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OSX clean install error messages

26 Jul 2020 - by 'Maurits van der Schee'

When you buy a second hand Mac you should do a clean install of OSX from a USB drive for security reasons. This sounds easy, but there are some problems you may run into. In this post we discuss 2 common, but cryptic, error messages and explain how to avoid them. Note that a clean installation requires you to have a USB drive with a bootable OSX installer. Note that on newer Macs you don't need an USB drive as these support macOS Recovery over the Internet by pressing Option-Command-R after boot.

Error: This Item Is Temporarily Unavailable

This (most likely) means that the hard-disk was not empty during installation.

Resolution:

• Power on the machine and quickly press and hold the Alt/Option key until the boot menu appears
• Choose the USB drive (containing the OSX installer)
• Let the computer boot from the USB drive
• Choose an installation language
• Accept the Apple license agreement
• Choose "Utilities > Disk Utility" from the top menu (next to the apple logo)
• Erase the internal drive, by (GUID) re-partitioning with one partition (Mac OS Extended Journaled)
• Erase the single partition that the drive has (not needed if the previous step was done)
• Quit Disk Utility by closing the window
• Now selecting the drive to install to and proceed installation

See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7bPfNREVMU

Error: No packages were eligible for install

This means that the date should be set (back!) to a date when the certificate for the OS was valid.

Resolution:

• Power on the machine and quickly press and hold the Alt/Option key until the boot menu appears
• Choose the USB drive (containing the OSX installer)
• Let the computer boot from the USB drive
• Choose an installation language
• Accept the Apple license agreement
• Choose "Utilities > Terminal" from the top menu (next to the apple logo)
• A terminal window occurs with a prompt
• Type "date 0101010117" to set the date to "Jan 1st, 2017 1:01 AM".
• Choose the last 2 digits "17" (means year "2017") from the list below:
  • 12 = Lion (10.7)
  • 13 = Mountain Lion (10.8)
  • 14 = Mavericks (10.9)
  • 15 = Yosemite (10.10)
  • 16 = El Capitan (10.11)
  • 17 = Sierra (10.12)
  • 18 = High Sierra (10.13)
  • 19 = Mojave (10.14)
  • 20 = Catalina (10.15)
• Type "exit" and reboot the machine to retry the installation

See: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250793420

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