Mojave - "An error occurred installing macOS" error

Hi All,

So I worked closely with a senior support team member (Thanks, Dean!) for the past week on this issue and I managed to resolve it.

First off, I run VyprVPN, Spoof-Mac (don't ask) and BitDefender.

Now, when I attempted to install Mojave the first time, I encountered an error similar to, if not identical to what has been described here, purportedly related to the BridgeOS failing to personalize and installation falling over with a non-descript error message (throwing codes such as 602, 204).

I captured my system data and sent it over to an engineer and he pointed me to my network connection is the likely root cause. The first suggestion was to create a new network location and test, then create an admin user account and try again, and also attempt to install after disabling/uninstalling any VPN, anti-virus or other network traffic manipulating software (including things that mask hardware addresses) and my firewall.

I also whitelisted *.com.apple.* addresses, and whitelisted the Mojave Installer in my network settings.

None of this worked for me.

However, I did make a significant change to my VPN configuration which finally allowed the installation to complete.

VyprVPN uses a proprietary protocol known as Chameleon which is an encrypted connection masked to outwardly appear as regular traffic. Basically, a VPN designed to not appear to be a VPN (this is to avoid the usual scanning done by certain ISP's, websites or government internet gates that would flag this kind of traffic and restrict or otherwise hinder it). By switching my VPN protocol to OpenVPN (still 256 encrypted but no longer outwardly appearing and regular traffic), my BridgeOS personalization step was able to complete and my installation progressed and finished without issue.

My suspicion is that Apple's listener has a decision tree on incoming connection attempts based on the traffic. As the installer sent its request under Chameleon protocol, I doubt there was any decision in place to handle an Apple installer connection coming in encrypted, looking un-encrypted.

Hopefully, this helps some of you all out!