Thu Jul 26, 2012, 09:14 PM

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, 4182 views

Reply to this thread

Always highlight: 10 newest replies | Replies posted after I mark a forum

Replies to this discussion thread

11 replies	Author	Time	Post
How I sorta solved my Mountain Lion download problem (Original post)	struggle4progress	Jul 2012	OP
Well, I got about half way thru after 10 hours (?WTF) and then the download failed. So	struggle4progress	Jul 2012	#1
With my connection, this would probably take, er,	cbayer	Jul 2012	#2
yeah, it's ridiculous to force people to download, imo	struggle4progress	Jul 2012	#3
Mercury is Retrograde till August 9	Berlum	Jul 2012	#4
Got it downloaded but now having no luck making an install disk or install usb	struggle4progress	Jul 2012	#5
OK, so if you want to make an install DVD apparently you need more than the 4.7GB on a standard DVD,	struggle4progress	Jul 2012	#6
So now I want to put this on one of my macs as an upgrade	struggle4progress	Jul 2012	#7
So I did the first update/install round on Lion, which probably took about	struggle4progress	Jul 2012	#8
Two rounds completed my updating for Lion. So it's time to launch	struggle4progress	Jul 2012	#9
oops. wait. first let me update my firefox, repair permissions on the disk,	struggle4progress	Jul 2012	#10
Time spent so far: maybe 20 + 10 + 2 + 2+ 2 = 36 hours	struggle4progress	Jul 2012	#11

Response to struggle4progress (Original post)

Thu Jul 26, 2012, 11:26 PM

struggle4progress (71,475 posts)

1. Well, I got about half way thru after 10 hours (?WTF) and then the download failed. So

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

Reply to this post

Response to struggle4progress (Original post)

Fri Jul 27, 2012, 10:53 AM

cbayer (120,011 posts)

2. With my connection, this would probably take, er,

A year.

Reply to this post

Response to cbayer (Reply #2)

Fri Jul 27, 2012, 11:38 AM

struggle4progress (71,475 posts)

3. yeah, it's ridiculous to force people to download, imo

Reply to this post

Response to struggle4progress (Original post)

Fri Jul 27, 2012, 03:44 PM

Berlum (3,689 posts)

4. Mercury is Retrograde till August 9

Cozmique Computer Reality....

Reply to this post

Response to struggle4progress (Original post)

Fri Jul 27, 2012, 07:38 PM

struggle4progress (71,475 posts)

5. Got it downloaded but now having no luck making an install disk or install usb

Reply to this post

Response to struggle4progress (Reply #5)

Fri Jul 27, 2012, 09:51 PM

struggle4progress (71,475 posts)

6. OK, so if you want to make an install DVD apparently you need more than the 4.7GB on a standard DVD,

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

Reply to this post

Response to struggle4progress (Original post)

Fri Jul 27, 2012, 10:11 PM

struggle4progress (71,475 posts)

7. So now I want to put this on one of my macs as an upgrade

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

Reply to this post

Response to struggle4progress (Reply #7)

Sat Jul 28, 2012, 03:36 PM

struggle4progress (71,475 posts)

8. So I did the first update/install round on Lion, which probably took about

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

Reply to this post

Response to struggle4progress (Reply #8)

Sat Jul 28, 2012, 06:41 PM

struggle4progress (71,475 posts)

9. Two rounds completed my updating for Lion. So it's time to launch

my Mountain Lion install/upgrade disk

Reply to this post

Response to struggle4progress (Reply #9)

Sat Jul 28, 2012, 07:07 PM

struggle4progress (71,475 posts)

10. oops. wait. first let me update my firefox, repair permissions on the disk,

and run a time machine backup!

Reply to this post

Response to struggle4progress (Original post)

Sun Jul 29, 2012, 01:58 AM

struggle4progress (71,475 posts)

11. Time spent so far: maybe 20 + 10 + 2 + 2+ 2 = 36 hours

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

Reply to this post

Macintosh Users (Group)