Before upgrading to High Sierra, check your drives

[Ear]

... I checked his specs on the Mac Mini... it's a 7.1, late 2014. I thought it was older, so this is good, I think. He has the i5 processor. Has a fusion drive, so I'm not sure if we should try High Sierra 10.13, after I fix it... I'm inclined to tell him to leave it on Sierra 10.12.6, for now.

[Slappy]

No worries, buddy... I was able to squeeze one out of the App Store. It's still on there, you just have to be creative with finding it, now that High Sierra is out.

Oh rly? How's that?

[Ear]

I went digging on tech sites, Slappy... Apple still has the Sierra full install on the App Store, but damned if you can find it in the App store. I found a tech article with a link to it. Successfully installed Sierra 10.12.6 on a 1tb partition, and tested by booting my MBP from the external. 

Here's the link to the article. the link to the full Sierra installer download is below the 4th paragraph, says "get macOS sierra from the mac app store here". It will then open the App store app. Not sure how long the link will remain valid but it works for now.

http://osxdaily.com/2016/09/20/macos-sierra-download-released/

Took it to Dad's last night and did not have success. The damn mini will not accept any key commands. I get the chime, the apple and a moment of a progress bar... then straight to kernel panic. Won't boot in recovery mode, no safe mode.... haven't tried target disk mode yet. I got a pic of the kernel panic log and am trying to search more specific phrases.

[Tracy]

If you can get it into the Apple store I think they will load it for free
anything software related is free is what I was told.
You can check, I don't think it has to be within the Applecare warranty either.

[Joe]

Target disk mode would be the way to go other than as you say, "The damn mini will not accept any key commands." so that may not be possible.

[Ear]

Yeah, Joe... my thoughts too. 

It tries to boot, so i don't think it's totally dead. I just need to research and see if I can wrestle it out of the boot loop. It acknowledges the external, as the light on the drive starts to flicker, when I boot with C held down, but it kicks back off it and into the panic. 

[Joe]

Have you tried booting into single user mode to a command prompt? You may be able to format the internal HD from there if you can get to the prompt.

[Ear]

Yep. Tried Single User, Safe mode, recovery mode.... even verbose, nothing. I'm going to hook it up later and try some of the variants of recovery mode. Still need to try target disk.

I have the file path to the bad kernel. If I can just get into the files, I can track it down and really mess things up.  :tongue: I'll post the panic log a little later.

[Ear]

Upon startup, Apple logo appears, progress bar starts and it displays the following panic message. The message quickly disappears, it chimes and tries to reboot. This is an endless boot loop, with a short panic log:

---------------------------------

Panic(cpu 3 caller 0xffffff801d6a796): "Process 1 exec of /sbin/launchd failed, errno 2"@/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/xnu/xnu-3789.71.6/bsd/kern/kern_exec.c:5031
Debugger called: <panic>
0xffffff811c073de0 : 0xffffff80128ea56c

BSD process name corresponding to current thread: init

Mac OS version:
Not yet set

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 16.7.0: Wed Oct 4 00:17:00 PDT 2017; root:xnu-3789.71.6~1/RELEASE_X86_64
Kernel UUID: F487A842-6E21-37AB-83C3-83F951218734
Kernel slide: 0x0000000012600000
Kernel text base: 0xffffff80128000000
_HIB text base: 0xffffff8012700000
System model name: Macmini7,1

[Joe]

Worse comes to worse pull the hard drive and format it on another mac. Though I wonder if maybe the firmware isn't hosed at this point.

[Ear]

I was thinking that too. I have another mini around here but wondered about the firmware thing too. 

I keep going back to the fact that it does show the apple logo and a quick progress bar. Gotta be able to trick it... unless it is the firmware, in which case I don't know.

[Joe]

Have you tried zapping the PRAM with COMMAND + OPTION + P + R at startup?

[David]

we just tossed an iMac that did the almost exact same thing. It would never boot, could not do a restore, or even get it to boot off a CD/DVD or an OS install usb stick.

[Ear]

Yes... and that is what started the whole problem, I think.

Dad was a righteous tech, in his day. I think he got impatient and tried to kill the install by zapping the PRAM. The install may or may not have been hung up, but the PRAM trick threw it into the boot loop. 

[Ear]

we just tossed an iMac that did the almost exact same thing. It would never boot, could not do a restore, or even get it to boot off a CD/DVD or an OS install usb stick.

The thought has crossed my mind. I'm sure dad would love a new machine... mom probably would love for me to fix it, and have some extra Christmas $$. LOL