New (probably better) macOS Sierra 10.12 FIX !

  • Hi,


    In the other threads about macOS Sierra, I was among the people loudly complaining that this should have been tested and fixed earlier, blah blah blah...
    Much better than whining is trying to help, so here's my contribution which I think fixes the problem properly, until Access can release a nicely packaged fix. ;)


    Much of the credit goes to "skittb123" for finding out that the issue had to do with SIP and offering an initial workaround, which put me on the right track !
    A bit of searching on the Apple developer forums gives the root cause of the problem that Access / Ploytec will have to fix : https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/50380
    In the meantime, we can do a quick fix ourselves in a few minutes.


    The following procedure fixes the driver itself, it is a much cleaner solution than disabling SIP on the entire Mac (which can leave it more vulnerable to malware)
    Disclaimer : I have no link with Access (other than being a faithful customer) and this is done at your own risk. There is not much risk, though
    :)
    If you have a very old (probably before 2009, check here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201948
    ) 32-bit Mac, then you'll need to replace "x86_64" in step 5 below with "i386" :


    1. Install the Virus TI Installer 5.1.3.0
    2. Open the Terminal app
    3. Copy/paste the following commands exactly as shown and type return after each. Enter your Mac password when you're asked to.
    4. First let's backup the original driver file, just in case :

    Code
    sudo cp -a /Library/Extensions/AccessVirusTI.kext/Contents/MacOS/AccessVirusTI ~


    5. Then let's fix it by keeping only the 64bit part of the driver :

    Code
    sudo ditto --arch x86_64 ~/AccessVirusTI /Library/Extensions/AccessVirusTI.kext/Contents/MacOS/AccessVirusTI


    6. That's it ! Plug-in your Virus TI and enjoy.
    7. If for some reason you want to revert to the original state, either reinstall the Virus driver, or do this to restore from our earlier backup :

    Code
    sudo cp -a ~/AccessVirusTI /Library/Extensions/AccessVirusTI.kext/Contents/MacOS/


    (Ironically, not tested with my actual Virus TI yet since I'm away from home, but I can confirm that the driver loads after this procedure and it should be all that's needed !)

  • Thanks for your efforts and solution! Great woork!

    Bass Player and Synthesist.
    Virus TI2 Darkstar | Virus TI2 Desktop | Sub 37 | Voyager RME | Machinedrum | Analog Four | Digitone | MPC Live | NI Maschine+
    Mac OS 13.5.1 (Ventura) | Cubase Pro 11.0 | Ableton Live 9.6 | Logic 10.4 | MainStage 3.4 | NI Komplete Ultimate 13 | RME Fireface UFX+

  • Good work! Might also be worth finding out if the newly released 10.12.1 has any impact on this. There's a chance that the driver loading might be more clever in the new version.


    Just tested, the fix still works in 10.12.1.
    Haven't tried without the fix but very unlikely there will be any difference from 10.12.0 : if you look at the Apple forum post I linked to above, the change in Sierra is intentional.


    "When the 64-bit kernel was announced, the WWDC session pointed out that such kexts were not supported and two kexts should be shipped instead.
    Now that strict code signing validation is being done on kexts, these unsupported kexts will fail signature verification."


    (kexts = drivers in Apple parlance)
    Basically it means that the 32+64 bit flavours of the Virus driver were packaged together in an unsupported way when 64-bit compatibility was added (6 years ago for 10.6 Snow Leopard), but Apple didn't mind too much about that until Sierra, where they tightened security even more.


    It would have been nice of Apple to warn developers that this was going to be enforced strictly from 10.12 (maybe they did ?), on the other hand they probably can't announce every small change, and this is why there's a June-September beta testing season :P Again I don't want to hammer the point home too much (especially since Access is waiting for a third party), but look at the date of that Apple guy's post explaining the problem and the fix : June 28th.

  • ...and the good news is, that Overbridge works - with more channels than I could achieve previously! :D


    Just need to work out why Virus isn't working...


    This (below) looks right I think? Wonder if I'm perhaps still on a beta version of Virus and maybe the later version is signed differently?


    ls -al /Library/Extensions/AccessVirusTI.kext/Contents/MacOS/AccessVirusTI


    -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 406960 1 Oct 2014 /Library/Extensions/AccessVirusTI.kext/Contents/MacOS/AccessVirusTI

  • Success! Hopefully this will help someone else.


    I had to uninstall my existing 5.1.3 suite completely, reboot, then install the 5.1.3.0v2 suite.


    Looks like Access still haven't properly sorted out their upgrading of the suite...


    EditL SIP enabled too. I now seem to have a much better system, especially where the Elektron devices are concerned! Looks like the promise of improved USB audio streaming on Sierra has been fulfilled!