I’ve successfully created a workflow to install macOS Mojave 10.14.4 and several software using MDS from an external LACIE portable drive connected to the Mac via thunderbolt.
I have run this MDS workflow successfully over 5 times on a Late 2013 Mac Pro (black trash can model) as well as an iMac i7 Late 2015.
When I attempted to run the same MDS workflow, from the Lacie Drive, on a straight out of the box iMac i9 2019, the workflow got past prompting for the computer name but then stopped when it attempted to run the macOS Mojave installer. Error: Your version of MacOS 10.14.4 cannot be installed on this system.
No user prompts to terminate, waited over 20 minutes and ended up Cold booting the iMac.
Now the iMac i9 2019 was purchased before the release of Mojave 10.14.5. My guess is that the iMac i9 2019 was released with 10.14.3 or 10.14.4 maybe older. My questions are:
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if the macOS installer is applying the same OS version that is on the out of the box iMac, would this generate the error I got and holt the entire workflow?
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Also to add, when I used the same Lacie external drive, I had to use the USB3 to connect to the iMac 2019 since there are no longer any thunderbolt ports on this model. Just USB and USBC. would that also cause the installer to fail during OS install?
Please advise. Thank you
The iMac 2019 probably requires a custom version of 10.14.4 or a generic version of a newer release (10.14.5+).
Running Greg Neagle’s excellent installinstallmacos.py shows that there are multiple releases of 10.14.5.
Blockquote
1 091-95155 10.13.6 17G66 2019-01-08 macOS High Sierra
2 091-94326 10.13.6 17G65 2018-07-11 macOS High Sierra
3 041-47723 10.14.4 18E2034 2019-03-25 macOS Mojave
4 041-64745 10.14.5 18F203 2019-05-22 macOS Mojave
5 041-59913 10.14.5 18F132 2019-05-13 macOS Mojave
6 091-95774 10.13.6 17G2208 2018-07-30 macOS High Sierra
The releases with the 4 digit build numbers are the machine specific builds.
Since there’s a 10.14.5 release (actually two of them) that are dated after the 10.14.4 release, I’d use one of those in my workflow. And 1F132 should support any hardware released prior to its build date such as the iMac 2019.
As for your second point, there are Thunderbolt ports on the '19 iMac (you should see the bolt icon), they just use the USB-C connector. If you want Thunderbolt speeds, use an Apple Thunderbolt 2/3 adapter, otherwise you’re fine with USB-the connection type doesn’t matter to MDS.
I find this to be a Best Practice: I constantly update my MDS setup with the most recent version of 10.14 that I can download since it means that I don’t have to use Software Update post-config to get the system up-to-date with all the patches.
Let us know how things work out once you update to a newer 10.14 release in your workflow.
Cheers,
Jon
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