[Sticky] Big Sur on M1 machines and SoftRAID issues

Apple has just released 11.3 beta 2 to developers (not a public beta!!). I can not try it, since there is a real chance it does not work. @softraid-support will you give it a try? As soon as it looks good, I will do it here. Sorry for not being more helpful, but I need access to my home -.-

Understand. The problem is we cannot comment specifically on this, until a user says something.  I am sure a user will post something very soon.

But you answered another mystery: I tried to download beta 2 from a test machine, and I did not see it as available. But it was available for intel. So I have to wait also.

@softraid-support

Yep, it isn't loading and I am now on macOS 11.3 beta and SoftRAID 6.0.1 b52. Hopefully this will get fixed, sooner rather than later.

Did you download beta 2, (which was just released a few minutes ago)?

Beta 1 does not work. it has a build number of 20E5172i

@softraid-support

Well it's panicked and rebooted on MBP 2016. 

All information is attached. Not sure any more about HW issues.

@nwind

Its definitely in the disk subsystem, SoftRAID is in the backtrace.

There are three panics showing from today, are you doing something specific to trigger this?

@softraid-support

First two times I was connecting new 3.5" HDD through USB and was trying to erase/format it through Disk Utility and it triggered panic immediately.

Third time I did nothing and was running duplicate search (nothing but just RAID connected) as before and MBP panicked and rebooted.

OK, creating a Time Machine backup of my boot disk now, then I will install it. Let's see :)

At first glance it looks like it is not working. I upgraded from 11.1, and softraid again did not pop up with the system extension blocked thing. I am reinstalling the beta now and will try again with a clean system. But right now it looks like it is not working. So please, if you have a running system right now, hold back. 

@nwind

Those first two were obviously Disk Utility panics. Disk Utility should never trigger a kernel panic.Issues with erasing SoftRAID disks have come and gone for 15 years, no one has bothered to fix them.

There is nothing in the SoftRAID driver mechanism to cause panics in search. I cannot give an explanation here. SoftRAID is a pass through driver, macOS looks at what driver "owns" a disk, then asks "where should I put these bits?" And SoftRAID tells it where to go, then macOS performs the actual IO. Very simple driver model.

Going back and forth is tricky. I tested a system with multiple OS's, a 11.1, 11.2 and 11.3. What happens is it is easy to get into a loop where you cannot change security settings at all. Apple has some work to do, as far as the M1 security model goes.

the 11.3 is not a public beta, so we cannot comment on it at all yet. (unless users do!)

Yep. It is not working. As a matter of fact, a Time Machine Snapshot is also not working, the system will force you to reinstall 11.3 and use Migration Assistant. So under no circumstances go away from a working system. I just trashed mine. 

Now we are getting somewhere. Apple played the ball back into your court @softraid-support. I just reinstalled Beta 2 and had the brilliant idea that on a clean system the Security Settings could have been reset. They were. I enabled them, uninstalled SoftRaid via the Utilities Menu, reinstalled SoftRaid, and now I got an error which I can not attach, since png is not allowed, but it said 

"System Extension Blocked

A program tried to load new system extension(s) signed by "Other World Computing" that need to be updated by the developer."

So they did change something, and it seems like now it is your turn. Driver is not loading, and the drive is not mounting, btw.

Thinking about this, it also seems like in case of this particular error (system extension has to be changed by developer) we do not get an error about the System Security Setting (remember, normally, if we try to enable a valid system extension, there will be an error that System Security blocked that and has to be changed in order to allow the kext), so we end up with no error at all, which is not helpful.

I had an interesting glitch last night which I discovered earlier this morning. One disk for some reason went missing. Ejecting RAID, shutting down power and physically remove and then reinsert HDD fixed the issue.

Do you know from your experience what can cause it? All disks are new 6TB WD Red+