Hi Jamf Nation,
I deployed a policy in Jamf which executes a script which essentially runs:
/Applications/Install macOS Big Sur/Contents/Resources/startosinstall --agreetolicense --forcequitapps
On most machines this works flawlessly and after some 30 minutes or so the machine is on Big Sur.
But on some machines it gets fuzzy. Sometimes the installer runs but.. just ends. Then, if started again the machine after some minutes reboots as expected. But then it lands in the recovery console saying:
A software update is required to use this startup disk
Clicking on "Update" just gets the user back to the same screen after a few seconds of showing the boot apple logo.
The only valid choice they can make is "Choose Start-Volume", Logging in with their password to unlock the drive and do a restart into macOS Catalina.
This is completely repeatable on the same, but not reproducable on another machine. If we start the "Install macOS Big Sur.app" from the finder after giving the user admin rights, the assistant comes up, system reboots and installs Big Sur as it should.
So what's the difference here between the startosinstall command and the Installer.app?
I hope someone here can shed a little light on this.
Regards
Daniel
