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I'm trying to bring back my old 2010 Mac Mini back from the dead. For various reasons, Internet Recovery doesn't work on it, so I need to create a bootable USB.

I've got the full installer for High Sierra on my daily driver (14in Macbook Air M2) but the darn thing won't open with a message like 'this version of MacOS is too old for this Mac...' similarly, trying to run the High Sierra createinstallmedia command in Terminal just results in terminal killed output.

What's the solution to create a bootable USB for an older version of MacOS on a modern/current Mac?

Dan
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    See if this helps: https://apple.stackexchange.com/q/309399/119271 If it doesn’t come back and explain what went wrong – Allan May 20 '23 at 14:43
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    A High Sierra installer is intel-only. Do you have Rosetta installed if you are trying to use createinstallmedia from it? – Marc Wilson May 20 '23 at 14:50
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    A lot of the "How to build OSX on Mac Y guides no longer work as written, because the installers have changed format in recent years. – Tetsujin May 20 '23 at 15:34
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    I tried just running createinstallmedia from HS on an M1Pro with Monterey. The crash report says: " "reportNotes" : [ "dyld_process_info_create failed with 6", "dyld_process_snapshot_get_shared_cache failed", "Failed to create CSSymbolicatorRef - corpse still valid ¯\(ツ)_/¯" ]" – Marc Wilson May 20 '23 at 17:22
  • (cont) That shruggie is in the crash report. – Marc Wilson May 20 '23 at 17:23
  • Dan: You could try creating an USB flash drive El Capitan or Sierra installer on your M2 Mac, then use to install on your 2010 Mac. Once you have the 2010 running, you should be able to access the Apple Store to get High Sierra or use the High Sierra you downloaded to your M2 Mac. – David Anderson May 20 '23 at 18:55
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    Instructions for creating an El Capitan installer can be found here. While the same instructions can be adapted for Sierra, you might want to use these instructions instead. – David Anderson May 20 '23 at 18:56
  • @MarcWilson I've tried it both on Apple Silicon and Intel and the installer is just to old to run / too told to run createsinstallmedia – Dan May 21 '23 at 07:44

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Answering my own question:

It turns out you can't use createinstallmedia on a newer Mac than the installer is designed for; you need to manually create a bootable USB stick using the instructions here. It's appears a bit convoluted but is ultimately straight-forward. Bear in mind some of the terminal commands are dependent on your USB transfer speed so don't worry if some just appear to hang.

It's also worth noting that whilst I was trying to get MacOS High Sierra, I ended up getting the installer for Sierra from this link as the download gave me a real file and not an annoying and ultimately useless App Store link.

Dan
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