Downloading a fresh copy of Mountain Lion Installer and using Lion DiskMaker to create an SD card boot drive

Today, in preparation for a 1TB SSD install following the demise of my 2nd 1TB Samsung 2009 iMac boot drive, I created a Mountain Lion 10.8.4 installer disk:

 

The process was more difficult than I'd expected, with some of the same Mountain Lion install problems I'd experienced during my original migration from Snow Leopard. The process of downloading and retaining the Mountain Lion Installer was particularly obscure, and none of the web references I read were entirely correct.

At this point I'd normally be railing about Apple, but it's clear they're as bewildered by the end of physical media distribution (DVD in this case) as the rest of us. (Though they certainly could have made SD distribution more palatable.) As I traced through the process I could see how Apple has been iterating on ML delivery over the past 8 months. Maybe things will go better with Mavericks.

After I was done with this process I did find Apple's official description, hidden in an obscure and mis-titled technical document ...

 OS X: About OS X Recovery

... If you completed your installation of OS X, your installer may have been removed after your successful first login to OS X Lion or OS X Mountain Lion. Mac App Store's Purchases page should show Install OS X as being "Installed", and disallow its download, when viewed from a computer running OS X.

To redownload the installer on a computer running OS X Lion or OS X Mountain Lion, press and hold the Option key while you click the Purchases tab. If the button to the right of the Install OS X Lion or OS X Mountain Lion item doesn't change to "Install" and allow you to download OS X, use Spotlight to search for "Install OS X Lion or OS X Mountain Lion" on your computer.

Launch the Install OS X Lion or OS X Mountain Lion installer you downloaded from Mac App Store. The installer should be in the /Applications folder. Follow the onscreen instructions to complete the OS X installation. Be sure you install Lion on the external storage device you've connected for this purpose, not your computer's boot drive. When installation to your external device is complete, you can re-run Install Mac OS X Lion or OS X Mountain Lion installer and upgrade the boot drive of your computer. A Recovery System will likely not be created, but if you need to reinstall or repair your boot drive at a later date, you can connect the external drive you just prepared and hold Command-R while restarting computer in order to boot from the external Recovery System.

Did you get that? Yes, the damned option key again - though as of 9/2013 the installer showed me a download button. They're wrong about this though: "The installer should be in the /Applications folder". Things are ... more complex. Even a bit astonishing.

I'll describe what I did today, though at the rate things are changing this advice is probably only good for a week or two. I was guided by bits and pieces of these additional references:

• OS X: About Recovery Disk Assistant - A shorter and more understandable guide to Apple's current recommendation.
• mac - Installing Mountain Lion on a fresh SSD - Super User
• Install Mountain Lion on As Many Macs As You Want Without Purchasing Additional Copies - Lifehacker
• upgrade - Can I download Mountain Lion and install it later? - Ask Different (I updated this with a corrected answer)
• install - How can I download the Lion installation file? - Ask Different - Lion description, somewhat older
• How do I install Mac OS 10.8 Mountain...: Apple Support Communities

The last of these, when combined with Apple's OS X: About Recovery Disk Assistant is a pretty good guide to what the Apple recommended (normal) route would be for installing Mountain Lion from the App Store on new boot media (HDD, SDD, etc). Here's via1083's explanation in the case of a fresh SSD install.

1. Before installing run Apple Software Update to make sure that you have the latest software.
2. Download the OS X Recovery Disk Assistant. This will allow you to create a bootable Recovery partition on a USB thumb drive that will allow you to reinstall OS X Mountain Lion. You need to have at least 1GB of space on your USB drive. For more information, including how to properly set up a USB thumb drive, visit About OS X Recovery Disk Assistant.
3. Shut Down your Mac and connect the USB stick that you prepared with the Recovery assistant to your Mac.
4. Turn on your Mac and hold the option key. Select the Recovery USB thumbdrive as the boot up disk. Make sure that the computer successfully boots up to it.
5. Exit the Recovery USB by going to the Apple icon and selecting shutdown. Disconnect the USB thumbdrive.
6. Proceed to upgrade your MacBook Pro with the SSD drive.
7. Before turning on your Mac, re-connect your Recovery USB thumbdrive.
8. Turn On your Mac, hold the "option" key and boot from the USB thumbdrive.
9. When the OS X recovery tools menu appears, select the Disk Utility Options.
10. Follow Kappy's tips on SSD drive preparation.
11. Quit Disk Utility.
12. In the OS X recovery tools menu select the "Install OS X" option.
13. Follow the instructions of the installer and agree with the terms and conditions, OS X will then proceed to the downloaded from Apple's servers. (This may take a while depending on your Internet connection's speed. Also, the computer will send its serial number to the Apple servers to validate the copy of OS X Mountain Lion.)
14. OS X Mountain Lion will proceed to install. This process will take some time, your Mac will reboot once installation is finished.
15. Follow the OS X set up assistant instructions after your Mac boots from installation.
16. Done! Proceed to install the rest of your Apps and restoring your documents if you use a back up solution

That's not the route I took though. I created a Mac OS X Installer SD using Lion DiskMaker.

 

First though I wanted a fresh copy of Mountain Lion. That turned out to be ... weird. I won't go through all the twists and turns but there's one key thing to know that I've not seen documented anywhere else:

• If you have a version of Install OS X Mountain Lion.app in range of Spotlight the App Store install process with update that version rather than create a new version in /Applications.

Yeah, that is hard to believe. But look at the log file I dug up from the installer (edited here, emphases mine, note the use of the tmpdir during install, I was using a purpose-created admin account I called 'temp'):

 

Sep  2 08:04:51 SaintPaul-2.local Install OS X Mountain Lion[5079]: @(#)PROGRAM:Install  PROJECT:Install-735

Sep  2 08:04:51 SaintPaul-2.local Install OS X Mountain Lion[5079]: @(#)PROGRAM:IA  PROJECT:InstallAssistant-360.1

Sep  2 08:04:51 SaintPaul-2.local Install OS X Mountain Lion[5079]: Hardware: iMac11,1 @ 2.66 GHz (x 4), 8192 MB RAM

Sep  2 08:04:51 SaintPaul-2.local Install OS X Mountain Lion[5079]: Running OS Build: Mac OS X 10.8.4 (12E55)

Sep  2 08:04:51 SaintPaul-2.local Install OS X Mountain Lion[5079]: Env: PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin

Sep  2 08:04:51 SaintPaul-2.local Install OS X Mountain Lion[5079]: Env: TMPDIR=/var/folders/js/329jxxks1gx77q7n_62bg6fh0000gq/T/

Sep  2 08:04:51 SaintPaul-2.local Install OS X Mountain Lion[5079]: Env: SHELL=/bin/bash

Sep  2 08:04:51 SaintPaul-2.local Install OS X Mountain Lion[5079]: Env: HOME=/Users/temp

Sep  2 08:04:51 SaintPaul-2.local Install OS X Mountain Lion[5079]: Env: USER=temp

Sep  2 08:04:51 SaintPaul-2.local Install OS X Mountain Lion[5079]: Env: LOGNAME=temp

Sep  2 08:04:51 SaintPaul-2.local Install OS X Mountain Lion[5079]: Env: SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/launch-aetmfB/Listeners

Sep  2 08:04:51 SaintPaul-2.local Install OS X Mountain Lion[5079]: Env: Apple_Ubiquity_Message=/tmp/launch-suN6EE/Apple_Ubiquity_Message

Sep  2 08:04:51 SaintPaul-2.local Install OS X Mountain Lion[5079]: Env: Apple_PubSub_Socket_Render=/tmp/launch-NTelRv/Render

Sep  2 08:04:51 SaintPaul-2.local Install OS X Mountain Lion[5079]: Env: COMMAND_MODE=unix2003

Sep  2 08:04:51 SaintPaul-2.local Install OS X Mountain Lion[5079]: Env: __CF_USER_TEXT_ENCODING=0x1F7:0:0

Sep  2 08:04:58 SaintPaul-2.local Install OS X Mountain Lion[5079]: Using distribution archive from /Users/jfaughnan 1/Public/AppInst/Mac App install/OSUpdates/Install OS X Mountain Lion.app/Contents/SharedSupport/OSInstall.mpkg

Sep  2 08:04:58 SaintPaul-2.local Install OS X Mountain Lion[5079]: Configuring products from SharedSupport folder

Sep  2 08:04:58 SaintPaul-2.local Install OS X Mountain Lion[5079]: Using product <OSInstallDVDProduct> based on media at /Users/jfaughnan 1/Public/AppInst/Mac App install/OSUpdates/Install OS X Mountain Lion.app/Contents/SharedSupport at distance 5...

 

Yes, the installer found an older version of Install OS X Mountain Lion and updated it rather than create a new app in /Applications.

 

Ok, now that you've got your head around this behavior,  here's an expanded version of what I posted to Ask Different.

1. As of 9/2013 the app store lets us download multiple instances of Mountain Lion without necessarily clicking on the option key to get the Download button to appear.
2. Lifehacker recommends downloading from a fresh purpose-created app store account. I suspect that's because they ran into the update behavior using an account with access to a prior ML download. I did this, but not sure it's necessary.
3. After the 4.4 GB download completed I quit the installer. Since the installer had located /Users/jfaughnan 1/Public/AppInst/Mac App install/OSUpdates/Install OS X Mountain Lion.app/Contents/SharedSupport/OSInstall.mpkg it updated that package [1]. I think if it hadn't found that prior installer it would have generated an install app and stored it in /Applications.

Once I figured out what had happened I used Lion DiskMaker to create the ML installer on an 8GB SD card. It works by mounting InstallESD.dmg and BaseSystem.dmg then creating  the boot and ESD components on the SD card.

 

After completion I tried holding down the option key on restart -- with a wireless Bluetooth keyboard. That didn't work, in fact I ended up with a familiar no mouse kb startup that resolved when I disconnected my firewire connected Epson scanner. I then used Startup Disk.app to choose the SD boot disk and I confirmed it worked.

So now I'm ready for the replacement SSD drive to arrive.

- fn -

[1] Spotlight found that installer even though it was in a different user account because it was in a shared folder.

Update 10/30/2013: @gaelicwizard explained the Spotlight-updating-Installer behavior in an app.net thread. This is simply how the app store updater works -- the app being updated doesn't have to be in the Applications folder. Nothing special about the OS X Installer.