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Some background: A while ago I found (literally found between garbage on the street) an older (2011) iMac which I intended to be used by my 7 year old son. I never used a Mac myself. The machine started up in High Sierra, with two users accounts (one of which was admin) and a guest account installed. I didn't have any passwords, so I could not do much with it other than try the guest account and see if it worked. All seemed well. At that point I Googled some ways to reset the user accounts to my own. Various sources recommended the same procedure:

  1. Start up in recovery mode with command+R
  2. Use Disk Utility to "Erase" the volume "Macintosh HD" (and in the process format is as APFS, the only option apart from some variants like encryption and case-sensitivity).
  3. Use Install MacOS to install High Sierra on "Macintosh HD" The last step installs fails with a message saying "The recovery server cannot be reached".

At that point I started looking for ways to fix this problem. The most obvious is of course to check the internet connection, which I verified with Network Utility (ping, dns lookup, trace route all work fine). Then I read somewhere that the installer verifies the date. I used Terminal to resync the system clock (which was off only by 0.4s), to no avail.

I also tried Internet Recovery (command+option+R) which downloads an installer for MacOS Lion. This also fails with the same message about the recovery server not reachable, after making sure internet is connected.

Then finally I asked a friend to prepare a bootable USB stick with a High Sierra installer. Again this fails at the same step, also with internet connected.

In the log file there's a line saying "Failed to load catalog https://swscan.apple.com/content/catalogs/...". That's probably what the error message is about. screenshot Installer Log

The log file also mentions that the file system is not suitable, but that's only after I tried Lion, in which the Macintosh HD volume was formatted to MacOS Extended (Journaled) file system (which seems to be the same as HFS?, a bit confusing), as shown in Disk Utility: screenshot Disk Utility

The file system issue is another problem than the problem of not reaching the recovery system, I believe, but I could be wrong.

nohillside
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marc
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    This is a bit confusing. If you're running from Internet Recovery, yes, High Sierra might struggle to see the App Store, but from USB there is no internet connection required. btw, you cannot install HS onto APFS, it must start with HFS & it will do the conversion itself [yes, that's irritating]. See https://apple.stackexchange.com/q/315880/85275 and https://apple.stackexchange.com/q/309399/85275 – Tetsujin Jun 20 '23 at 08:10
  • This iMac had High Sierra installed before, so there is a Base System present. Disk Utility lets me only format Macintosh HD as APFS (and encrypted/case variants), not HFS. And yes, the USB install does prompt for a Network, it is required. Probably what is on the USB drive is the same as is already in de Base System partition, not a full ISO. The size of the USB installer is 1.39G. – marc Jun 20 '23 at 11:14
  • @Tetsujin the links you mention say High Sierra needs Mac OS Extended (Journaled) file system (not HFS), so I will try that. – marc Jun 20 '23 at 11:42
  • I used Disk Utility to "Erase" (format) the "Macintosh HD" partition as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), and Disk Utility shows it as such (239GB available, 311MB used), however, the High Sierra installer still sees it as APFS, even after a restart. In the installer log I read "isConvertibleToAPFS: was called on a APFS disk" and after that "This volume is not formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled)." – marc Jun 20 '23 at 13:38
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    It’s tough to follow your trials and tribulations in comments. Would you be so kind as to [edit] with some clarifications, screenshots or Terminal output (preferable)? A lot here doesn’t make sense. Also, start by erasing your drive with the Terminal command diskutil partitionDisk /dev/diskX 1 GPT JHFS+ “New Name” 100%. The install High Sierra. You should have no “base system/format” when you erase a drive. – Allan Jun 20 '23 at 14:39
  • Please don't add the solution to the question. Post it as an answer below and accept it. This will make it easier to find in the future, it also indicates that the question has been solved. – nohillside Jun 21 '23 at 09:38
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    Your [now removed] solution still draws some wrong conclusions, as do your comments. 1. Mac OS Extended (Journaled) is HFS+. 2. Apple has never issued the OS as .iso, only ever as .dmg so if you're starting from an iso, you have a non-Apple file. 3. Just because High SIerra is no longer supported doesn't mean you can no longer get it directly from Apple [this was linked from my first comment]. 4. USB installs do not need to access the internet at all, so you're still doing something wrong there. – Tetsujin Jun 21 '23 at 10:11
  • @tetsujin 1. thank you for clarifying this. 2. I don't have a iso file, just imagined there must be something like a disk image of a dvd, which is commonly known as a .iso file. Pardon me for using the wrong name. 3. Apparently Apple does not offer High Sierra anymore in the App Store, and the catalog file which the network installer tries to download (see log) is "Not Found". 4. USB installers come flavours: the one I tried, which still needs a network connection to download the bulk of the files and a full installer, which has everything, like a dvd. The latter is what I need. – marc Jun 21 '23 at 10:44
  • All this information & all the instructions you need to do this are linked from the 2nd link in my first comment... get your friend to download MDS & use that to make an installer. That avoids the App Store entirely & should be possible to run on any Mac. There are no 'partial' installers & no need for the High Sierra Mac to reach out to the app store at all, once it has the right USB installer. I really cannot figure out what you already had as an installer at all. Once booted to the USB stick, use Allan's instructions from above to format HFS+. – Tetsujin Jun 21 '23 at 11:07
  • I suppose I might as well offer my corrects to the above comments and the currently deleted solution by user marc. User @Tetsujin, Mac OS Extended (Journaled) is JHFS+. Readers can enter the command diskutil listFilesystems to learn more. User marc: I have High Sierra installed on my 2011 iMac. When I enter the URL macappstores://apps.apple.com/app/macos-high-sierra/id1246284741 into Safari, I get High Sierra in the App Store. So High Sierra is still available from the Apple App Store. Although, the download is not the full installer. – David Anderson Jun 22 '23 at 00:08
  • @DavidAnderson yes indeed, the download is not the full installer, as was the one I had one my USB stick, so it needs to connect to Apple's server to download the remaining files, which fails because they are no longer there. So, your answer below, to install Mountain Lion and then upgrade to High Sierra is a workable alternative. However, this update has to go in two steps: first to El Capitain. At least, that's what I read in other posts. I found someone who can provide me with a full High Sierra install DVD, which I can stick into the iMac and start from there. Thanks for your time. – marc Jun 23 '23 at 06:50
  • Thanks for posting your solution as an answer instead of an edit :-) – nohillside Jun 23 '23 at 07:27
  • marc: I tested my answer by using a virtual machine. In my test, I was able to go from Mountain Lion directly to High Sierra. This is also documented by Apple both from the Apple App Store High Sierra download window and at this Apple website: macOS High Sierra - Technical Specifications. – David Anderson Jun 23 '23 at 17:13
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    I should also point out that much of the information regarding installing OS X/macOS, that is posted on the internet, is wrong. Some was always wrong, while other information is now wrong (i.e. outdated) do to changes made by Apple. Many of my own older posts are now wrong do the changes made by Apple. I image in the future much of what is posted here will be wrong. The best information comes directly from Apple. They do make a effort to keep their websites up to date. – David Anderson Jun 23 '23 at 17:53

2 Answers2

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If you can not install High Sierra by using the High Sierra installer application stored in the High Sierra Recovery partition or from booting to Internet Recovery, then the steps below could be used as an alternative.

The procedure installs OS X Mountain Lion, then uses OS X Mountain Lion to do a clean install of macOS High Sierra.

  1. Create a bootable USB Mountain Lion installer. The instructions are given in the section titled “How to Create a USB Flash Drive Mountain Lion Installer from OS X/macOS Recovery” of this answer.
  2. Follow this answer starting at step 2. Note: At step 6, substitute http://maclinks.publicvm.com for the link How to download macOS.
David Anderson
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Another alternative is to find a bootable High Sierra installer on DVD from someone, which can be inserted in the iMac, and selected for booting after starting up with Option (Alt) pressed.

David Anderson
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marc
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