What is installer.failurerequests in the root directory?

Question

I just noticed a file called installer.failurerequests in my root directory:

cd /
ls
Applications/              User Information@          cores/                     installer.failurerequests  sbin/
Library/                   Users/                     dev/                       net/                       tmp@
Network/                   Volumes/                   etc@                       opt/                       usr/
System/                    bin/                       home/                      private/                   var@

It's a plist of some sort and its contents read as:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<array>
    <dict>
        <key>Operation</key>
        <string>fsck target</string>
        <key>CrashAtProgress</key>
        <integer>0</integer>
    </dict>
</array>
</plist>

What is that file and what it is doing in /? I am on OS 10.11.3

Same here, but don’t where it came from either. – woerndl May 15 '16 at 14:03 — woerndl, May 15 '16 at 14:03

score 11 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 06 '18 at 22:51

It's safe to delete this file.

It is a file left behind by the OS X installer in later versions. It seems to always be there after installation, so its existence does not indicate a failure in it self.

What the installer actually uses the file for is not known to me. It might be used if the installer fails/crashes, to indicate what the installer was doing at the time of the crash - but this is guesswork.

What is installer.failurerequests in the root directory?

1 Answers1