Softraid 6.0.5. + OWC accelsior 4m won't mount in Big Sur

I'm very well aware of SIP, and have ALWAYS run my machines with SIP disabled. I run professional software at work that requires SIP (and even gatekeeper) to be disabled, and I run tools at home that require SIP to be disabled as well. Leaving SIP enabled when I migrated from my 2010 to my 2013 Mac Pro was an oversight - I intend to leave SIP disabled. In fact, I used OpenCore on my 2010 Mac Pro to ensure SIP could never be enabled - an override of sorts.

@johnd

Run this command in terminal after a restart:

sudo kextstat -b com.softraid.driver.SoftRAID

Lets see what driver is actually installed.

@softraid-support

Executing: /usr/bin/kmutil showloaded --bundle-identifier com.softraid.driver.SoftRAID

No variant specified, falling back to release

Index Refs Address            Size       Wired      Name (Version) UUID <Linked Against>

  192    0 0xffffff7f9ce07000 0x2f000    0x2f000    com.softraid.driver.SoftRAID (6.0.5) E6447899-F7A5-3524-B637-5BAEB4A09DAA <31 6 5 3>

Well THAT's interesting. SoftRAID monitor thinks both the monitor and driver are 6.1 b3! Add that oddity to the fact that ever since installing 6.1b3, my system has been stable! I'm not rebooting for up to a week, if I last that long without a KP, just so we have solid confirmation. I'll then execute the other commands you recommended and report back on stability. For now, I'm enjoying stability for the first time this week.

@johnd

What is happening is the 6.0.5 driver is still in the StagedExtensions folder (extensions cache) and is what is loading.

When SoftRAID was written, there was no concept of the installed driver not being the loaded driver, so the SoftRAID components do not check. We are working on getting these parts of macOS fixed rather than making workarounds.

YOu can try clearing the staged extensions by doing this:

UNinstall SoftRAID (utilities menu)

run these in terminal:

sudo kmutil clear-staging
sudo kextcache -i /

then install SoftRAID driver again.

But it is interesting your system is stable. I wonder if before some point, the default 6.0 driver was loading? Big Sur is very poor at loading drivers like SoftRAID consistently.

@softraid-support

My system has been stable since my last post (well over a week, where before it was panicking several times/day). So now I'm executing your terminal commands...

Johns-Mac-Pro:Extensions jdegroof$ sudo kmutil clear-staging
Password:
clearing all staged extensions...
Johns-Mac-Pro:Extensions jdegroof$ sudo kextcache -i /
Executing: /usr/bin/kmutil install --volume-root / --check-rebuild
rebuilding local auxiliary collection
kmutil done
Johns-Mac-Pro:Extensions jdegroof$ 

@johnd

This should be a one time thing to reset the extensions cache only to actively installed extensions (and update ones that have been updated in the /Extensions folder)