Mount and install the operating system to a temporary image

[pierreganty]

Trying to upgrade form 10.9.5 to ElCapitan 10.11.4 following the steps as described.
I tried with 64g instead of 32g when creating /tmp/output.sparseimage but the error remains.

sudo installer -pkg /tmp/installesd/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg -tgt /tmp/os
Password:
installer: Package name is OS X
installer: Installing at base path /private/tmp/os
2016-05-13 11:50:09.776 installer[13369:8977] Looking for system packages
2016-05-13 11:50:09.780 installer[13369:8977] no system packages found
2016-05-13 11:50:09.781 installer[13369:8977] No or Invalid system receipts found on /private/tmp/os/Recovered Items
2016-05-13 11:50:09.781 installer[13369:8977] Attempting fallback using: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/SystemMigration.framework/Resources/FallbackSystemFiles.plist
2016-05-13 11:50:09.910 installer[13369:8977] Finding system files...
2016-05-13 11:50:11.486 installer[13369:8977] Writing system path cache.
2016-05-13 11:50:11.501 installer[13369:8977] FSF cache NOT written: /private/tmp/os/Recovered Items/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.FindSystemFiles.plist
installer: The install failed (There is not enough space on this disk to install the selected items.  Deselect at least 10.86 GB and try again.)```

[pierreganty]

Using AutoDMG I found:

1. Can I build images for one OS while running another?

No. Apple's installer does not work across OS versions. If you want to build a 10.9 image, AutoDMG needs to run on a 10.9 machine.

provided it applies here too, it needs to be written somewhere.

[rawtaz]

This is quite odd. I have many times used createinstallmedia to build installer USB drives for newer versions than the one I'm running the command on, and it's never been a problem. I've gone from various versions to newer ones, sometimes one step up and sometimes two (e.g. 10.9 to 10.10 or 10.9 to 10.11).

[pzuraq]

I was able to run createinstallmedia on an El Capitan machine for macOS Sierra. Maybe this only applies to creating full images using AutoDMG?