When you are installing macOS 10.14 Mojave (Beta) and the installer is stalled for a long time – more than 30 minutes or hours – with the message "About 5 minutes remaining…", you can check what is going on – if still something is going on – as follows:
Analysis & understanding where the macOS installer is stuck
In the “Install macOS Mojave”-app window, press Command+L – or go to menu View > Install Log – to show a detailed installation log
Check the files being updated in the folder under /Volumes/[Your macOS drive]/macOS Install Data/
In the detailed Install Log, check the last message appearing: for me, it was stuck on
Started downloading package com.apple.dmg.BaseSystem
without a message saying
Retrieved package com.apple.dmg.BaseSystem
And the incoming network traffic was like only on ~50kb/s.
In the local macOS Install Data folder I saw a file “BaseSystem.dmg.partial” – which was still being updated as of the “Last modified”-date of that file.
Resolving a stalled macOS installation
I was easily able to resolve my stalled macOS Mojave installation by simply “Cancel” the installation in the “Install macOS Mojave”-app widow – and then relaunching the Installer app from within /Applications/ folder & starting the regular installation process normally again.
