Big Sur Beta 10 install becomes no longer usable on my storage hard disk

[Mac Arthur1]

I usually keep a copy of all the OSX installers I have downloaded, either from the Apple Store or from gibMacOS, since once installed, this installer will disappear from the Application directory.
This works for all my distributions, since ... Tiger for those that run on Intel CPUs. When I need an installer, I copy it from my other storage disk to the Applications folder and I can install.

Well for Big Sur, it doesn't work anymore, even for the latest Beta V10 which can be downloaded now without having a developer account.
If I copy this installer from my application folder after download to another storage disk the copy is ok but then I get a file with a forbidden sign. And yet these 2 files have exactly the same number of bytes (attached image).
If I copy back this distribution from the local disk to the Applications folder, the forbidden direction does not disappear.
More surprisingly, this phenomenon does not seem to occur immediately.
I was able to install the various BigSur beta that I have downloaded immediately after downloading, or a few days later.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to download again an old beta since a new beta replaces the old one on the servers (no choice in the beta to download, it is always the last at an instant T).

Any idea of what's happening? Any solution to revert that issue?
Thanks in advance for your input !
Mac

 

[DeltaMac]

I suppose that you have that problem because you are copying to One Drive.
I can't think why One Drive would be giving you that kind of difficulty, but if you just use OneDrive for archiving your downloaded files, you could try zipping any files/apps before copying to your One Drive.
(Looks like you already did that with one copy which appears to still be usable )
Do you have the same result when you copy your installer apps to another local drive?

 

[Mac Arthur1]

It is on my Hard disk. This disk is then sync with one drive but I am only talking about files staying on the computer. Not sent to One Drive and then downloaded again. The name of the disk is misleading. It is just named like that because it is the one I sync on my Cloud.

 

[hoodafoo]

All files on macOS have an invisible metadata file that goes along with it has info such as where you d/led it from and when, allows for tagging, etc. So when you copied it to your external, the file system doesn't support those invisible meta files and now seen as a foreign file to macOS

 

[Mac Arthur1]

Thanks a lot. This is the kind of things I was suspecting...
Is that new to big Sur installers?
I don't have any problems with all the others OSX I keep a copy (Tiger to Catalina...).
Thanks for your time!
Mac

 

[hoodafoo]

Thanks a lot. This is the kind of things I was suspecting...
Is that new to big Sur installers?
I don't have any problems with all the others OSX I keep a copy (Tiger to Catalina...).
Thanks for your time!
Mac

I would suspect the same to happen if you did the same with the Catalina installer. Try it and let us know

 

[Mac Arthur1]

I have been dragging back and forth so many installers in the past, without any problem...
Here is a screenshop of my storage disk, where the Big Sur culprits are as well...

 

[hoodafoo]

I found this article https://eclecticlight.co/2020/09/24/preparing-to-upgrade-to-big-sur/

read where the heading says "32-bit software"

 

[Mac Arthur1]

Let me double check and revert with my thoughts then !
Thanks for your time to investigate...

 

[DeltaMac]

One thing I did notice is from your first post. The Get Info windows for those two Big Sur installers show different permissions, and neither is the same as the permissions that all of my OS X installer apps show.

 

[Mac Arthur1]

Thanks for your comment !
However I am wondering if there is another parameter to consider...
Here are 2 installers having the same permissions as yours.
One is fine, the other is not...

 

[DeltaMac]

If that's what you have, then comparing the two copies of the installer app - One is good, and the other appears to have a problem of some kind. Don't keep that one. If you are going to continue to keep copies of every cotton-pickin' version of every installer, then at least try to decide which copies are reasonable to keep.
There will be a public release of the 'real' Big Sur soon, and you would be trashing all of those unneeded beta versions, right? There will soon be a beta 11, or even a GM, when you can move betas to a "trash soon" folder. Signs of possible corruption should make that decision easy.

 

[Mac Arthur1]

I do agree.
However I wanna understand what's the problem... and I love to keep record, even though this is not useful for the future ;-)

 

[Monotremata]

All files on macOS have an invisible metadata file that goes along with it has info such as where you d/led it from and when, allows for tagging, etc. So when you copied it to your external, the file system doesn't support those invisible meta files and now seen as a foreign file to macOS

Are you thinking of OS 9 and before? Resource forks still exist but this isn't the OS 9 days where you copied a 'simple' AIFF to your Windows machine and it broke because the resource fork wasn't zipped. I copy files back and forth from Windows to my Mac all day long, have never had an app break because of it. Worst case scenario, Windows doesn't know .app is a bundle and shows it as a folder, you can break your apps yourself messing with the package contents a lot easier that way.

 

[hoodafoo]

Are you thinking of OS 9 and before? Resource forks still exist but this isn't the OS 9 days where you copied a 'simple' AIFF to your Windows machine and it broke because the resource fork wasn't zipped. I copy files back and forth from Windows to my Mac all day long, have never had an app break because of it. Worst case scenario, Windows doesn't know .app is a bundle and shows it as a folder, you can break your apps yourself messing with the package contents a lot easier that way.

I discovered this when I was using rsync and messed with the switches to omit hidden or system files. I lost all the tags on my files

 

[Monotremata]

I discovered this when I was using rsync and messed with the switches to omit hidden or system files. I lost all the tags on my files

That was deliberate, and no clue what you did there with rsync but don't do it again heh. Whatever you intentionally did with rsync is never going to happen simply copying a file back and forth, not between Windows/Mac/Linux/Android/etc. Those days were left behind when OS X was released.

It sounds more like his installer got corrupted or something OneDrive is doing is not playing nicely.

 

[hoodafoo]

That was deliberate, and no clue what you did there with rsync but don't do it again heh. Whatever you intentionally did with rsync is never going to happen simply copying a file back and forth, not between Windows/Mac/Linux/Android/etc. Those days were left behind when OS X was released.

It sounds more like his installer got corrupted or something OneDrive is doing is not playing nicely.

On a Mac, all this metadata is stored somewhere in Apple's file system (http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20101206161739274), but when you go to a foreign file system like FAT32, it creates a sidecar "dot underscore" file (https://www.swiftforensics.com/2018/11/the-dot-underscore-file-format.html) to save that info. But if you move your file back without that dot underscore files, it loses all the metadata. At least that's my understanding

 

[Mac Arthur1]

It sounds more like his installer got corrupted or something OneDrive is doing is not playing nicely.

Once again the name of my folder may be misleading.
It is on a hard disk of my computer, locally, not on the Cloud. This disk is then sync with my cloud but this is another story.
We are really talking about files just copied on another disk for local storage , some of them becoming unusable.
Mac

 

[iStorm]

Once again the name of my folder may be misleading.
It is on a hard disk of my computer, locally, not on the Cloud. This disk is then sync with my cloud but this is another story.
We are really talking about files just copied on another disk for local storage , some of them becoming unusable.
Mac

I also feel like this may be caused from OneDrive not playing nicely. I understand that you are copying this file to a local disk and that disk is synced to OneDrive, but keep in mind that OneDrive is also syncing stuff in the cloud back to your disk. Something could be going wrong with that process. Perhaps it thinks the file that was just synced to the cloud isn't the same as the one on the disk, so it is syncing back down and corrupting it.

Here are some ideas to try to help determine if OneDrive is the issue or not.

• Does this behavior occur if you copy the file to another location that doesn't sync to the cloud?
• Does this behavior occur if you temporarily disable OneDrive (or go offline) while copying the file?
  • If not, does it then occur once you re-enable OneDrive (or go back online) to complete the syncing process?

 

[hoodafoo]

I also feel like this may be caused from OneDrive not playing nicely. I understand that you are copying this file to a local disk and that disk is synced to OneDrive, but keep in mind that OneDrive is also syncing stuff in the cloud back to your disk. Something could be going wrong with that process. Perhaps it thinks the file that was just synced to the cloud isn't the same as the one on the disk, so it is syncing back down and corrupting it.

Here are some ideas to try to help determine if OneDrive is the issue or not.

• Does this behavior occur if you copy the file to another location that doesn't sync to the cloud?
• Does this behavior occur if you temporarily disable OneDrive (or go offline) while copying the file?
  • If not, does it then occur once you re-enable OneDrive (or go back online) to complete the syncing process?

Poor @Mac Arthur1 , I don't think he will ever live down that OneDrive screenshot 😂

 

[iStorm]

Poor @Mac Arthur1 , I don't he will ever live down that OneDrive screenshot 😂

Am I misunderstanding something? Mac Arthur1 said the the disk is synced to OneDrive. I know the file is local and that it isn’t being downloaded from OneDrive. He also said that the phenomenon doesn’t occur right away. So my thought was maybe the file is getting uploaded to OneDrive when it’s copied over to the disk, and then OneDrive is pushing a change back down to reconcile some difference and corrupting it. I’ve seen that behavior happen before, but rarely.

 

[Mac Arthur1]

Poor @Mac Arthur1 , I don't he will ever live down that OneDrive screenshot 😂

That's what I am going to test now, as I got Big Sur 11.0.1 downloaded this morning.
I have Big Sur V10 and 11.0.1 on my storage disk synch with OneDrive AND a copy on a "safer" place.
Let's see whats happen in a few days...
I'll keep you posted, but I am really devastated for having lost my previous versions of Big sur

 

[IowaLynn]

When I kept different installers or system versions I kept them all on .DMG files so they would remain intact. Easy to move around, mount, restore. Even mount and make changes.

Back in Mac OS X 10.3 days we could create and burn out own installer DVD to add SoftRAID and video card drivers. Keeping different versions with different drivers and patches. Rather messy too the way 10.3.6 came out.

I would want to use DMG unless there is likely an issue with file size and 12GB installer.

 

[Mac Arthur1]

Yes, i am listening for some advices too. Should I keep a .dmg zipped or the installer zipped?
I need to zip them anyway, the only solution for me if I want to share some of the installers on some other forums. I have roughly all installers, updates, combo updates and security updates since... Cheetah.
Thanks in advance for advices...
Mac

 

[Mac Arthur1]

I am about to become crazy
As recommended by some contributors on this post, I did a copy of my latest downloaded Big Sur installer on another disk, which is NOT sync with my OneDrive disk.
and WTF, my 11.0.1 app file is now seen as corrupted in my Apps folder although I did not do anything on it because so far I don't plan to update my main SSD and prefer to stay on Catalina 10.15.7.
Any input? I really get lost and wanna know what's happening...
Cheers