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Question

OS X El Capitan Upgrade Booting To Recovery HD

  • July 1, 2016
  • 6 replies
  • 35 views
kishjayson
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We're in the process of rolling out the last of the OS X El Capitan upgrades to our users, but I've run into a handful of machines exhibiting some strange behavior. Specifically, instead of booting to the installer and completing an in-place upgrade, they're booting to the Recovery HD instead.

Here's the policy log for a system that upgraded successfully:

Executing Policy OS X El Capitan
Installing Install OS X El Capitan.InstallESD.dmg...
Preparing for in-place OS upgrade...
Closing package...
Running command kdestroy -a...
Result of command:
Blessing in-place OS upgrade directory...
Mounting install DMGs...
Creating Reboot Script...

Here's the policy log for a system that instead booted to the Recovery HD:

Executing Policy OS X El Capitan
Installing Install OS X El Capitan.InstallESD.dmg...
Preparing for in-place OS upgrade...
Closing package...
Running command kdestroy -a...
Result of command:

I should note that the machines that did not successfully upgrade still have the OS X Install Data folder on the root level of the hard drive. Anyone else run into this, or have any recommendations for how to possibly resolve it?

    6 replies

    T
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    • thoule
    • Contributor
    • July 1, 2016

    I had this happen on several of my machines. I had the user decrypt the HD, then run the in-place and it went well. I'm not sure if it was the encryption or just retrying it, but 90% of the time, it worked after that.

    kishjayson
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    • kishjayson
    • Author
    • Contributor
    • July 1, 2016

    @thoule I thought that too, but it's happening to both system with and without FileVault enabled.

    kishjayson
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    • kishjayson
    • Author
    • Contributor
    • July 1, 2016

    UPDATE So I can resolve the issue by deleting the existing /OS X Install Data/ directory first, then re-running the policy. However I'd like to try and determine the root cause of why the directory isn't being blessed in the first place.

    T
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    • typingpool
    • New Contributor
    • November 10, 2016

    We are having a similar issue (late to update to 10.11). Do either of you have EFI locked? Curious.

    kishjayson
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    • kishjayson
    • Author
    • Contributor
    • November 10, 2016

    @typingpool Why yes, we do indeed have an EFI password set on these machines.

    J
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    • JeffreySerrell
    • New Contributor
    • January 20, 2017

    Did anyone ever solve this issue with the EFI Password being set during the in-place upgrade?

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