The Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks download script is now hosted on Mavericks Forever. To download Mavericks, open a Terminal on any Mac and run:
curl mavericksforever.com/get.sh | sh
Or, navigate directly to mavericksforever.com/get.sh to read what the script does.
Hi There. :)
So great news , after a few failed attempts (Could Not Unmount Volume etc.) , I found that having the finder window open showing the volume stopped it being unmounted for some weird reason. Also at the end I got an ASR error , but I think that was just trying to rename the USB.
Either way , it's worked , a working booting USB from Apple Servers of Mavericks in 2025.
I have learnt a lot from my experimenting and failures but also from your awesome script work , thank you very much , it's much appreciated.
I think I could have come to the same end by using the BaseSystem.dmg that your script downloaded , and the package files , the semi installed OS had , along with my dd copied and enlarged Image , but why reinvent the wheel right :)
Again thank you.
One last question , any guess why the Installer I can download from an old OS App Store will not just work using the createmedia tool? and any idea why when I try to look inside the app contents the shared system InstallESD.dmg is reporting itself as corrupt?
Not that it matters now just curious.
Thanks again to all involved in this great work. :)
Last login: Mon Dec 1 01:16:03 on ttys000
/Users/alex/create-bootable-installer.command ; exit;
alex@Louises-MacBook-Air ~ % /Users/alex/create-bootable-installer.command ; exit;
Checksumming partition of size 0 blocks...done
Block checksum: ....10....20....30....40....50....60....70....80....90....100
successfully scanned image "/Users/alex/InstallMacOSXMavericks.dmg"
Please enter the volume name of your USB flash drive: Untitled
WARNING: All data on Untitled will be erased. Continue? (yes/no) yes
Password:
Started partitioning on disk2
Unmounting disk
Creating the partition map
Waiting for partitions to activate
Formatting disk2s2 as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with name Untitled
Initialized /dev/rdisk2s2 as a 57 GB case-insensitive HFS Plus volume with a 8192k journal
Mounting disk
Finished partitioning on disk2
/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *61.9 GB disk2
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk2s1
2: Apple_HFS Untitled 61.5 GB disk2s2
Validating target...done
Validating source...done
Retrieving scan information...done
Validating sizes...done
Restoring ....10....20....30....40....50....60....70....80....90....100
Verifying ....10....20....30....40....50....60....70....80....90....100
Restored target device is /dev/disk2s2.
Remounting target volume...done
asr: Couldn't personalize volume /Volumes/OS X Base System - State not recoverable
Saving session...
...copying shared history...
...saving history...truncating history files...
...completed.
[Process completed]
So great news , after a few failed attempts (Could Not Unmount Volume etc.) , I found that having the finder window open showing the volume stopped it being unmounted for some weird reason. Also at the end I got an ASR error , but I think that was just trying to rename the USB.
Odd, I'm not immediately sure what to do about that. (I know you got it working but it's a shame it wasn't a smoother experience.)
One last question , any guess why the Installer I can download from an old OS App Store will not just work using the createmedia tool? and any idea why when I try to look inside the app contents the shared system InstallESD.dmg is reporting itself as corrupt?
If I recall correctly, the InstallESD.dmg inside the App Store's Mavericks installer was never restorable, even when Mavericks was current. But of course createinstallmedia worked at one point.
From what I understand, Apple updated the App Store Mavericks installer some years back to re-sign a certificate or something, but ended up breaking it. Or something like that, haven't looked into this closely—but It's not only broken for you!
Many thanks , that explains a lot.
Congrats again with the great work in automating the whole process. 👍👍
Hi there again.
So I’ve been working with ChatGPT to try and create a script to produce a working “Install OS X Mavericks.app” have had some progress but keep running into the wall where even if the InstallESD.dmg is the one downloaded from your script , once the .app is created and I try to use createinstallmedia tool , it just says This is not a valid OS X installer.
Any Thoughts?
This is the script we came up with.
#!/bin/bash
set -euo pipefail
BROKEN_APP_DIR="/Users/labtech4/Desktop/Broken App"
GOOD_ESD_DIR="/Users/labtech4/Desktop/Good ESD"
OUT_PARENT="/Users/labtech4/Desktop/Rebuilt Install OS X Mavericks App"
GOOD_ESD="$(find "$GOOD_ESD_DIR" -maxdepth 1 -type f -iname "InstallESD*.dmg" -print -quit || true)"
if [ -z "$GOOD_ESD" ]; then
echo "[ERROR] Cannot find InstallESD.dmg in $GOOD_ESD_DIR"
exit 1
fi
if [ -d "$BROKEN_APP_DIR" ] && [[ "$BROKEN_APP_DIR" == .app ]]; then
BROKEN_APP="$BROKEN_APP_DIR"
else
BROKEN_APP="$(find "$BROKEN_APP_DIR" -maxdepth 1 -type d -iname "Install.app" -print -quit || true)"
if [ -z "$BROKEN_APP" ]; then
echo "[ERROR] Cannot find Install OS X Mavericks.app in $BROKEN_APP_DIR"
exit 1
fi
fi
mkdir -p "$OUT_PARENT"
STAGED_APP="$OUT_PARENT/Install OS X Mavericks.app"
WORKTMP="$(mktemp -d /tmp/mavericks_rebuild.XXXXXX)"
trap 'rm -rf "$WORKTMP"' EXIT
echo "Good ESD: $GOOD_ESD"
echo "Broken app: $BROKEN_APP"
echo "Output app: $STAGED_APP"
echo "Working temp: $WORKTMP"
hdiutil attach "$GOOD_ESD" -nobrowse -readonly >/dev/null
ESD_MOUNT="/Volumes/OS X Install ESD"
BASE_LOCAL="$WORKTMP/BaseSystem.dmg"
cp -p "$ESD_MOUNT/BaseSystem.dmg" "$BASE_LOCAL"
cp -p "$ESD_MOUNT/BaseSystem.chunklist" "$WORKTMP/"
SPARSE="$WORKTMP/BaseSystem.sparseimage"
hdiutil convert -ov "$BASE_LOCAL" -format UDSP -o "$SPARSE" >/dev/null
hdiutil resize -size 6500m "$SPARSE" >/dev/null
hdiutil attach "$SPARSE" -nobrowse -readwrite >/dev/null
MOUNT_BASE="/Volumes/OS X Base System"
rm -rf "$MOUNT_BASE/System/Installation/Packages" 2>/dev/null || true
mkdir -p "$MOUNT_BASE/System/Installation"
cp -R "$ESD_MOUNT/Packages" "$MOUNT_BASE/System/Installation/"
cp -p "$ESD_MOUNT/BaseSystem.dmg" "$MOUNT_BASE/System/Installation/"
cp -p "$ESD_MOUNT/BaseSystem.chunklist" "$MOUNT_BASE/System/Installation/"
hdiutil detach "$MOUNT_BASE" >/dev/null
hdiutil detach "$ESD_MOUNT" >/dev/null
OUT_DMG="$WORKTMP/InstallMacOSXMavericks.dmg"
hdiutil convert -ov "$SPARSE" -format UDZO -o "$OUT_DMG" >/dev/null
rm -rf "$STAGED_APP"
mkdir -p "$STAGED_APP/Contents/SharedSupport"
mkdir -p "$STAGED_APP/Contents/Resources"
mkdir -p "$STAGED_APP/Contents/Frameworks"
mkdir -p "$STAGED_APP/Contents/MacOS"
cp -R "$BROKEN_APP/Contents/Resources/"* "$STAGED_APP/Contents/Resources/" 2>/dev/null || true
cp -R "$BROKEN_APP/Contents/Frameworks/"* "$STAGED_APP/Contents/Frameworks/" 2>/dev/null || true
cp -p "$OUT_DMG" "$STAGED_APP/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg"
if [ -f "$ESD_MOUNT/Packages/InstallableMachines.plist" ]; then
cp -p "$ESD_MOUNT/Packages/InstallableMachines.plist" "$STAGED_APP/Contents/SharedSupport/"
fi
if [ -f "$BROKEN_APP/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia" ]; then
cp -p "$BROKEN_APP/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia" "$STAGED_APP/Contents/Resources/"
chmod +x "$STAGED_APP/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia"
else
cat > "$STAGED_APP/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia" <<'CIM'
#!/bin/sh
echo "Use ASR restore method; createinstallmedia not included."
exit 1
CIM
chmod +x "$STAGED_APP/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia"
fi
cat > "$STAGED_APP/Contents/Info.plist" <<'EOF'
CFBundleIdentifier com.apple.InstallAssistant.Mavericks CFBundleName Install OS X Mavericks CFBundleVersion 1 CFBundleExecutable InstallAssistant EOFxattr -cr "$STAGED_APP" >/dev/null 2>&1 || true
chmod -R 755 "$STAGED_APP"
chown -R "$(whoami)":staff "$STAGED_APP"
echo
echo "=== Rebuild complete! ==="
echo "Rebuilt app location: $STAGED_APP"
echo
echo "Do you want to create a bootable USB now? (This will erase the selected disk) [y/N]: "
read -r CREATE_USB
if [[ "$CREATE_USB" =~ ^[Yy]$ ]]; then
echo "Available volumes:"
ls /Volumes
echo
echo "Enter the name of the USB drive exactly as it appears in /Volumes (will be erased): "
read -r USB_VOL
DISK_ID=$(diskutil info "/Volumes/$USB_VOL" | awk '/Part of Whole/ {print $NF}')
if [ -z "$DISK_ID" ]; then
echo "[ERROR] Could not determine disk identifier for $USB_VOL"
exit 1
fi
echo
echo "All data on $USB_VOL ($DISK_ID) will be erased! Confirm by typing YES: "
read -r CONFIRM
if [ "$CONFIRM" != "YES" ]; then
echo "Aborting USB creation."
exit 1
fi
CURRENT_DATE=$(date "+%m%d%H%M%Y")
echo "Temporarily setting system date to Jan 1, 2015 to avoid certificate errors..."
sudo date 0101010115
echo "Creating bootable USB..."
sudo "$STAGED_APP/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia"
--volume "/Volumes/$USB_VOL"
--applicationpath "$STAGED_APP"
--nointeraction
echo "Restoring original system date..."
sudo date "$CURRENT_DATE"
echo "Bootable USB created on $USB_VOL"
else
echo "USB creation skipped. You can use createinstallmedia manually."
fi
echo "Done."
Basically trying to fix what Apple broke , when you download the installer app from the old App Store , it can’t validate the InstallESD.dmg but the one your script downloads is valid . Trying to merge the two together to create a working .app is proving tricky. 🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️
@Sixxdog-UK Hi, see https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/can-we-download-mavericks-directly-from-apples-servers.2444350/page-7?post=33648307#post-33648307
Tl:dr is that, as far as I can tell, what you're trying to do is impossible.
Hi Jonathan,
Thanks for the feedback , it was just a fun experiment and I learnt a lot from doing it.
Nice to know it’s been tried before and not just me being hopeless. 😆
Just as a side note , did you know that the certificate issues don’t just effect mavericks , if you download an installer from an old version of the AppStore , the InstallESD.dmg still can’t be opened. Not such a problem as we have links to download everything else , just a curious side note.
Thanks again for your brilliant work.
sixx
Hi There,
Thanks for getting back to me so quickly , I'll try all the things you mentioned and get back to you ASAP.
It's weird that the Installer App that I manage to download direct from apple won't work as it's InstallESD.dmg inside Shared Support declared it is corrupted? odd
Anyway will get back to you as soon as ive tried this things.
Also yes file I am ending up with is in fact the InstallMacOSXMavericks.dmg
Thanks again for your hard work and advice, will get back to you as soon as I know more.