No packages were eligible for install I have an older, MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2009) that I intend to give as a gift.

For security reasons, I decided that I was a good to format the drive and reinstall OS X El Capitan.

My first effort was thwarted by an error:


  This item is temporarily unavailable.Try again later.


After reading Wiped drive, now can’t reinstall El Capitan from Recovery because the “item is temporarily unavailable”, I supplied a different set of icloud credentials, and the process continued.

Eventually, however, the installation failed with a different message:


  No packages were eligible for install. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance.  Quit the installed to restart your computer and try again.


I tried using "Internet Recovery" (Option+Command+R) and a bootable USB drive that contained El Capitan, both of which ultimately failed with the same message.

Is there a way to get this to work?

To create a bootable USB drive, I needed the Install OS X El Capitan.app package.

Using my MBP 16", I used the Download OS X El Capitan link on Apple's support site to get the installer.

Unfortunately, running the InstallMacOSX.pkg package in the DMG failed:


  This version of OS X 10.11 cannot be installed on this computer.


I 'found' a Install OS X El Capitan.app package and was able to create the bootable media.
The accepted answer to the question (How can I download an older version of OS X/macOS?) that @nohillside suggested contained the ultimate solution--essentially the computer's date needed to be within a year of the OS' release.

Wikipedia's article on OS X El Capitan indicated that:


  OS X El Capitan was released to end users on September 30, 2015, as a free upgrade through the Mac App Store.


Based on this knowledge, I changed the computer's system date to 2/1/2016 12:00:00 @ UTC using Terminal:

$ date -u 020100002016


Once the system's date was changed, the installation completed as desired.