DiskMaker X

Well well well.

Of course, as I envisioned, things did not go as well as I wished for DiskMaker X launch. There are some issues, but there is one which is much more annoying than the others…

DiskMaker X does not work with Mac OS X 10.6.8 (or previous versions).

It will automatically fail after inputing your admin password. Though I was really sure to have tested it these last days, it seems that I missed completely the 10.6 tests. There is a major bug with Apple’s built-in tool (the now famous createinstallmedia command) when run from 10.6. If you try to run it, here is what you get:

I opened a Radar on this one (#15307100)

If you are running 10.6.8 and want to upgrade to 10.9, do the following:

• Make a backup copy on another disk of the OS X Install Mavericks app on another disk.
• Upgrade to 10.9.
• After upgrading to 10.9, launch DiskMaker X 10 and build your bootable install disk.

Of course, this means that you WON’T be able to perform a clean install of 10.9 straight. Which may be painful for some of you.

An easier way would be to have a 10.7 or 10.8 machine around and build the install disk with DiskMaker X from this machine.

I really apologize for this bug, as I should have ensured to perform more rigorous testing. Though this is not my direct responsibility but a bug in Apple’s tool, I feel bad for having this major problem slipped.

Is there no hope ?

Not completely. As I began to work on Lion DiskMaker X 3 / DiskMaker X, I did not try to use Apple’s command before it went under the radar (no pun intended), so I developed my own code to build the disk. And… it almost worked, though a bit convulated. In fact the code I used for Lion DiskMaker 3b2 did not use createinstallmedia at all.

So I want to correct this as soon as possible and re-use this code to make it work if 10.6 is used.

Please don’t report any bug if you use 10.6.X.

I prefer to concentrate on the issue with 10.6 by working on a fix than answering a flood of mail 🙂

However, don’t expect the new version to be available right now: I am at the same time very busy on my (hem) real job, and won’t be able to push a new update as fast as I wish.

Again, I apologize for having this gone public, it should have been better tested (for my own defense, testingLion DiskMaker under four different OS takes a lot of time. But this does not absolve me of my errors…

So, stay tuned, read the blog regularly, and check the Twitter account or Facebook page for more information.