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[Sticky] Monterey SoftRAID Beta testing

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(@profdraper)
Posts: 9
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@softraid-support

Thanks for this, appreciated. Yes, am aware of the various permutations & have studied your support pages and made notes earlier. My post was more of a 'heads up' and new information now is that Monterey indeed may have the same problems for the moment. A couple of comments:

SIP has been disabled at certain points so as to be able to manually delete any kexts & ensure the system was 'clean'. No need to send a report, there are no obsolete drivers here & I am very aware of what each one does & where they are located in the new scenario since Big Sur. 

My experience:

Yes, sudo kmutil load-p /Library/Extensions/SoftRAID.kext loads the SoftRAID driver and mounts the RAID sets. But also, sudo touch /Library/Extensions is the only way that the other 3rd party drivers will load. And so, until just recently, this certainly gets the system up and going & I can continue with work until the next boot.

Update:

I now seem to have revolved this by going back and i) format the Monterey volume, ii) reinstall Big Sur via Internet recovery, iii) migrate Big Sur data via a Tine Machine backup. This time then, when updating SoftRAID from v6.05 to v 6.1b3 - everything 'works' and 'sticks'. Well, at least for now it would seem. 

One particular thing I noticed:

Mac OS Security & Privacy does not necessarily load and 're-cache' the new drivers. It would be useful to be able to clear all of its settings, but this so much easier said than done. Apple makes this very difficult & the various command strings that supposedly clear this have little effect. [Apple 'security' appears to be more about shareholders rather than customers].

For example, after completely removing all references to SoftRAID drivers, prefs, deleting kexts, re-booting etc - Security & Preferences still does not ask for new permissions when new SoftRAID drivers are installed. Hence, a clean system install appears to do the trick in that Security & Preferences prefs are reset. This is also exactly what happened on my other primary Big Sur boot volume.

Thanks again.

MacPro 7,1 macOS Sonoma 14.2, 16 core, 2TB /192GB, Vega II Duo. 8TB Thunderbay 6 RAID 4, 2TB Sonnet M.2 4x4 RAID 0. UA Apollo x8, UAD-2 quad, Decklink MiniMon 4k. Dell U3419W & BenQ SW2700PT. FaderPort 16, KK S61, Nuendo, Wavelab, Live, Logic, Resolve Studio.

 
Posted : 06/08/2021 4:34 pm
(@softraid-support)
Posts: 8008
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@profdraper

Thanks for the comments. We hope this is fixed soon, so far it does not seem to be fixed in the current Monterey beta versions.

The "Sytem Preferences" Allow option can be "blocked" by other extensions, such as an older HP printer extension and some others.

 

 
Posted : 07/08/2021 2:14 am
(@joemikeb)
Posts: 93
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I have 18 days remaining on the SoftRaid 6.1 b 3. Any word on a new beta or even better a Monterey compatible release?

______________

Make intentional errors —
Otherwise the Great Spirit
realizes you have fulfilled
your purpose on earth.

— Navajo saying

 
Posted : 27/08/2021 5:02 pm
(@softraid-support)
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@joemikeb

We have an internal beta, but not a public beta yet, trying to get APFS UI support in the next beta.

 
Posted : 27/08/2021 5:18 pm
(@stevek)
Posts: 86
Member
 

Just wanted to say I haven't encountered a single issue with the latest Monterey and SoftRaid betas. In fact, the only app I'm having trouble with is Transmit. Nice job.

 
Posted : 28/08/2021 12:40 pm
(@stevek)
Posts: 86
Member
 

Hi again. Everything was going well until last night when I decided to put my iMac to sleep instead of letting it go 24 hours (because I like to watch Plex content from my iMac on my iPhone when I go to sleep). Today when I woke the computer up I got a message from SRb8 that one of two of my RAID 5 volumes was locked and couldn't be used to avoid corruption or something along those lines. I was half asleep so I didn't think of taking a screenshot, sorry.

I restarted and now when I launch SRb8 both the drive and volume panes are totally blank. Nothing at all. Of course, this scares me. The drives do show up on my desktop, though.

Has this been documented before?

I have two Thunderbay 4 Thunderbolt 2 enclosures, one Work and one Media. Media is the one that became locked. They are not daisy chained, they each use their own TB port on my Late 2015 top of the line iMac running the latest beta of Monterey. Hope that info helps.

 

EDIT: I tried to launch SoftRaid again from the menu bar and nothing happened. Tried once more and it opened, asked for my iMac password, then both panes were fully populated again. Weird.

 
Posted : 18/09/2021 11:57 am
(@softraid-support)
Posts: 8008
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@stevek

restart and you should be OK. the drives must have momentarily power cycled (thunderbolt chip reset) causing the SoftRAID driver to lock the volume.

Not sure what caused the empty screen, one of the drives may not  have been responding, hanging up the disk scans.

 
Posted : 18/09/2021 1:50 pm
SteveK reacted
 rrg
(@rrg)
Posts: 20
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Is it possible, and if so is it advisable, to run this beta on Big Sur?

I’d like to get all my critical software ready for Monterey before it’s released, to reduce the likelihood of issues when it’s finally time to upgrade.

 
Posted : 19/09/2021 12:05 pm
(@softraid-support)
Posts: 8008
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@rrg

Yes you can run 6.1 beta. The driver is very solid. We are working on improving the user interface, especially for APFS.

 
Posted : 19/09/2021 2:47 pm
SteveK reacted
(@zathras)
Posts: 29
Member
 

@softraid-support

I've gone through the process of updating the OS a couple of times and reinstalling the driver. And my RAID doesn't show up. (OWC 4M2). Beta version 8 and the latest Monterey Beta (21A5522h). It seems something has broken.

 

This post was modified 3 years ago by SoftRAID Support
 
Posted : 25/09/2021 12:33 pm
(@softraid-support)
Posts: 8008
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Topic starter
 

@zathras

The driver is not loading. Did you make sure to "Allow" OWC as an identified developer? (every time you upgrade SoftRAID)

What is the output to this in terminal:

sudo kmutil load -p /Library/Extensions/SoftRAID.kext

 
Posted : 25/09/2021 12:40 pm
(@zathras)
Posts: 29
Member
 

@softraid-support

There is no response to the sudo statement. It just shows the prompt. 

+++++

eric@Erics-M1-MacBook-Pro ~ % sudo kmutil load -p /Library/Extensions/SoftRAID.kext 

eric@Erics-M1-MacBook-Pro ~ % 

+++++

And yes, I do the "Allow OWC..." in the Security section of the Preferences.

I even shut down and and booted into the Security Utility and made sure it was set properly.

--Edit--

And I looked just now and it's mounted. Not sure what I did. Oh well, thanks anyway!

Eric

This post was modified 3 years ago 3 times by Zathras
 
Posted : 25/09/2021 1:52 pm
(@softraid-support)
Posts: 8008
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@zathras

I think the kmutil command did load the driver. Use it again, if necessary. Beta 13 should auto load it every time.

 
Posted : 25/09/2021 2:29 pm
(@zathras)
Posts: 29
Member
 

@softraid-support

It didn't auto-load on my first log in after updating to beta 13 and doing the Allow OWC thing in system preferences. It did load with the first attempt with the sudo command.

I'll let you know if it doesn't auto load with the next restart.

Eric

This post was modified 3 years ago by Zathras
 
Posted : 25/09/2021 4:40 pm
(@zathras)
Posts: 29
Member
 

@softraid-support

I did a restart and it did not auto load. Should I reinstall the driver just to make sure the right one is there?

Eric

 
Posted : 25/09/2021 4:44 pm
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