Error trying to install any macOS version in macbook 2010 mid

Solution 1:

You have a 2010 MacBook, I have a 2010 iMac and Catalina nor Mojave will run on my machine. I think your machine is too old to install Catalina. You should check the system requirements for Catalina. It doesn't list a 2010 MacBook as being compatible.

Solution 2:

TLDR format the disk as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and not as APFS before running the installer.

I had this error today on a 13" MacBook Air 2012 trying to install macOS Catalina 10.15.5. I first tried with Command+R and then with Command+Option+R. When this error appeared I used the menu to show the Log. I scrolled the log up until the line before it mentions the install failing and it said something like this:

Clearing automation and attempting to rebless

To me this looked like an APFS error, so I used disk utility to format the hard drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and then attempted the install again and it fixed this problem and the install worked. Because one stage of the installer is to convert the disk the resulting install was APFS despite starting as Mac OS Extended Journaled.

This was with an Internet recovery install so I suppose the downloaded install dmg cannot be extracted to an APFS volume yet and set as bootable, hopefully Apple fix that.