MAC OS X

Creating an Install USB for OS X Mojave

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Introduction:

Theses procedures are for creating a SUB Stick to install Mac OS X Mojave completely fresh(Not meant for upgrades)

Prerequisites:

Make sure you have an empty min. 8GB USB Stick available.
This USB Stick will be completely erased and filled with the Mac OS X Mojave installation software.

Steps:

  1. Get the Mac OS X Mojave install APP into your Applications Folder.
    • Click this link – this will open the Mac App Store on the Mojave page.
      IMPORTANT: In some countries this link might not work and show you the ‘Not Available’ error message. In this case you might have to look around Internet to try to get your copy of the APP. Basically any OS X that is lower than Mojave should be allowed to upgrade to Mojave and instead of installing just copy the APP from the Application folder.
    • Click on Get.
    • Software Update will open with the words “Finding Update”. Eventually a message “Are you sure you want to download macOS Mojave 10.14.6” will appear. It might look like a .6 update, or later, but you’ll see from the size of the download (just over 6GB) that this is the complete installer for Mojave.
    • Once the installer has downloaded do not click Install. If you install it the installer will automatically be deleted.
      e) You should be able to find the Install macOS Mojave app in your Applications folder
  2. Insert the USB Stick in a Mac OS X of any version.
  3. Using the Disk Utility, you format it new as:
      Name: MojaveINST
      Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
      Scheme: GUID Partition Map
  4. Start the Terminal application and issue the following command: 
      sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Mojave.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MojaveINST --nointeraction --downloadassets
      That might take a long time for ‘Finding assets to download’ step to finish.
  5. Once this operation has been completed, unmount the USB stick labeled ‘Install macOS Mojave’ and insert it in the MAC Desktop/Laptop to be newly installed with Mojave.
  6. Start the MAC Desktop/Laptop by shortly pressing on the Power button while keeping another finger on the ‘Option’ key till the screen presents you with the choices of booting devices.
  7. TROUBLESHOOTING:
    • At some point you might be presented with the Error message saying something like: ‘Cannot install, the file is damaged‘. This message is a false error message. It simply means: ‘The date limit of possible installation has expired‘.
      To fix this you need to set the system date to a few days after the release date of Mojave(24 September 2018) as follows before you can install.

        Leave the installation program and start the Terminal app from the menu under ‘Utilities’.
        In the terminal you need write a command to change the date and time according to the following format:
        date -u {month}{day}{hour}{minute}{year(short form)}
        To set the date to a few days after the release date of Mojave the command will look like this:
        eg. Oct 25th 2018 14:24
        Command: 

        date -u 1025142418

EXTRA INFO

  1. Here are the release dates of different Mac OS X Versions.
      OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion (Zinfandel) – 25 July 2012
      OS X 10.9 Mavericks (Cabernet) – 22 October 2013
      OS X 10.10: Yosemite (Syrah) – 16 October 2014
      OS X 10.11: El Capitan (Gala) – 30 September 2015
      macOS 10.12: Sierra (Fuji) – 20 September 2016
      macOS 10.13: High Sierra (Lobo) – 25 September 2017
      macOS 10.14: Mojave (Liberty) – 24 September 2018
      macOS 10.15: Catalina (Jazz) – 7 October 2019

  2. You might want to have a look at these links for more information:

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