Pkg Installer pagecontroller error

Hi everyone,

I have the strangest problem with a Mac installer pkg over here. I’m building my installer using productbuild as one would do. The installer is fully signed/notarized and works perfectly on most of my testers’ machines.

However, one tester reports the following error on trying to open the installer:
Screen Shot 2021-03-12 at 11.49.21 AM

Google doesn’t provide any useful answers to this, just a few unreachable pages and a few russian/korean page hits… Has anyone ever experienced something like this?

From the install log located at var/log/install.log I can gather this:

2021-03-12 11:58:12-05 Testers-Mac-Pro Installer[1468]: Invalid Distribution File/Package
2021-03-12 12:29:32-05 Testers-Mac-Pro Installer[1896]: @(#)PROGRAM:Install PROJECT:Install-1000
2021-03-12 12:29:32-05 Testers-Mac-Pro Installer[1896]: @(#)PROGRAM:Installer PROJECT:Installer-920
2021-03-12 12:29:32-05 Testers-Mac-Pro Installer[1896]: Hardware: MacPro5,1 @ 2.40 GHz (x 16), 65536 MB RAM
2021-03-12 12:29:32-05 Testers-Mac-Pro Installer[1896]: Running OS Build: Mac OS X 10.13.6 (17G65)
2021-03-12 12:29:32-05 Testers-Mac-Pro Installer[1896]: Env: __CF_USER_TEXT_ENCODING=0x1F5:0x0:0x52
2021-03-12 12:29:32-05 Testers-Mac-Pro Installer[1896]: Env: TMPDIR=/var/folders/pp/cs6r33912dv83ymp5cmn5rdh0000gn/T/
2021-03-12 12:29:32-05 Testers-Mac-Pro Installer[1896]: Env: HOME=/Users/testername
2021-03-12 12:29:32-05 Testers-Mac-Pro Installer[1896]: Env: SHELL=/bin/bash
2021-03-12 12:29:32-05 Testers-Mac-Pro Installer[1896]: Env: Apple_PubSub_Socket_Render=/private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.B0Dct9k43c/Render
2021-03-12 12:29:32-05 Testers-Mac-Pro Installer[1896]: Env: SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.Wk6upPikEO/Listeners
2021-03-12 12:29:32-05 Testers-Mac-Pro Installer[1896]: Env: PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin
2021-03-12 12:29:32-05 Testers-Mac-Pro Installer[1896]: Env: LOGNAME=testername
2021-03-12 12:29:32-05 Testers-Mac-Pro Installer[1896]: Env: XPC_SERVICE_NAME=com.apple.xpc.launchd.oneshot.0x10000054.Installer
2021-03-12 12:29:32-05 Testers-Mac-Pro Installer[1896]: Env: COMMAND_MODE=unix2003
2021-03-12 12:29:32-05 Testers-Mac-Pro Installer[1896]: Env: USER=testername
2021-03-12 12:29:32-05 Testers-Mac-Pro Installer[1896]: Env: XPC_FLAGS=0x0
2021-03-12 12:29:32-05 Testers-Mac-Pro Installer[1896]: Error parsing distribution script from data
2021-03-12 12:29:32-05 Testers-Mac-Pro xmllint[1899]: -:1: parser error : Start tag expected, ‘<’ not found
2021-03-12 12:29:32-05 Testers-Mac-Pro xmllint[1899]: onds>140728898420736</nanoseconds>
2021-03-12 12:29:32-05 Testers-Mac-Pro xmllint[1899]: ^

This makes things even more unclear to me. It seems to me there is a parsing error in an xml doc at a tag called nanoseconds.
I looked at the package contents of my installer using Pacifist, but inside the package everything looks as it should and an xml containing the tag nanoseconds is nowhere to be found.

Also again, the installer works fine on a couple of other testers’ machines and doesn’t do anything special. I’m at a total loss…

Is this reproducible on that one machine, e.g. can you be sure that this isn’t simply a result of a corrupted download?

Yes, unfortunately it’s reproducible. It’s happening for this user with two different installer packages, which I both re-built and re-sent through different channels to be absolutely certain it’s not just a corrupted download

We’ve just had the same report from a customer; did anyone ever find a solution?