[Guide] Avoid APFS conversion on High Sierra update or fresh install

[Henties]

The problem with Xcode 9.0 and High Sierra 17A405 has been localized to the files as per the attached jpeg. They all seem to relate to iPhone development and GeoServices (location services) in particular, but only for certain countries. I tried to download Xcode 9.0.1 developer beta but that seems to have been withdrawn by Apple. Will continue using Xcode 8.3.3 on my Sierra 10.12.6 fallback installation, for my current Xcode projects, until this mess is sorted out by Apple.
To arrive at this conclusion I reinstalled Xcode 9.0 from a time machine archive that predates the upgrade to 17405 carried out today by about a week. Same result with CCC on what I know is a good copy of Xcode 9.0. As in an earlier posting of mine, two different versions of CCC have no problems with Xcode 9.0 as installed on High Sierra 17A365. I am now convinced that no corruption of my existing Xcode 9.0 installation happened during the upgrade to 17A405.
Food for thought indeed, in particular the update frequency that we have to contend with to get everything working properly, with gigabytes and gigabytes of downloads that is still awaiting us down the line..
Cheers

 

[Allan Oliveira]

Both fresh install and update scenarios are covered in post #1.
Please read it carefully.

Aaaah buddy, ok.

 

[nunziantimo]

Instead of doing as you said for the fresh install, wouldn't be easier closing the installer from the usb, opening the terminal and launch this command (MacSSD will be the target HFS+ volume)?


/Volumes/"Image Volume"/"install macOS High Sierra.app"/Contents/Resources/startosinstall --volume /Volumes/MacSSD --agreetolicense --converttoapfs NO

 

[RehabMan]

Instead of doing as you said for the fresh install, wouldn't be easier closing the installer from the usb, opening the terminal and launch this command (MacSSD will be the target HFS+ volume)?


/Volumes/"Image Volume"/"install macOS High Sierra.app"/Contents/Resources/startosinstall --volume /Volumes/MacSSD --agreetolicense --converttoapfs NO

Last I checked, startosinstall DOES NOT WORK from Terminal within the macOS installer.

Anyone else want to make suggestions they haven't tested?

 

[nunziantimo]

Last I checked, startosinstall DOES NOT WORK from Terminal within the macOS installer.

Anyone else want to make suggestions they haven't tested?

Ty for clearing it up, I am backupping right now, I'll test and then I'll report if now startosinstall works from the installer or not. I was just asking, sry for a dumb question

 

[billbrown]

Yup.
TRIM causes issues with APFS and non-Apple SSD hardware more than it did with HFS+J.
Converting back to HFS+ requires a fresh install.

Note: Upgraded from 10.12.6 to 10.13 running a Crucial M4 SSD with trim enabled. No problems.

Have a fully functional 10.3 with APFS file system. Converted to HFS+ by saving EFI to desktop and cloning with CCC (will not allow cloning a Recovery Partition) to another drive (SSD). Installed Clover v4220 on cloned drive and replaced EFI with the one saved on desktop.

 

[vulgo]

Note: Upgraded from 10.12.6 to 10.13 running a Crucial M4 SSD with trim enabled. No problems.

Have a fully functional 10.3 with APFS file system. Converted to HFS+ by saving EFI to desktop and cloning with CCC (will not allow cloning a Recovery Partition) to another drive (SSD). Installed Clover v4220 on cloned drive and replaced EFI with the one saved on desktop.

Do you notice any delay in boot time or none?

 

[billbrown]

Do you notice any delay in boot time or none?

No.
Had problem with initial update from 10.12.6 (iMac 17.1) to 10.13 because my i-3 7100 firmware was not recognized. Had to change IG Platform ID to 0x19168086. After update changed to iMac 18.2 and kept default ID Platform ID 0x59120000. Boot time was slow and Video was buggy because my i-3 loaded only 7 MB.

Fixed that by adding Custom Boot Flag -disablegfxfirmware
Result:
Boot time super fast.
Video back to normal acceleration.

 

[Scott1204]

I'm attempting to do an in-place upgrade using the command line instructions given, and am encountering an issue indicating that the "helper tool crashed."

You ever able to work around this? Getting the 'helper tool crashed' as well.

 

[RehabMan]

You ever able to work around this? Getting the 'helper tool crashed' as well.

Are you running it from your working 10.12.6 install?
Make sure you're not trying to run it from a USB installer.
And.. make sure your installer is complete (quite a few reports of partial downloads)... it should be 5.19GB.
Note that if you run the installer directly, it is exactly like doing an upgrade as long as you don't erase the target partition.