07.16.08
“BaseSystem package could not be verified” - a solution is found!
A little while ago I bought a Mac Mini to play around with. The primary goal was to use it (believe it or not) as a Windows Server 2008 platform and do some tinkering with Hyper-V. This worked well and I’ve been very happy with the ease at which I was able to do the installation, apply a fully working set of drivers and get it up and running with Hyper-V. I upgraded the RAM in the Mini to allow me to do this - it will take 4GB quite happily - following the instructions you can find pretty much everywhere and I’ve been very happy with this pretty little box and it’s performance.
But time has moved on and I decided I was going to look at other things, principally the Server version of OS X Leopard and what it can do. I wanted to find out more about the Podcast Producer component (which is VERY cool by the way) but I hit a major issue during the installation process, a BIG error box saying (I paraphrase slightly here) ‘The “BaseSystem” package could not be validated, please go away’ or words to that effect anyway! 
I was slightly miffed at this and was not able to find any reference to what could be causing this despite a good amount of time spent with Mr Google, so putting it down to a ‘bad’ DVD image I put that disk to one side and decided to put the original Leopard distribution back on (no real reason but a machine with no OS seems a little sad to me) - and got the exact same error message!!
Now I know that this installer works, I’d already re-installed a couple of times when creating the bootcamp split for the Windows Server install, so this set me to thinking.. what had I changed in the meanwhile? The answer was the RAM upgrade.
I’d done the previous installation and the Windows Server deployment with the original 1GB of RAM fitted, waiting for the 4GB to arrive in the post, which I subsequently installed. I still had the original 2 x 512MB SODIMMS so I popped the lid off and set about swapping things over. I left the lid of to do the testing - just in case - and BINGO the Leopard distro which came with the MIni installed without issue!
So, I retrieved the Server version from the corner of the room where it had been ’stored’ and gave that a go… after an anxious wait while the installer checked things over it worked!! YAY I AM A GENIUS! After the installation had finished I re-installed the 4GB upgrade and put the lid on.. my work was done.
So if you’re seeing errors like this and don’t know why - think about what you’ve changed hardware-wise and try returning to base config, it worked for me.
- J.
