[Sticky] Big Sur on M1 machines and SoftRAID issues

@softraid-support

OK, I just saw your critical announcement msg at top of page. Holding off updating to 11.2. Thx.

@softraid-support there is an article on macrumors that the Box app does not run on Big Sur and M1. Looks like a similar issue. Problems loading the system extension.

This was a driver level change in 11.2.

There is a fix in progress on Apple's end, so do not update until the next macOS update (or beta) is released.

Yep. Waiting. Glad you could reproduce this and I do not feel like a total idiot not being able to get this running :)

We needed to catch this at least a week earlier to have gotten a fix into 11.2. Maybe two weeks.

It appears 11.3 will have the fix.

I stupidly updated to 11.2 before checking the softraid site. My big problem now is that my machine did not make a local snapshot before upgrading and I cannot find an 11.1 installer to download anywhere so that I can make a bootable and do a clean install. Any advice on where to find one?

@softraid-support oh bummer, I accidentally updated before double checking the soft raid article! My Thunderbay Flex is now rendered useless with all of my project files on it for work. Unfortunately I never setup Time Machine so I can't roll it back. Just got off chat with apple support and they said there is no way to roll back without time machine snapshots. Do you guys have any solutions I should consider or do I simply have to wait weeks for 11.3? 

@softraid-support

So what happens if you upgrade to 11.2, without having seen the warning, and you do not have a snapshot to revert to?

Is it possible to roll back to 11.1 by re-downloading the OS itself and re-installing it?

@robodean Probably not. The problem is that in order to get rid of 11.2 you have to boot your Mac into Recovery Mode, delete the internal HDD from there using diskutil and then using the integrated tool to reinstall MacOS. The point here is that "Reinstall MacOS Big Sur" will just download the latest official release, which since now is 11.2.

My guess is that even if you find an 11.1 installer somewhere it would not work, since the installer will usually not overwrite the system, which seems to be the part responsible for the system extension not loading.

And, if your personal data is on that internal drive, of course that will be gone once you wipe the drive.

A quick search in Google did not show any results. But maybe @softraid-support has an idea.

They are all removed. I tried downloading an 11.1 yesterday and midstream it failed and downloaded 11.2.

Even the beta links are changed to 11.2. Apparently there was a major security patch in 11.2.

Apple seems to have removed all traces of 11.1. Even an App store version I found yesterday downloaded 11.2 instead.

Do you have an intel anywhere? Or, an 11.3 beta may be posted soon. I don't have a workaround.

We are going to post a blog on Rocket Yard discussing the cause of this issue.

I think a beta of 11.3 will be much sooner.

@robodean

I saw some notes about 11.2 addressing serious security issues. I think that may be partly why 11.1 was pulled completely.

Lets hope a beta of 11.3 is released tomorrow or something very soon. Its my understanding this is already fixed.

@sunstarfire

Every 11.1 I tried downloaded 11.2. Even the beta program, which shows 11.1, downloaded a release of 11.2.

Everyone with an M1 should sign up for the public beta program. (beta.apple.com). 11.3 should be available very soon, I expect this week, but have no specific information either way.

Everyone who is impacted should subscribe to our "Critical information" newsletter. We will announce when there is a solution. (We sent out an announcement yesterday AM, for example, alerting users of this issue)

Also, on Rocket Yard, there is a discussion, and a technical explanation of this issue will be described for those interested.

Its likely to be posted to this thread, but it could be a new thread:

https://eshop.macsales.com/blog/70840-read-before-updating-m1-to-big-sur-11-2/

I updated my OS to fix the horrible Bluetooth issues I had with my M1 mini.  It makes no sense that this should have rendered SoftRaid useless again.  I understand all the issues at play, but this is just way too frustrating when you just need to access your hard drives and you can't check 3 different places every time you need to update software.  It's a massive flaw in the approach to RAID drives.  I can't believe I have to replace these drives at my own cost because I never know when SoftRaid will cease functioning.