Furiously frustrated with Jamf. Mojave upgrade issue.

I have also seen this, and speculated it was connected to FileVault as all the machines I've seen the issue on were using FV2. Wild speculation FTW ;)

I have seen this issue as well - whether it is platter drives or SSDs, and as an administrator. I've seen this issue on both FileVault and non-FileVault systems. The systems I've been testing on are an iMac (Late 2015) w/SSD, an iMac (Late 2012) w/HDD, and a MacBook Pro (Late 2012) w/SSD (FileVaulted). It's a real mixed bag. I blame it on Apple, not jamf.

Interestingly I tried upgrading a laptop from Sierra to Mojave without any Jamf installed on it and it just logged straight in following the upgrade, I wasn't presented with the loading screen upon logging in following the upgrade...

I will do some more tests but based on this single test it appears that it could be a Jamf issue.

Hey Guys,

Im back with my results. My test bench triggered the upgrade from High Sierra to Mojave at 9pm 3/14/29 last evening and i came into the office and logged in at 9am 3/15/19. This was a 12 hr wait and the results are the same. As i logged in i received the famous 13 minutes to complete progress bar.

We are seeing this in our MDM and we are not using JAMF, We think this is an Apple Issue. Its a shame JAMF support is not helping to drive to a solution with Apple.

@jrwilcox who says they aren't? Just because they aren't publicly putting it out there behind the scenes they may be raising holy hell.

I wonder if it maybe has something to do with a firmware update or some kind of update being missing?

Stub installer vs Full installer?

This thread would be a great place to let us know thy are working on it with Apple. I sure did not see anything like that.

Hi everyone,

I upgraded a computer yesterday around 4PM and today at around 9:15AM when the user logged in for the first time, the screen flash to black for 1-2 seconds and came back to the login screen with the credentials empty, after re-entering their credentials they logged in.

This is a mac that has an SSD and came with High Sierra installed. I used a package of Mojave of the full installer that I made in Composer and under Files and Processes had Run:

/Applications/Install macOS Mojave.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall --agreetolicense --nointeraction

The 1-2 second screen flash and having to enter credentials twice is a mild annoyance but doesn't have the impact of having the first user to sign in have to wait several minutes.

In addition, my colleague imaged two SSD macs in his environment--one using Munki and one through the manual download and install process. In neither case has he experienced that second installation window after logging in.

My issue with Jamf is that tech support (zero day experts) did not know or offer this solution (waiting a period of time before logging in). Also, since my last email detailing my frustrations with their responses, no one from support has reached out in any way--customer service has not been impressive. To the point of it being an "Apple issue" part of customer service is having timely responses for customers that provide information and work arounds, Jamf charges way too much for such shoddy service. Just letting customers know that you're actively working on it or trying to find out the source of the problem, is better than nothing, or generic links to githubs and threads.

I see various timings, for instance I've just done it and seen it come up with the Apple logo and say 13 minutes remaining but in actuality it probably took closer to 2 minutes. A look at the processes running really doesn't help as it honestly looks like nothing is happening.

@psherotov

Do you mind sharing your colleague that is using munki for the deployment workflow. I want to understand how they are prepping and what commands they are using to complete the upgrade. Idk how much help this is but it may shed something i believe.

We have experienced similar problems when upgrading MacBook Airs to High Sierra. The upgrade appears to complete and the user logs in and everything is fine...except the USB Ethernet adapter isn't recognized. Log the user out and log into a management account with admin rights and boom...it shows that an additional 23 minutes is required to install who knows what. After those components installed, the Ethernet adapter started functioning again.

I agree with OP to a point but it's clear you haven't done enough testing or research. I agree that we pay JAMF to help simplify the tedious scripts and management of Apple products. The gotcha here is that Apple doesn't care about enterprise. They design their upgrade process for home users.

10.12.6 was the last OS that allowed easy management from fruit to nuts. High Sierra started the change to more user intervention due to the Security boogeymen. Now Mojave has taken things way too far imo, so far we discuss not buying Apple products anymore. What are the benefits? OSX? That's not going to be a good reason forever.

OP, you can script give your users admin rights and then run the installer, or have them initiate the installation through self service. Take away the admin rights after the OS has completely the upgrade. My process works, granted I did have to do a bit of work to make it work. About a week of testing. If you need help just call me, 212.251.1211.

FWIW - I don't bother to try to automatically complete the whole upgrade process using Jamf anymore as every solution to get it "working" since 10.12.x has required more work than it saves in our environment - but every install type I do here - even manually downloading and doing the install sitting at the machine requires a 2nd authentication somewhere between 10 or 15 minutes after the install starts. Basically it always goes get package to machine - initiate install with creds - install runs for awhile - installer asks for creds again.

I just tested an upgrade from 10.12.6 to 10.14.3, after the reboot I let it set for 30 minutes then logged in. The setup continued with the 13 minutes remaining screen, but finished in 3 minutes.

Hi everyone,

Here's an update: This morning I checked on a teacher computer that I set to upgrade overnight, however, since the computer was asleep it didn't run. After manually running it, it took 34 minutes to complete the upgrade. After logging in I got the same "About 13 minutes remaining" (It only took about 3-4 minutes though, the last few minutes counting down in seconds.) After that it went back to the login screen with the password field empty.

An additional point of concern is that the same process has occurred when doing a within version upgrade 10.14.2 to 10.14.3 (I'm doing some more testing on this and will report back.)

@tnielsen Thanks for offering to help, very nice of you! Over a two week period I tried installing the upgrade through two different packages and policies, through VPP and policy, as standard user doing a manual download and install, and as a local admin user doing a manual download and install. I also tried on HDD, Fusion Drive, and SSD macs. In addition, I googled extensively on the issue, consulted colleagues, search Jamf Nation for discussion threads, and of course called Jamf support and provided them with logs from several different Macs. I feel satisfied with my due diligence :)

Speaking of Jamf support, I do want to add to the record that my account rep called me and we had a really positive discussion and the lead technician emailed me about the support process I had experienced so far. At this point, I am happy with their support and responsiveness. I used to manage a helpdesk and am sensitive to the challenges of offering support and am not quick to complain, I also understand that we are all (hopefully) always looking to learn and grow and do better, myself included.

@kroberts1 My colleague who has not seen this issue at all uses Munki and simply did the following for his upgrade: Munki import and then entered the path to specifying the location to the .app file and made it available through Managed Software Center.

Something I've noticed this morning is that the login followed by "X minutes remaining" problem only seems to happen for me when a user was logged in since the last reboot. I have a reboot policy setup to run between 3am and 5am, and then a startup triggered policy to run the update during the same window, and the whole process completed without needing to login. I haven't tested with a High Sierra to Mojave upgrade yet, but in a 10.14.3 to 10.14.4 update, the reboot/startup triggered policies skipped the login issue, but running the update through Self-Service did not.

Edit: The trick didn't work going from 10.13 to 10.14

I've just been experimenting with the 10.14.4 installer and so far not seeing the 2nd progress bar following the upgrade...

The combo upgrade did not have the second progress bar.

Is this possibly the difference between Macs that have FileVault enabled and Macs that do not? Maybe the FileVault login screen is preventing the OS from being able to complete the required installs because it is halting the loading and decrypting of the hard drive? Just a thought.

I do not have filevault enabled on any of my systems that test with and I see the 13 minute progress bar when upgrading from earlier OS

I'm seeing the second progress bar upgrading from 10.13.6 to 10.14.4. I don't have file vault enabled either.

Still seeing this with 10.14.6 upgrades.

I didn't read through all the responses for this, just most of them. Not sure if someone already mentioned this, but what I have done as a workaround is:
I create a auto-login user and deploy that with the download of Mojave or high sierra installer dmg. I kick off the install with Startosinstall command and parameters as mentioned above.

Then I have another policy scoped to a smart group "machines with auto login user" With a script that checks to see if the current user logged in is the auto-login user, if it is, it deletes that user then reboots the computer. I set that policy to on-going, frequency is reoccurring check in, scope it to that group as well as limit it to the auto-login user.

This allows the "installation completing: 13 mins remaining" continue with no issue or interaction by a user.

This is just a workaround I have currently to make the in-place upgrade "automated".

@rcsaladin Cool workaround! Do you mind posting your script or pointing me to your github page? Thanks

I just ran the upgrade to catalina on a test machine, it still gets the "13 minutes remaining"