OS X Lion install USB, what the hell is going on?

[Faloude]

I'm throwing in the towel and asking for help from the community. I've been trying to create a macOS Lion (10.7.5) USB installer and it has been absolute hell. The device I'm working on is a MacBook Pro 13" mid-2012 (model A1278) which supports OS X 10.7.3 and up and it's currently running OS X Lion 10.7.5. This is the method I'm applying, broken down in steps.

1. Downloaded OS X Lion Installer from Apple website directly (InstallMacOSX.dmg)
2. The downloaded InstallMacOSX.dmg contains a file named InstallMacOSX.pkg which checks if your computer supports Lion, after which it places Install Mac OS X Lion installer in the Applications folder.
3. I right-click Install Mac OS X Lion -> Show package contents and then browse through Contents -> SharedSupport to copy InstallESD.dmg to the desktop, which holds the bootable drive image
4. I mount this InstallESD.dmg to the filesystem by double-clicking it
5. Insert a 64 GB flash drive and format it to MacOS Extended (journaled)
6. I launch Disk Utility and click on tab restore, drag the mounted InstallESD.dmg volume to the Source field and drag the empty volume to the Destination field and start the process. It finishes without problems

So after restarting the Mac and holding the alt button, the USB installer shows up nicely and I can boot to it. However when booting to it, after a few minutes of loading, the round circle with "prohibited" symbol appears.

The comedic part of this all, is that I have a functional 10.7.5 USB installer which by the life of me I can't remember how I made it work flawlessly.

Here's all the alternatives I've tried so far

• Tried a different USB drive: no luck
• Restored InstallESD.dmg from file rather than mounted .dmg: no luck
• Restored InstallESD.dmg from file, in the recovery environment on internal drive: no luck
• Restored InstallESD.dmg from file, in the recovery environment on the functional Lion USB installer, no luck
• Restored volume from functional Lion USB installer to new USB drive: no luck
• Used terminal to flash InstallESD.dmg in command line: no luck
• Used Disk Maker X (I believe 3.x): no luck
• Used Balena Etcher: no luck
• Even tested on an older 2011 variant A1278: no luck

All these flashing attempts finish successfully, but boot to the round circle with prohibited symbol. I'm out of ideas!

 

[bogdanw]

See https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...acos-installers-from-lion-to-ventura.2378889/

 

[Faloude]

@bogdanw oh dear god, it worked. How could I have missed this wikipost. I've searched the forum multiple times.

I had a suspicion from the start that the InstallMacOSX.pkg altered the package. It seems that @startergo's method bypasses this. Am I making the right conclusion here?

Edit: strangely, a third and fourth attempt resulted in the same problem. There is a lot of magic happening and I don't like it at all. Trying Dayo's script now, hopefully that works every time. I need a method that works every time.

Edit 2: Even @Dayo's script is resulting in the same problem, using a freshly downloaded Lion dmg from Apple. Unbelievable.

 

[Faloude]

Anyone have an idea? I'm just completely dumbfound by this. I literally clone a working Lion USB installer onto a new USB and the new one doesn't work, over and over again. How is this even possible?

 

[tony359]

I am a newbie on this but Dayo's script worked for me. I installed Lion on an old Macbook today.

I just downloaded the official Apple DMG from the link provided and ran the script on my MacMini M4. First time it failed because of a USB issue on my end.

I've also tried this and at least it starts the installation.

1. Download this: https://archive.org/details/mac-os-x-lion-10.7.5-install-esd
2. Format a USB flash drive using Disk Utility as Mac OS Extended and GPT, you can name it whatever you want
3. When that's done, launch Terminal and run the command sudo asr --source /path/to/the/dmg/you/downloaded --target (drag the icon of the USB flash drive on the desktop here) --erase --noverify
4. Enter y to confirm, let it do its thing
5. Eject the USB and boot from it

I hope this helps?