Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member Latest Breaking News Editorials & Other Articles General Discussion The DU Lounge All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

struggle4progress

(120,556 posts)
Thu Jul 26, 2012, 08:14 PM Jul 2012

How I sorta solved my Mountain Lion download problem

Lots of folk have been having problems downloading Mountain Lion

I got the corrupt file error from the appstore

The way I fixed this was some combo of the following:

(1) look in console for the name of the directory in /var/folders that's causing the problem and delete it (mine was /73). if you don't wan't to delete the whole folder insider of /var/folders, track down the path to /var/folders/.../com.apple.appstore and delete from there. This stuff seems to get recreated on relaunch of appstore so no biggie. Save a backup if you're nervous

(2) repair permissions on disk

(3) reboot

(4) disable anti-virus software

Downloading now, and it's a big download that takes a long time

11 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight: NoneDon't highlight anything 5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies

struggle4progress

(120,556 posts)
1. Well, I got about half way thru after 10 hours (?WTF) and then the download failed. So
Thu Jul 26, 2012, 10:26 PM
Jul 2012

I had to restart. It looks like it's taking off from where it failed, but of course I won't know until the whole download finishes and I try to install

struggle4progress

(120,556 posts)
6. OK, so if you want to make an install DVD apparently you need more than the 4.7GB on a standard DVD,
Fri Jul 27, 2012, 08:51 PM
Jul 2012

even though

Applications > Install OSX Mountain Lion.app > Shared Support > InstallESD.dmg

is nominally only 4.35GB. Whatever. Anyway, lots of people have trouble unless they do this, and so did I. So I went out and bought myself some DL (dual-layer) 8.5GB DVDs to be able to do this, and now it looks like I've successfully burned it and verified the burn, cuz it ejected and when I reinserted it in the optical drive, a Mac OSX Install ESD finder window opened to show Install OS X Mountain Lion.app and several folders

But, also, I am learning what lying asshat copycats most of the people posting on the web are

You read "X is really simple! All you have to do is blah blah blah!" And then you try it and it doesn't work

So you look for other instructions and you find word-for-word the exact same useless effin instructions on a gazillion other websites

And then finally you find one where somebody put in the comments field "Disk Utility won't make a usb stick from this dmg unless you mount the dmg before trying to use the Disk Utility Restore operation" and the frickin copycat asshat answers something like "Thanks!" And you finally find one where somebody put in the comments field "Actually I always got a Disk Utility Burn error with a standard 4.7GB DVD, so I had to use a 8.5GB DVD-R DL. And it seems like maybe most of the folk posting all these helpful instructions have never ever tried them

struggle4progress

(120,556 posts)
7. So now I want to put this on one of my macs as an upgrade
Fri Jul 27, 2012, 09:11 PM
Jul 2012

That means I should get Lion reasonably up to date

That is projected to required at least 10 hrs of downloading for 2.13GB of upgrade

struggle4progress

(120,556 posts)
8. So I did the first update/install round on Lion, which probably took about
Sat Jul 28, 2012, 02:36 PM
Jul 2012

10 hours of download/install time, and now I'm onto the second update/install round on Lion, which will take another couple of hours

struggle4progress

(120,556 posts)
9. Two rounds completed my updating for Lion. So it's time to launch
Sat Jul 28, 2012, 05:41 PM
Jul 2012

my Mountain Lion install/upgrade disk

struggle4progress

(120,556 posts)
10. oops. wait. first let me update my firefox, repair permissions on the disk,
Sat Jul 28, 2012, 06:07 PM
Jul 2012

and run a time machine backup!

struggle4progress

(120,556 posts)
11. Time spent so far: maybe 20 + 10 + 2 + 2+ 2 = 36 hours
Sun Jul 29, 2012, 12:58 AM
Jul 2012

You'll have better luck if your internet connection is faster than mine, and if you've kept your machine up-to-date and backed up, because nearly half of this is me updating Lion on a portable machine I haven't used recently and that I've been very negligent to back up

I won't have to re-do the 20 hr download (if my disk works) cuz that's why I made the disk -- but I have several other machines that are gonna require at least the 10 + 2 hr double download update

My main machine, when I get around to doing it, after I'll ironed out the bugs on several others, should go reasonably fast: I've kept the software up-to-date and everything backed up

Latest Discussions»Culture Forums»Apple Users»How I sorta solved my Mou...