Beta 3 Installation Frozen

[NevilleB]

I downloaded the Developer Beta 3 update and now it's at the stage of installing "Installing Software Update: About 8 minutes".

The mouse icon is visible but I can't move it and the installation seems to be frozen with the above message for the past 10 minutes.

What should I do?

I am scared to force restart the computer with the power on/off button but nothing seems to be happening if I leave it.

 

[tmoerel]

Just wait...took about 15 minutes for me but in the end it got there!

 

[grahamperrin]

mouse icon is visible but I can't move it

What type of Mac? A model identifier will be ideal. Make and model of mouse? How is it connected?

Lack of pointer movement aside, is there any other way of telling whether the Mac has ceased responding to human input?

If there's a hard disk drive: is it simply spinning; or can you feel, hear, or see anything that suggests movement of heads within the drive?

 

[NevilleB]

I eventually force rebooted it by pressing the power button and it, thankfully, rebooted fine and I was able to log on normally.

The strange thing is that the update did not install at all and it does not show up in the App Store as an available update anymore. There was an update for iTunes 12.5 though.

 

[NevilleB]

What type of Mac? A model identifier will be ideal. Make and model of mouse? How is it connected?

Lack of pointer movement aside, is there any other way of telling whether the Mac has ceased responding to human input?

If there's a hard disk drive: is it simply spinning; or can you feel, hear, or see anything that suggests movement of heads within the drive?

It's a MacBook Pro late 2013, with SSD drive and mouse pad.

 

[tmoerel]

It's a MacBook Pro late 2013, with SSD drive and mouse pad.

Tha is exactly what I have. As I said earlier I just waited and it went through in the end after about 15 minutes. The progress bar did only move very slowly but the time updated.

 

[grahamperrin]

… did not install … does not show up in the App Store as an available update anymore …

Open a Terminal window, run the following one-line command:

date ; uptime ; sw_vers ; tail -n 21 /var/log/fsck_hfs.log ; time softwareupdate -l

Then please share the output from that command. It will tell readers things such as:

• exactly how long since the start of the operating system
• the build of the OS
• a little about the file system(s)
• how long is taken for an alternative approach to checking for updates that may be applicable to the OS.

 

[tywebb13]

If installing it via the Mac App Store is presenting difficulties you can use the direct links in apple's developer forums to get the 4 packages for DP3 and also for DP2 via a browser instead of the mac app store.

There are no combos yet till the first 10.12.2 beta. So if you are starting from DP1 you need the DP2 links too.

But you can't just install these individually anymore. The installation procedure is different for Sierra which prevents you from just installing directly from these packages as we used to be able to do for previous versions.

So to go from DP2 to DP3 via direct links, after downloading them through a browser, you have to put the 4 files into the folder /Library/Updates/031-68147. Reboot and then go to the mac app store and click Update. Nothing downloads but it should immediately tell you to restart to install it.

Do the same to go from DP1 to DP2 except the folder this time is /Library/Updates/031-63042

 

[tywebb13]

On the other hand if apple are going to make it this hard to update it I reckon a lot of people will still be on DP1 or PB1 by the time the GM is out. This also means they will be getting far too many bug reports for DP1 and PB1 and more importantly not enough for newer betas. As a consequence the GM will be more buggy than it should be.

They should just provide these updates as a simple dmg download on the developer portal or public beta portal. They did this for mountain lion (for developers, alas not public betas). Then they messed it up in mavericks by insisting everything goes through the mac app store. And it has been a problem ever since.

 

[grahamperrin]

it has been a problem ever since.

An exception, not the norm.