[Sticky] Running Big Sur (beta) on Intel Macs

@iftibashir

Yes. We are changing the registration system with version 6, but yes.

Thanks!

My beta is expiring in 3 days, will I need to redownload or will it just keep working and complaining?

You should have been notified of a new beta, use the same link as the first. If you have not received any notifications, please attach a SoftRAID tech support file to the forum. I want to understand why you did not get notified.

Beta versions will be released regularly now.

Can the b46 beta be installed on Catalina systems? I've been trying to install it before upgrading to Big Sur (rather than after) but the driver installation always fails, in fact it removes the SoftRAID driver entirely and I have to reinstall 5.8.4.

If this is expected behavior I'll just take the plunge and upgrade the OS and deal with the consequences.

Yes it should. I did not test b46 (b44 certainly does work), as the only changes were on M1, and had limited test time.

How is the driver install failing?

Are you doing the "Approve" OWC as an Identified developer?

@softraid-support I went ahead with the Big Sur installation but the same problem is occurring. After several iterations of installing and re-installing macOS and restarting the system, there seems to be no SoftRAID driver installed and SoftRAID 6.04b6 fails to install it.

OWC is an identified developer, and there's nothing in the Security & Privacy pane (immediately after a restart or at any time afterward) to suggest otherwise.

The first attempt at SoftRAID installation after a macOS reinstallation provides the expected prompt to update the driver:

That leads to the "rebuilding boot cache" screen but in a few seconds there's a failure pop-up:

Subsequent attempts to install (regardless of whether or not the system is first restarted) result in the "no driver" pop-up:

and the installation attempt results in "The installation of the SoftRAID driver failed", as above.

Is there anything else I can try?

@softraid-support Version number typo in my previous reply: I meant SoftRAID 6.0.1 b46, of course.

@rrg

Try cleaning out old extensions. this has worked for others.

Uninstall SoftRAID driver.

go to /Library/Extensions and note what is in there. you can make a copy but delete them all.

This is brute force, so you may need to reinstall any apps that you are sure are updated for Big Sur and you need.

Now run Terminal.app and paste these in:

sudo kmutil clear-staging

followed by:

sudo kextcache -i /

Restart, run SoftRAID and install the driver. See if that works.

@softraid-support

Didn't work. I removed everything in /Library/Extensions except for AppleMobileDevice.kext (which the system doesn't let me remove), ran kmutil and kextcache, and restarted, but the driver installation still fails.

@softraid-support

  Mine is doing this. I have deleted extensions, letting the drivers be reinstalled. with latest Big Sur, and latest Softraid, the driver is still not loading, so no mount on desktop. Just FYI. Thanks for all that the team is doing on this.

@cjglynn Are you serious??

@softraid-support Still no joy after this effort on my end. Im on an iMac Pro, T2 is disabled per instructions, extensions wiped, softraid re-installed, driver re-installed...no mount. Since there is no driver 'loading' , i cant see anything in DF (terminal) that I can mount. Is there another way to get the driver to install?

I tried that, and it does not work for me. SoftRaid sees all my disks and the ThunderRaid, but it STILL will not mount.

 I hope a quick solution to this will be forthcoming.

@necammy

Is this an intel mac? Were you running the B43 beta prior? Was that working?

Do you have the b43 beta you can try and see if that works?