myspaghetti
commented
2 years ago There's a similar question about older versions of macOS.
When you have a working installation of macOS, it's very easy to create installation media for any available version of macOS as early as Tiger. Versions up to 10.12 use
asr restore
Download the Lion disk image, restore it onto a USB storage device with asr restore, plug the USB device into the faulty Mac, and boot from the USB device.
Incidentally this is the reason I wrote the script in the first place. I had a faulty MacBook Pro but no other Macs handy to create a bootable install media, so I created one manually and thought "this should be automated."
Ketchup901
Using the script I have created several macos vms, upgraded them, cloned them, etc. Works great - even resolved the kernel panic with the Monterey updates. I was gifted an old 2007 MBpro running Tiger. I upgraded the ram, gave it an ssd and managed to upgrade it to Lion which is as far as it can go. I have no installation dvd. I have been attempting to make a virtualbox Lion. It doesn't seem possible to get into recovery with the script generated machines. I had thought to make a time machine backup of the physical machine and then restore it to a virtual one. I added a second blank vdi to the Monterey machine thinking I would restore to that and then remove the Monterey disk and boot from the restored Lion. Nope. Apple thinks the Time Machine backup is from too old a machine and won't restore it. Since then I have tried numerous other machinations. It is fairly simple (if time consuming) to make a copy of the pohysical disk onto a usb backup disk. It is also easy enough to make a usb installer with the Lion dmg. Can't get Virtualbox to boot from the usb so no go there. Studying the script, I see in the beginning that it is specifically keyed to go out and retrieve High Sierra, Mojave or Catalina. Is there a way to plug in the install dmg for Lion by editing the script or is that just not feasible. I know this isn't practical really but it is a challenging puzzle (at least for me). So - is it conceivable or is this totally not possible? Thanks for any thoughts on this.