Monday, March 29, 2021

El Capitan, My El Capitan

I wanted to re-install El Capitan on my very old MacBook Pro. It had 2 disk partitions which I wanted to merge but couldn't do so via Disk Utility while in recovery mode. It won't start-up recovery mode via internet with Command + Option + R. 

My scouring over the world wide web ended in me having to:

  • Download the dmg file from Apple.
  • Run below commands in Big Sur (or any macos which has higher version than El Capitan) to create the installation media (using a 32GB flash drive):
    • rm -rf /tmp/El\ Capitan
    • pkgutil --expand /Volumes/Install\ OS\ X/InstallMacOSX.pkg /tmp/El\ Capitan
    • diskutil eject Install\ OS\ X
    • cd /tmp/El\ Capitan
    • hdiutil attach InstallMacOSX.pkg/InstallESD.dmg -noverify -nobrowse -mountpoint /Volumes/esd
    • sudo asr restore -source /Volumes/esd/BaseSystem.dmg -target /Volumes/MyVolume -noprompt -noverify -erase
    • diskutil rename /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System /Volumes/Install\ El\ Capitan
    • rm /Volumes/Install\ El\ Capitan/System/Installation/Packages
    • cp -rp /Volumes/esd/Packages /Volumes/Install\ El\ Capitan/System/Installation
    • cp -rp /Volumes/esd/BaseSystem.chunklist /Volumes/Install\ El\ Capitan/
    • cp -rp /Volumes/esd/BaseSystem.dmg /Volumes/Install\ El\ Capitan/
    • hdiutil detach /Volumes/esd
    • sudo bless --folder /Volumes/Install\ El\ Capitan/System/Library/CoreServices --label Install\ El\ Capitan
    • cp /Volumes/Install\ El\ Capitan/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/InstallAssistant.icns /Volumes/Install\ El\ Capitan/.VolumeIcon.icns
    • cd "$HOME"
    • rm -r /tmp/El\ Capitan
    • diskutil eject /Volumes/Install\ El\ Capitan