Downloaded installer corruptedI

[JiJoBoJaJa]

OSX version: 10.10.5  Mac Pro

Safari version: 10.0.3

Currently installed Flash player: 24.0.0.194

I've attempted to download and install the latest update multiple times.  Every single time it says the file is corrupted and should be ejected and does so without installing. 

What should I do?  Is it possible the file on the server is corrupted?  Is my setup somehow interfering?   There is no stored website data in safari or Flash in all the possible locations I could find to check and delete.

[_maria_]

HI JiJoBoJaJa

The screenshot you posted ins't from https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer, which is the Flash Player download page.  The Flash Player download page doesn't contain Adobe Spark advertisement. Furthermore, if the download page required Flash content it would result in users who do not have Flash installed to not be able to download Flash Player installer.

What's happening on your mobile device is that the page is being redirected to a different page.  For example, on my Android device, using Google Chrome, attempting to access https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer is being redirected to www.adobe.com/m/flashplayer/android.html.  I'm not familiar with this page, but the messaging makes sense as Flash Player is not supported on any mobile device (Android, Blackberry, iOS, Windows Phone, etc).

If you want to use your mobile device to download Flash Player installer for a supported platform please go to https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/otherversions.  You'll be prompted to select the OS and the Flash Player type (ActiveX, NPAPI, or PPAPI) installer to download.

--

Maria

[JiJoBoJaJa]

Thank you m_vargas.  I was able to download, via mobile device via the link you sent, to Dropbox.  Subsequently I was able to install that Flash update from Dropbox on my Mac Pro.  So this method continues to work.  It's obvious the issue is somewhere in the download process on my Mac Pro.  Until I fix that issue I hope that "other versions" link will be available so I can continue to update via that method until I get it fixed.

Thanks for your help.  Probably safe to call this resolved.

[jeromiec83223024]

Out of curiosity, does this problem also happen if you download the files from the other versions link using Chrome?  My sense based on what you're seeing is that it's going to end up being Safari specific.

[JiJoBoJaJa]

I don't have chrome but I suspect you're right.  I did notice when running disc repair (not in recovery mode) that many safari errors exist and some say they cannot be fixed.

I realize we're well outside the purview of Adobe specific help here but is there a location to download an installation of just safari?  All links i can find recommend reinstalling your OS which I think is just insane when all I want to do is fix issues within safari.  Not sure why I'd have to reinstall my entire OS if all I want to do is reinstall safari.  I realize it may be THAT integrated into the OS but it seems there still should be an option to just update broken portions, somehow.

EDIT: I do have Opera and that ends in the same result.  Had tried that pretty early on.

[jeromiec83223024]

Chrome is more interesting, because it's very encapsulated and they roll most of the logic themselves.  It may or may not work, but would give a good sense of differentiation.  I've seen other problems with Chrome where third party software leave it in a bad state (users of Matlab and Safari will sometimes run into issues where Safari starts downloading everything with a Matlab extension, etc.).  I don't know enough about the internal implementation of Safari to know why that happens, but Chrome and Safari are the two extremes of really tied to the operating system and isolated to the extent possible.  It's an interesting comparison.

Safari and the OS are pretty tightly coupled.  I think that's why they update synchronously these days.  I don't think you get Safari without the OS.  You could try a factory reset on Safari, but I think you're really looking at a wipe and reinstall of the OS.  if you've got enough removable disk space, you could do a time machine backup, and then just make a separate copy of your user and applications folders, wipe and reinstall the OS, then dump your user and applications folders back over the top.  I've had good success with that, but worst case, you roll back to your time machine backup if it all goes wrong (or bite the bullet and just reinstall your apps manually).

Someone at Apple might have a more surgical solution, but I'm not aware of one.  There are a number of "reset Safari" tutorials online, but I can't vouch for them (and am a little suspicious of the efficacy of a couple that I looked at.

[JiJoBoJaJa]

Thanks again. 

When I updated my drives I started noticing some issues elsewhere which is kind of making want to just do a clean OS install and reset everything.  I think it might clear up a lot of these issues.  But I really don't want to do that and avoiding that at all costs because of all the inane questions you have to answer when setting things back up, endless entering passwords for apple ID, sitting waiting staring at the screen while software installs, and the countless restarts.  So painful in a "watch pain dry" kind of way.  And the settings are never the same as they were so you're basically starting from scratch again.  And inevitably you find some software no longer works despite it having functioned before because it was grandfathered in via numerous OS updates.  I'm still using my copy of Photoshop CS4 because I don't want to be on a subscription plan for example.  I prefer to have the software on my computer and pay one price up front.  I suspect that'll stop working if I have to reinstall it.

Super close to having no choice though.   LOL

[jeromiec83223024]

Yeah, I hear you.  My sense is that your symptoms are weird enough that it's something really low level.  I've never run across this, and I break machines for a living.

If it were me, I'd bite the bullet and do a clean wipe and reinstall.  It's a waste of an evening, but by far the clearest path to success.

I'm still a little mystified as to how you ended up in that state in the first place without an underlying storage problem or something.  We have a large enough user base, and I've been doing this stuff for long enough that I'm always pretty surprised when a really oddball set of symptoms comes along.

There *is* malware that targets Mac, and while there's no smoking gun, I always start to get a little suspicious when I see unexplainable, hinky behavior.   It if was my machine, I'd personally get some peace of mind knowing that unless it was something really sophisticated that persists across installs, I've wiped it completely and minimized any risk that I might still be sharing my personal data with a bad actor.

Password resets across your important accounts (banking, healthcare, email, etc.) once you're back to a clean state might also be a good precaution.  It's a good excuse to make the jump to using a password manager and unique passwords for your important accounts, if you're not already.. and/or finding a backup service that you like.  There are a lot of reasonably priced hybrid online/offline backup services, in addition to time machine and iCloud, etc.  I just try to make the most of those events and use them to get things cleaned up.

[jeromiec83223024]

The error message above isn't actually the one you would get from the MacOS "where do you want to install files from" security setting, but it looks a lot like it, so I get the confusion.  That isn't the issue, and it makes sense that those steps didn't help.

What the error message is saying is that the file that's getting stored on your machine is corrupt.  We serve about ~2.5 billion installs/month off a world-class, globally distributed content distribution network.

I'm pretty confident that when the bits leave the source and hit the wire that they're right, because complaints from even 1% of that number would hopelessly overwhelm our ability to respond, and this is the only active complaint I'm aware of.

We send the bits to you over a connection with TLS (transport layer security) enabled, which guarantees with a high degree of certainty that those bits are authentic and unmodified at arrival.  Unless a nation-state has decided to mess with you specifically, you're in pretty good shape on that front.

If we rule out the source and transmission with a reasonable degree of confidence, then we have to look at what happens to those bits once they arrive at the destination (i.e. your machine).

The bits get stored to the local disk, but in this instance, the operating system attempts to open them (a .dmg file is basically a fancy compressed package, like a .zip file), but calculates a hash of the bits in the file, and compares it with the hash that was stored in the header of the file when it was created, and it sees that they don't match.  It then throws the message that you're seeing, which is effectively, "the bits in the file you have don't match the bits that should be there".

Following that logic, here are the things that come to mind:

1. Your disk is full, and the file gets truncated at the point at which you completely run out of space.  Since only part of the file gets stored, it's never going to match the original. 
   
   To confirm, look in Finder > Go > Computer > Macintosh HD (or whatever you named it)
   Choose File > Get Info, and then look at Free Space.  If you don't have > 100MB of disk space free, you're running pretty low, and might have better success if you freed some space up.
   
   
2. The filesystem is corrupted.  The filesystem is basically a little database on the physical disk that keeps track of where individual files start and end.  It does get messed up from time to time, and this could cause things to be written or read inconsistently.  Keep reading.
3. The disk has a physical problem.  There are one or more areas on the disk that are physically damaged, and this file is getting repeatedly written/read from the affected location, or the actual read/write heads are damaged (they come unglued sometimes, etc).
   
   

If you've confirmed that you have free space, then you probably want to rule out problems 2 and 3 next.  The problem is, they're hard to differentiate, and if you have a physical problem that's blossoming from "being a little flaky" into "catastrophic failure", you probably want to grab any important data off the disk before you give it a good workout.  If you don't already have those irreplaceable pictures and secret documents backed up, definitely do that now.  Disk recovery services are crazy expensive.

Once your backups are in order, MacOS provides a nice utility for making sure the disk is in a consistent state.

See the "Try Disk Utility" section:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203176

While you're there, choose Repair Filesystem Permissions (Verify will frequently return clean, but then Repair will still fix a bunch of problems).

Once you've identified and corrected any problems, drag all of the copies of the Flash Player installer (the DMG files) into the trash, empty it, and reboot the machine for good measure.

At that point, download a new copy of the installer from here:

https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

If the install still throws a corrupted file error, please let us know, but I think that will get you unstuck.

[JiJoBoJaJa]

Thank you jeromiec83223024.  Sorry to you and Mvargas for the delayed reply.  Was out of town on business. 

I will give your suggestions a try.  Sounds very extensive and intensive.  Since I was able to install previously by downloading the update installer to Dropbox from my phone that makes me think there's some issue with my network.  Not sure how but I guess would be easily remedied by plugging the cable running to the modem directly into my computer and skipping the LAN hub.  Not sure why this would matter though.

[JiJoBoJaJa]

To get more specific jeromiec83223024:

re: available disc space - I'm using 226.25GB out of 999.35GB.  Not an issue there.

re: #2 and #3 - I recently (within a couple months) moved my OS and storage to new drives.  I had the problem with the flash installer prior to this so it's not related to that.  I mention the new drives because there is no physical problem with the discs.  In the process of installing software and moving files to the new drive there was cause for making sure the volumes were ok prior to use.

Nevertheless I ran through your suggestions.  I was unable to start in recovery mode.  I hold down CMD+R but it keeps restarting due to a problem.  So I skipped that but was able to make use of fsck after starting in single user mode.  It went through the checks and everything came back A-OK.  So that appears to rule out #2 and #3 but the inability to start in recovery mode is a bit concerning.  I was able to start in safe mode without an issue.

checking to see if I can install now that I've run fsck.  Will report back.

[JiJoBoJaJa]

FYI - I tried bypassing the LAN hub so I was connected to the internet directly.  No change.

[JiJoBoJaJa]

That did not change the result.  I'm able to double click the DMG.  The folder opens I double click to install and still get the same error message with the only option to eject.