MacOS could not be installed on your computer

[Dalmatian]

I've witnessed one by one recently that our company laptop showing up the error like attached "MacOS could not be installed on your computer" and The path /System/Installation/Packages/OSinstall.mpkg appears to be missing or damaged.

Users see this error at a startup or reboot, and it happens on both latest High Sierra 10.13.3 as well as High Sierra 10.12.5 or .6

I'd like to know what's cause the issue, and how to avoid this issue?

btw, i know how to choose the startup disk and access to the system.
We have SUS installed on Linux and also a daily cmd running via JSS sudo softwareupdate -ai to all laptop.

[TSOAFTVPPC]

Sometime found if the system clock is wrong that installs won't work

[mtward]

Before starting the macOS Install from Internet Recovery, USB media or NetInstall, check what the system date is currently set to:

• In the Menu bar, click "Utilities > Terminal"
• Type "date" and press return.

It's likely you will find the date year is 2001/1970 (if time is actually the cause of the issue). If initiating the install from the Install macOS High Sierra.app from within macOS, ensure that you have the full version of the installer (5GB+).

To Fix:

• Ensure you are connected to ethernet/WiFi that can reach the internet
• In Terminal, type: ntpdate -u "time.apple.com" and then press return
• Test that the date is now correct by typing "date" followed by return. The result should be the current date and time.

If you live in Asia, Europe or elsewhere, use Apple's time server nearest you, such as time.asia.apple.com or time.euro.apple.com

Once the date is correct, ensure you're still connected to the internet before attempting the install again. macOS requires Internet connectivity to Install.

Hope that helps!

[mvijy]

I am facing the same issue. But unable to login to existing OS, directly it showing this error. if this date issue, how we can change this?

[Nix4Life]

@mvijay as @mtward mentions
1. get to terminal
2. type date
3. if date not correct, use this command syntax to correct 'date month[xx]day[xx]time[24hr]year[xx]'
4. for example date 0206091018 would change the date to Tue Feb 6 09:10:00 EST 2018

my understanding is that it has something to do with the recovery partitiion
hth
L

[remyb]

I've seen this a few times, it seems that this happens when you install an update that requires a reboot, but don't reboot immediately. I've changed our update script to force the reboot after installing these updates, and haven't seen the issue since. I'm not confident yet that this was the source of the problems, but it seems to have fixed them so far for me.

[wsg]

This is happening on multiple computers left and right: https://twitter.com/willgregorian/status/966348131985080320 - is anyone else experiencing the issue after the most recent macOS update?

[Absolute]

I'm also getting this on all my computers. How can we resolve.

[#9]

also experiencing this issue.

[joshuasee]

The computer is trying to boot to an alternate partition, probably the recovery partition, to complete an OS upgrade. In cases where I've encountered this I have used to boot picker to reboot into the normal OS partition, then System Preferences | Startup Disk to get the computer to stop doing it going forward.