyboard, then there isn't any other possibility then internal hardware / software issues (driver / firmware.)

In other words, The two solutions I mentioned, are applications deisgned to set up a virtual environment to run a second operating system on top of the host. For example running windows along side macos without needing to reboot into bootcamp. You could try running mojave along side High sierra, but instead of the host os, Mojave would be the guest and High sierra would be the host. If you aren't familiart with running Virtual machines, I'd either do research first, or just stick to your originial plan that you had mentioned in earlier posts.

While working with Virtual Machines isn't particularly a difficult task, it just takes understand and knowledge of what's going on, and how to properly configure them.

In my case, I use Virtual machines to run a copy of Windows 10 professional along side the macOS, various versions of Linux, and older versions of Mac OS X, that won't run on newer hardware.

Think of it this way, Virtual Machines are the process of running multiple computers inside 1 physical computer.

You are sooooo wrong.

1. I first upgraded through the Apple Store. It cratered.

2. I took it back to the Store. It cratered.

3. I took it back again to the Store. It created.

4. I got it back after reformatting the disk, twice at my request to really clear it out. They reinstalled the OS and said, I could to to timemachine and recover.. this is the first time timemachine is involved in the process by the way.

Guess what.... it cratered again.

It is not a backup and timemachine problem. It is a bad OS release. Or the Hardware has a problem. The problem with the later possibility is that the machine worked well under the prior OS.

The idea of going to the old OS and spending hours rebuilding it again is amazingly painful. The idea of it not working is even worse.

/etc/sysctl.conf is a linux reference as described here:

https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-kernel-etcsysctl-conf-security-hardening/

Here is a page referencing the command on the Mac. It's the same tool. It's basically Kernel related so, it could be causing problems for some.

http://commandlinemac.blogspot.com/2008/12/sysctl.html

Ann, I posted above what sysctl is for. It's nothing specific to the Mac. It's part of the underlying UNIX system.

I believe I also had the file and it did not cause problems for me. It's possible the people who had issues had a corrupted file. Likely when upgrading to Mojave, when the old file was renamed, a clean file was created in it's place.

systole.config is the configuration for the sysctl utility which is for dealing with the kernel and various flags / settings.

As mentioned, it's not Mac specific, it's a Unix tool.

dmauch, I just did some testing, and I came up with results that brings up more questions, as how anyone ended up with the file at all.

As you know, I run virtual machines, and many of those include versions of macOS / OS X back to snow leopard.

I tested from Snow Leopard - High Sierra, and that file wasn't present on a factory install of any version.

I ran the command ls -l /etc/sysctl.conf in all virtual machines and they all came back with the file wasn't present.

So, if Apple isn't creating the file, and the users aren't manually creating it, something else is. I'll continue digging and try to come up with an answer as to why some people have it, and others don't.

If you're not planning on using the built in Time Machine functionality, then you should format your backup drive to whatever the source is. So if you're backing up an APFS source use an APFS backup.

The only reason that solution doesn't work for Time Machine is because of how time machine uses hard links which APFS doesn't support, so in that case the time machine drive needs to be HFS+.

I have both SuperDuper!, and Carbon Copy Cloner, as well as the built in Time Machine functionality of the OS.

All good solutions with their pros and cons.

The only other time I would recommend against APFS is:

1. you plan on using software not compatible, such as an older version of the macOS.

2. or you backup solution doesn't support it.

Now that you have Mojave, and your Fusion drive has been converted to APFS, you now have snapshots right on the system drive, so if you need to roll back, you can do it now right from the system drive. (similar to Windows restore points.). Keeping an external backup now, is just a way of having the content backed up to another source.

I'm sharing this, because if you were to have something happen to the external backup. APFS would still have a backup from the last 24 hours. It does a snapshot every hour for the last 24 course. So you should always have a current backup of the last day on your APFS drive.

Anyone else still having issues? I deploy MBP's into my enterprise environment, so this is quite concerning for not being able to update the OS to Mojave (even though HS works perfectly fine). Currently I am deploying only 2018 15'' MBP's with High Sierra (10.13.6). My 2 2015's and one 2012 test MBP's have had no issues updating to 10.14. I have an incident open with the Apple Engineers, and have sent multiple logs to them regarding this issue. So far they are blaming the proxy and firewall we have set in place (but that does not make sense to me, when pre-2018 Macs are able to update to 10.14 fine). I have tried SMC/NVRAM resets, attempting to update from a home network (non-proxied), hot-spotting either my iPhone 8 or XS to see if it goes through, and so far nothing. I am receiving the same errors as everyone else. I have not had much progress with the Apple Engineer Team quite yet, still awaiting to hear from them after viewing more logs. Hoping for more progress soon.

Did you get in direct contact with Apple support? If so, what's their response?