Failed to create a bootable disk image file for this version of macOS.

Discussion in 'Installation and Configuration of Parallels Desktop' started by DaveP10, Dec 6, 2021.

  1. DaveP10

    DaveP10 Bit poster

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    Hello all,

    Any ideas on why I keep getting this message? I am running out of ideas and cannot get any answers from support.
    I had to rebuilt my mac system from scratch and reinstalled + re-added the license. I am on macOS Monterey 12.01 and trying to create a new Big Sur instance on 11.6.1. The .app installer is sitting in /Applications and I've downloaded directly from Apple, so I can confirm that it is clean. Yet, I am still getting this error within the Installation Assistant right after I select the .app and click Continue.

    Any ideas would be very helpful on how to resolve.

    Thank you!
     
  2. DougD

    DougD Bit poster

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    Stuck in same boat. Did you ever figure this out?
     
  3. CloudDude

    CloudDude Bit poster

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    I had the same issue. In my case, the error occurred when trying to directly create a macOS VM whose OS version is not natively supported on my physical underlying Mac hardware. For example trying to directly create/install macOS Monterey on a Mac Pro 2010 produced this error.'

    I figured out I could instead first (1) Create a macOS VM using the last version natively supported by the underlying hardware then (2) upgrade the OS within the VM thereafter. Using the same example, first created a macOS Mojave VM, then upgraded the OS within the VM to Monterey 12.3.1.
     
  4. CloudDude

    CloudDude Bit poster

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    Additional note about this in-place OS upgrade process. From my experience, upgrading the VM from macOS Mojave to Monterey went fine, but at one point during the upgrade it displayed an icon of a circle with a slash going through it with a link about macOS startup. But after some time it rebooted and continued the upgrade process. My suspicion was that page was related to attempted firmware upgrades which weren't needed.
     
  5. DebasmitaM

    DebasmitaM Forum Maven

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    Hello, please let us know if the issue is resolved. If not, kindly help us with the screenshot of the error.
     
  6. veeceeoh

    veeceeoh Bit poster

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    @DebasmitaM@Parallels - I am having the same issue of the error message "Failed to create bootable image file for this version of macOS" when I select the macOS Monterey 12.3 installer .app in the Applications folder, as downloaded directly from Apple's server. I also see the same error when I select the macOS 13 Ventura beta installer .app as well. Both of these installer apps are for the respective Intel version of macOS.

    The host system is a 27" 2017 iMac with 4.2GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, running macOS Monterey 12.4 as the host OS. I am 100% sure that the host Mac is able to natively install and run macOS Monterey 12.3, so the error message must be due to another reason.

    Here are screenshots:

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
     
  7. DebasmitaM

    DebasmitaM Forum Maven

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    Hello, which Parallels Desktop version you are using?
     
  8. veeceeoh

    veeceeoh Bit poster

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    I'm using Parallels Desktop for Mac version 17.1.4.
     
  9. BenS28

    BenS28 Bit poster

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    Any updates on this? Other users (i.e. me) are having this issue as well, so please don't DM individuals or if you do, please update this thread as well.
     
  10. SuF

    SuF Bit poster

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    I can confirm that I am having the same issue on the same exact hardware 27" 2017 iMac with 4.2GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, running macOS Monterey 12.4 as the host OS and Parallels Desktop for Mac version 17.1.4.
     
  11. Grllle

    Grllle Bit poster

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    Same problem for me trying to install a Mojave 10.14.6 VM
     
  12. YoonK

    YoonK Bit poster

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    The same issue, anyone knows where to get an Image File for older versions? I am planning to upgrade a Big Sur VM to Monterey inside the VM but cant seem to find a working download link for Big Sur Image
     
  13. Enrico5

    Enrico5 Bit poster

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    Same issue here. Mac Pro 7.1 Intel with Monterey 12.4.

    I make a video proof

     
  14. Asish

    Asish Staff Member

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    Hello @Enrico5 , Kindly let us know the processor of your Host Mac (Intel/ M1).
     
  15. Enrico5

    Enrico5 Bit poster

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    Intel Xeon W 28 cores
     
  16. DebasmitaM

    DebasmitaM Forum Maven

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    Hello, we would request you to create a support ticket so that we can check the issue internally.
     
  17. FrankL22

    FrankL22 Bit poster

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    I ran into this problem today and decided to dig deeper. Actual workaround inside! (Although I have no idea why it works...)

    The actual process of converting the App to ISO actually uses a shell script. This is the command it executes (your paths will vary):
    Code:
    /bin/bash '/Applications/Parallels Desktop.app/Contents/Resources//repack_osx_install_app.sh' repack '/Applications/Install macOS Monterey.app' '/Users/flow/Parallels/macOS_image_file.iso' -w
    You can actually execute that same script easily (use sudo, some steps seem to require root). In my case it failed in hdiutil attach:

    Code:
    + for i in '{1..10}'
    ++ hdiutil attach '/Users/flow/Parallels/macOS image file.iso.tmp.MmgaDy/macOSInstallImage.sparsebundle' -mount required -mountrandom '/Users/flow/Parallels/macOS image file.iso.tmp.MmgaDy' -plist -nobrowse -noverify
    ++ grep -A1 mount-point
    ++ sed -n 's:.*<string>\(.*\)</string>.*:\1:p'
    hdiutil: attach failed - Resource temporarily unavailable
    ++ true
    + mount_path=
    + '[' -n '' ']'
    + sleep 3
    Interestingly hdiutil attach seemed to work half, at least afterwards with hdiutil info you could see a mount. The error is completely reproducible when editing the script to make sure it leaves the sparsebundle around after the run. You can run hdiutil attach and detach on it and see the error.

    Anyway, I googled the error and found https://stackoverflow.com/questions...t-results-to-resource-temporarily-unavailable where someone claimed he encountered this error when using hdiutil detach but could work around it with diskutil eject. Neither he nor the responder had any idea why that might be. But I was desperate, so I experimented with it. And lo an behold, when running hdiutil attach on the sparsebundle and then not running hdiutil detach but instead run diskutil eject then the next hdiutil attach works. Magic!

    And we can use that to work-around the problem in Parallels as well. As you can see in the script output above it actually tries the hdiutil attach 10 times with 3 seconds sleeps in between. So open a terminal beside Parallels and determine which disk hdiutil attach will use (Just run diskutil list and see what the next /dev/disk number will be). In my case I have a /dev/disk1, so hdiutil attach uses /dev/disk2). So I started the conversion process in Parallels, waited for a few seconds and then executed diskutil eject /dev/disk2 in the terminal. That made the script actually succeed and Parallels continued from there.
     
    lukas7 likes this.
  18. FrankL22

    FrankL22 Bit poster

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    Instead of executing the diskutil eject in a separate terminal you can also edit the /Applications/Parallels Desktop.app/Contents/Resources//repack_osx_install_app.sh directly. Just add the diskutil eject command before the sleep 3 (line 75 in my version of Parallels). Probably with some work you could actually detect that disk to eject, but I haven't invested time in that. I confirmed that it works on my system by just adding diskutil eject /dev/disk2 and cleaning up any remaining mounts before starting it.
     
  19. AlexC1

    AlexC1 Bit poster

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    I had the same issue and I cracked it!

    Here is what you need to do. Attach a USB disk drive formatted in Mac OS X Extended or AFPS. (A old USB drive will do.) please backup anything off it before formatting it.

    When the software says that it need to create a bootable volume save this to the USB drive. The creation of it will take a while for a 13GB file when I installed Big Sur took at least 5 mins. Please be patient. You will see the Big Sur disk volume dmg come and go off the desktop. This is normal and there is nothing to worry about. Its like as if you are using the createinstallmedia command in terminal.

    After it has created the boot volume on the USB drive it will then ask you where would you like too save and start the virtual machine. Save this where you normally do. the virtual machine will then boot off the USB drive and then you can install the OS. if you want to remove the USB drive after install this will need to be done under the virtual machine settings. As I think (unless someone wants to correct me, and feel free,) you can delete it.

    Let me know how you get on. I would think the reason why we can't install on the internal drive is a security thing or Apple are tight on security. I am not sure.

    Good Luck!
     
  20. AlexC1

    AlexC1 Bit poster

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    try the method I suggested. Also if you download software called MDS from https://twocanoes.com/products/mac/mac-deploy-stick/ its software to deploy updates to Mac OS for IT teams etc. Its free to download.
     

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