Failing to install Tails 2 from macOS Catalina

[whoozl]

Hi everyone, I’m happy to be a new face in this forum!

I am trying to install the macOS version tails-amd64-4.14.img on an USB stick (128 GB, USB 3.0) using balenaEtcher-1.5.115 but I always get stuck when I press ‘Flash!’ because it doesn’t seem to accept the admin password showing this error (it’s in German, but I guess you understand what it means, but I’ll be happy to translate it, if wished):

I tried the installation procedure with 2 different sticks, reloaded the current version of Etcher twice and also tried it with a reloaded copy of Tails, however not being successful so far. If anyone here knows a solution to this, me and others would be happy to know about. If not, I’d like to invite everyone for a discussion of this issue as it seems to be quite common - thanks a lot!

[xginn8]

Hi there,

I believe that prompt is asking for your user password rather than the admin password, can you try that and let us know how it goes?

Thanks for reporting this!

[whoozl]

Hi xginn8

Sorry for the delay. I tried the same as above but according your advice with using my user pw instead of the admin pw, however nothing happened, just nothing and I did wait for quite a while. I also used the admin pw again, and there I’ve got a message at least, this time even a different one:

When I enter e.g. the admin pw this appears a few times but finally nothing happens any longer. I also tried it with a few other passwords that remotely make sense but nothing. I’m not sure that helped a lot…

[ab77]

Can you please close all Etcher windows, then open Terminal and run the following:

$ sudo su -
# /Applications/balenaEtcher.app/Contents/MacOS/balenaEtcher 

Then try flashing from that application instance…

[whoozl]

Thanks, but I was too tired yesterday!

But I’ll try it today - wish me luck!

[whoozl]

What will this do, btw?

[jtonello]

Hi,

Using sudo su will switch you from your “user” account to the “superuser” account on your Mac. The superuser can run anything, so if there’s a permission issue when trying to run balenaEtcher, running as the superuser should resolve that.

John

[whoozl]

Hi John
Alright, with your help I tried the whole installation procedure on the root account. And yes, it was a bit different this time but still failed to install Tails on a USB stick, even 2 different sticks. At first it looked like as it wood work…

…, but a few moments later it looked like this…

Same story with the second stick. I also checked the user settings of both sticks. When I clicked ‘more info’ I received this window…

Sorry for the large posting, but explaining everything by writing would be tedious.
I hope this gives you a some idea of what the problem might be. Thank you!

Jens

[whoozl]

Something else: my iMac is running pretty slow and the hard disk is working hard. The reason for this is the process ‘hdutil’, which is consuming about 180% of CPU power at the moment. I’m pretty sure that this is because of this one line of code I wrote in the terminal. How can I reverse this? By deleting the root admin account?
Heip would be highly appreciated - thank you!

[whoozl]

Never mind! I deactivated the root admin, rebooted, and everything seems normal again!

[dfunckt]

Etcher can write just fine on both Catalina and Big Sur. I would check 2-3 things:

• that your user account is an admin account. Go to Preferences > Users & Groups, and ensure under your name in “Current user” on the left it says “Admin”
• that Etcher and Terminal aren’t blocked by the OS. Again, Preferences > Security & Privacy, go through every item on the list on the left and see if Terminal or Etcher are listed as unchecked
• that the USB drive you’re using is actually usuable. Try formatting it once with Disk Utility and copying some files into it.

[whoozl]

Ok, thanks I’ll try that! Does it matter how I may format the stick?

[alexgg]

Hi, just using the Disk Utility and erasing the disk to the default supported file system and copying some files should be enough to make sure the drive works.