EtreCheck reports a kernel panic today. Also, I can't resintall macOS Monterey.

I tried to reinstall macOS Monterey. I get a screen that shows two volumes: Macintosh HD and Preboot. I click on the HD one, and it says, "The volume cannot be downgraded." Say what? So I can't reinstall macOS if I've done macOS updates? And what about the Preboot volume? What is that? It said 0 KB available. Doesn't sound good!


And about the kernel panic. The machine did freeze strangely. Started with Firefox, I think. I had dozens of tabs open! I suppose that doesn't help things. Never ever got red in the memory pressure graph. The beach ball came on and first spun only over FF, but then spun over everything. The ball often froze and stuttered as it was "trying" to spin. I had seen this before and thought it was from Final Cut Pro 10.6.8. So I downgraded to 10.6.6. Things seemed to stabilize until today.


I was going to reinstall macOS Monterey anyway, as I've had other strange things happen from time to time: Rarely the tabs or header of Finder or the main Mail window would turn red! Often the Time Machine panel suddenly hides itself under everything else. Sometimes it shows strange things. So I thought it's time. But I can't downgrade from 12.6.8 to 12? I have to erase the drive and restore from Time Machine? That'll take many hours! Even First Aid runs take about 3 hours, due to having to check about 2 dozen "snapshots."


Another reason to reinstall the OS was the FCLM (Final Cut Library Manager) app doesn't work right. So I wanted to see if a simple reinstall would fix it before upgrading to Ventura. But given all this, what to do? Should I upgrade to Ventura and hope for no more kernel panics? Bring the Mac in to the local Apple Store for them to diagnose the hardware because of the one or more kernel panics? Erase the disk, reinstall macOS, do all the updates, then restore all my data from Time Machine? It'll likely take many, many hours! (I have two slow TM drives and Backblaze for offsite backing up.)


The machine is barely a year old!


EtreCheck report attached.


macOS 12.6.8 (Monterey)

24" M1 4-port 2021 iMac


TIA!

iMac (M1, 2021)

Posted on Sep 9, 2023 3:09 PM

Reply
37 replies

Sep 10, 2023 3:13 PM in response to Barney-15E

You asked, "Is your Documents folder not in your home?" How should I answer that? Should I have just said, "It is in my home"? Would that have been even the least bit helpful?


Look, I appreciate your help, but I can't read your mind. We need to speak the same language. A page fault is like I described. It is a normal part of how memory works on modern computers since at least the mid-80s.


Extra fluff? How else am I to explain what a page fault is when you use the term to mean something completely different? It reminds me of the time someone I knew back in grad school who when swimming says he does x laps in the swimming pool, but he counts a lap as just once across, while everyone else counts it as a single back and forth. So his numbers are too high by a factor of 2. I should have said that I consider a lap to be a cm.


OK, would the following have been better? "A page fault is a normal part of memory management in modern operating systems. Surely you meant something else, like a memory error."


Hey, it's not my fault is page fault is a stupid name for what it is. And there are plenty of stupid names of things.

Sep 10, 2023 3:58 PM in response to betaneptune

Did you even read what I wrote?

Did you attempt any comprehension?

It doesn't matter what a page fault is. Your desire to wow us with your vast knowledge won't solve the problem.

Normally, a panic log will report the type of panic. One of them is a called "Page Fault." Is it actually a page fault as you've deigned to inform us? I have no idea. All I know is that a Type 14 (Page Fault) panic is oftentimes related to memory problems. You can actually check for that yourself unlike almost all other hardware panics.

Sep 10, 2023 7:27 PM in response to betaneptune

betaneptune wrote:

But I can't downgrade from 12.6.8 to 12? I have to erase the drive and restore from Time Machine?

Yes. If you really want to do that. However, the operating system is on cryptographically sealed, read-only snapshot. If reinstalling the operating system did fix anything, that would indicate that you have a serious hardware failure.

That'll take many hours! Even First Aid runs take about 3 hours, due to having to check about 2 dozen "snapshots."

It shouldn’t take that long. If it is due to the snapshots, then delete them. However, Disk First Aid on a modern Mac is a waste of time. It regularly reports errors. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything is broken.

Another reason to reinstall the OS was the FCLM (Final Cut Library Manager) app doesn't work right.

In what way? It would be best to explore that in more detail. The most likely explanation is that the app is simply buggy. Software quality these days is very poor.

So I wanted to see if a simple reinstall would fix it before upgrading to Ventura.

Anything you’ve said so far is irrelevant on this point. No matter what problems you’ve had, I can guarantee that Ventura will only make them worse.

Should I upgrade to Ventura and hope for no more kernel panics?

There is nothing in Ventura that will fix any kernel panics. Regardless of what is causing them, you will only have more.

Bring the Mac in to the local Apple Store for them to diagnose the hardware because of the one or more kernel panics?

Hardware failures are the most common cause of kernel panics. If you do have a problem, then obviously getting it fixed would be best. It’s still under warranty after all.

Erase the disk, reinstall macOS, do all the updates, then restore all my data from Time Machine? It'll likely take many, many hours! (I have two slow TM drives and Backblaze for offsite backing up.)

It shouldn’t take that long. You can always do a backup to a new drive or SSD. That being said, I don’t see any reason to assume that erasing and restoring from backup would help. Time Machine backs up everything and restores it. If there is some file system error causing these problems, a restore will restore those problems.


If you think you have some kind of corruption, an erase and reinstall would fix that. In many cases it can fix problems like corrupted databases, preferences files, cache files, etc. But this only happens if you don’t restore. Restore will restore the problems. If the restore really does take hours, those will be wasted hours. A proper wipe and rebuild will take days or weeks, but would be more effective.


I recommend more clearly identifying what specific problems you are having. They may be normal. This may be as good as it gets.

Sep 10, 2023 11:00 PM in response to etresoft

The Apple web page about how to use safe mode suggest reinstalling macOS as the only possible fix.


See Use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support

where it says, "If nothing else works, reinstall macOS. " I thought it gets a new copy over the internet. In fact, something I read recently says you need a stable internet connection. Maybe that's a verification of purchase thing?


FCLM was recommended by a power user in the Final Cut group. It works for him. I don't know why it doesn't work for me. I did get some use out of it. Deleted some render files en masse, when it worked better. Also got a list of exports, including those to YouTube. Now I know how to do that in FCP itself!


Ventura will make the problems worse? How? Is this the new normal, that upgrades make things worse?


Yeah, maybe I'll take it in to the local Apple Store. But I don't want to have my disk erased and have to load everything back on. Last time that didn't go well (when the hard drive portion of the Fusion Drive up and died). My Movies and Music folder trees were incomplete and in the wrong places. And it was slow. Oh, there were problems with the disks I was trying to restore to! 'Twas quite a nightmare!


Most of my stuff is on external drives now, though. With my Fusion drive hard drive death, all was on it. 'Twas a 3 TB drive. So things should go a lot faster this time. Still a lot of time, I think!


A new drive means more money. Esp. for an SSD. I've already spent a ton on this thing and its peripherals.


Oh, the First Aid runs went much faster than I expected. I guess that's the advantage of Recovery mode and the M1 chip thing. But I recall First Aid running on my SSD external drive a while back took a long time on each snapshot -- with the M1! Well, a rare happy surprise yesterday!


But I recently found out that if the SSD goes bad, you have a brick! You would need a whole new logic board. Nice. Fortunately I'm not doing video editing 7 or 8 hours a day.


"A proper wipe and rebuild will take days or weeks, but would be more effective."


Days or weeks? What is a proper wipe and rebuild?


Anyway, I did get all the errors cleaned up on my startup drive. Doing the run on the container did the trick!


I do have errors on one of my external drives from the outermost thing First Aid can check (the top of the tree for a disk). It just says that I might not be able to boot from it. Well, I do boot my old Mac with it and that works fine.


So hopefully I'm in good shape except for that stupid FCLM program. If it works for me like it works for their other customers, no one would ever buy it.


I think I'll just carry on unless I get another kernel panic. I have two Time Machine drives doing backups locally, and Backblaze doing offsite backups, so I should be covered data-wise. I hope!


"I recommend more clearly identifying what specific problems you are having. They may be normal. This may be as good as it gets."


Next post. Thanks for chiming in!

Sep 11, 2023 5:40 AM in response to betaneptune

betaneptune wrote:

The Apple web page about how to use safe mode suggest reinstalling macOS as the only possible fix.

See Use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support
where it says, "If nothing else works, reinstall macOS. " I thought it gets a new copy over the internet. In fact, something I read recently says you need a stable internet connection. Maybe that's a verification of purchase thing?

I know. I've got to remove any references to that document in EtreCheck. Many of the things it recommends are extremely bad ideas. It is useful for interactions on how to run Safe Mode. Safe Mode itself is useful for getting the internet working again and confirming that some 3rd party system modification really is causing problems.


But this statement, "update macOS and your apps before using safe mode. This is more likely than any other step to resolve the kind of software issue that safe mode can help identify" is categorically false.

FCLM was recommended by a power user in the Final Cut group. It works for him. I don't know why it doesn't work for me. I did get some use out of it. Deleted some render files en masse, when it worked better. Also got a list of exports, including those to YouTube. Now I know how to do that in FCP itself!

I don't know anything about FCLM, Final Cut, or anything else related. I'm simply stating that if you are having problem with any particular app, you should always start by clearly stating what said problems are so that people understand what you are talking about. Maybe they will need to point you to other people who have more knowledge about that app. Maybe it's normal. Maybe not. But reinstalling either the operating system or the app is always a total waste of time.


The only exception to this rule is when you don't restore from backup. Sometimes, that will fix problems if said problems are due to a very specific kind of data corruption. It's a catch-22, but that's the way it is. Regardless, skipping that first step of identifying and describing the actual problem is a bad ideal 100% of the time.

Ventura will make the problems worse? How? Is this the new normal, that upgrades make things worse?

Yes - Ventura will make the problems worse. How? By repeatedly changing the behaviour of the operating system in ways that the original developers of 3rd party apps, and even much of Apple's own software, never expected. This is the new normal. It's a non-stop barrage of new bugs, social media security paranoia, and updates. People are addicted to software updates. They don't care about the pain the updates bring. They don't care that the updates never seem to actually fix any bugs. They just need that next fix.


There are a couple of solutions. Wait until Apple released the next update and then camp out on the previous version. It will still get most security updates, and will still contain lots and lots of bugs, but it will be stable and you'll be better able to manage it to do what it was you bought the computer to do. The other option is to buy a new computer, install each update, and continually test all of your 3rd party apps and work. That way, you always have a functional computer and a back. If you are a professional and need your Mac for your livelihood, I strongly recommend the 2nd option.

Yeah, maybe I'll take it in to the local Apple Store. But I don't want to have my disk erased and have to load everything back on.

As I said, that is a virtually guaranteed fix. If it still has the problem after that, the problem is almost certainly hardware and Apple can fix that. But once all of your 3rd party apps and corrupt data is removed, if the computer runs fine, then the Apple genius has done their job. The problem's gone. Make sure you don't turn around and reinstall it.


...to be continued...

Sep 11, 2023 5:40 AM in response to etresoft

Last time that didn't go well (when the hard drive portion of the Fusion Drive up and died). My Movies and Music folder trees were incomplete and in the wrong places. And it was slow. Oh, there were problems with the disks I was trying to restore to! 'Twas quite a nightmare!

That was typical with the older iMacs and Fusion Drives. The newer computers are much less problematic. On these computers, problems are more likely caused by 3rd party system modifications and software bugs from Apple and 3rd party developers.

Most of my stuff is on external drives now, though. With my Fusion drive hard drive death, all was on it. 'Twas a 3 TB drive. So things should go a lot faster this time. Still a lot of time, I think!

External drives are great for backups and archives, but they are not really safe and reliable. With newer computers, they are one of the top causes for kernel panics. When we say kernel panics are often caused by "hardware failures", sometimes we mean external hardware.

A new drive means more money. Esp. for an SSD. I've already spent a ton on this thing and its peripherals.

Did you ever hear the story about the oil changes on a BMW? Apple makes premium products that carry a premium price tag. You didn't take this route to save money.

Oh, the First Aid runs went much faster than I expected. I guess that's the advantage of Recovery mode and the M1 chip thing. But I recall First Aid running on my SSD external drive a while back took a long time on each snapshot -- with the M1! Well, a rare happy surprise yesterday!

It's the internal SSD. The new ones are just crazy fast. Funny how the world works. All of the latest Macs have absurdly fast internal SSDs. They are at least twice as fast as the fastest external SSDs on the market. And you would never be able to find those SSDs. They are ten times as fast an any external SSD that you can actually buy.


And yet, with these new computers, it seems that everyone is just obsessed with using and booting from external drives. They balk at the price tag that Apple charges for the larger SSDs and opt for the smallest one that Apple sells. They figure it is better to spend more money for the fastest possible configuration, then spend a little extra to make it run 10x slower and less reliably, than to spend just a little bit more and just get a bigger internal SSD.

But I recently found out that if the SSD goes bad, you have a brick!

That is true, but it rarely happens.

Days or weeks? What is a proper wipe and rebuild?

Erase the hard drive and reinstall the operating system. Don't restore from backup. Ideally, enable all iCloud settings on the old computer first. If you do this, you can setup a new environment in only a few minutes.


But the more data that you don't have in iCloud, the more trouble it will be to manually copy it over to the new computer. You'll need to manually reinstall any 3rd party apps. You may need to manually configure them too. That means you'll have to keep the original installers handy. Most people don't do that. This is where the days or weeks timeframe kicks in.

Anyway, I did get all the errors cleaned up on my startup drive. Doing the run on the container did the trick!

But did that fix anything? I'm sure the errors will be back. Apple's new APFS is prone to such things. Apple suffers from these constant Apple bugs just like everyone else.

So hopefully I'm in good shape except for that stupid FCLM program. If it works for me like it works for their other customers, no one would ever buy it.

But you have to buy most software because you can use it and realize that it doesn't work very well. If you buy from recommendations made in the past, those recommendation may not be valid with current versions of the app, running on current versions of macOS with current Mac hardware. Change changes things.



Sep 11, 2023 8:32 AM in response to etresoft

I don't have time right now to respond to all of this, but one thing I want to say right now:


I didn't know that most people are addicted to updates and upgrades. I, for one, abhor such things (updates, like going from Monterey to Ventura, e.g.). Things break, things vanish, replacement apps (like QuickTime X) tend to be inferior to the apps they replace. And now they're hiding more things than ever. Like on the Music app. Lousy user interface! The search box is on the left, and the choices of Library vs. Store vs. something else is all the way on the right, sometimes totally hidden by the history thing.


Doing updates, and esp. upgrades, take time. I'm trying to get stuff done here! Security updates, I'm there. Everything else breaks things or makes them worse. Still, I thought maybe the most recent version of FCLM might only work on Ventura. What an awesome program it is if it would just work. You don't have to open each Final Cut Pro library to delete render files and other things. But it doesn't read in all of the libraries it lists, and it has a couple of other minor problems. Anh. (Rhymes with the first syllable of Poincaré. Yeah, I need a more common word. Haven't found one yet.)


Thanks again for chiming in! And with lots of useful detail. Not a fan of short cryptic answers.

Sep 11, 2023 12:40 PM in response to betaneptune

I meant "upgrade, like going from Monterey to Ventura, e.g."

"Everything else breaks things or makes them worse." This applies primarily to upgrades.


To be clear:

update: minor revision.

upgrade: major, meaning the OS gets a new name, like Mojave, or Catalina, etc.


"Anh" rhymes with the "Poin" in Poincare. Yeah, I need to find a common word for it. Rhymes with cat with a nasal twist thrown in somehow.

Sep 11, 2023 3:30 PM in response to betaneptune

betaneptune wrote:

To be clear:
update: minor revision.
upgrade: major, meaning the OS gets a new name, like Mojave, or Catalina, etc.

Aside from marketing, there is very little difference anymore. Supposedly "minor" updates to Ventura regularly broke things like networking and video. There is no reason to assume that Sonoma will be different in any way.


One of my favourite threads was about the video failure. People sincerely expected Apple to fix that bug in days. If only someone could have predicted it would take Apple over two months.


You're not immune either. You said, "Security updates, I'm there." People are currently falling all over themselves to apply a security update to block an exploit used by NSO. People sincerely think that they are targets for this kind of hacking. If only they knew that their tax dollars paid the salaries of the hackers. 😄

Sep 14, 2023 10:05 AM in response to etresoft

More on this post I'm replying to one of your posts. These thread postings are in a confusing order.


Final Cut Library Manager gives the wrong sizes, at least on external disks. Then the Delete Render Files, and optimized and proxy and flow files can't be done. If I open one of the libraries listed with the wrong size, it fixes the size and I can proceed. But the whole point is that you can delete render files en masse! 


The last update was v 3.97 and was copyrighted 2014. So in 9 years, I'm the only one who has this problem?


There are a lot of diagnostic files with the extension .fcpbundle, and those get listed too. I'm thinking of zipping them up. 


It often goes to the bottom of the window stack when I start it.


Time Machine often goes to the bottom of the windows stack. Even when it's been on top for a while, it will suddenly vanish.


Sometimes I get solid red over the top of Mail or the tabs on Finder. Pretty seldom, though.


Ventura will make things worse? Then what's the point of upgrades? I should stay on Monterey as long as possible?


A restore will cause problems with the OS? I've read in this thread that backup now doesn't back up the OS, only the data. Had that when I was trying to recover from my hard drive dying on my old Mac. 






Sep 14, 2023 10:42 AM in response to betaneptune

More on this post I'm replying to one of your posts. These thread postings are in a confusing order.


Final Cut Library Manager gives the wrong sizes, at least on external disks. Then the Delete Render Files, and optimized and proxy and flow files can't be done. If I open one of the libraries listed with the wrong size, it fixes the size and I can proceed. But the whole point is that you can delete render files en masse! 


The last update was v 3.97 and was copyrighted 2014. So in 9 years, I'm the only one who has this problem?


There are a lot of diagnostic files with the extension .fcpbundle, and those get listed too. I'm thinking of zipping them up. 


It often goes to the bottom of the window stack when I start it.


Time Machine (I mean the System Preferences TM) often goes to the bottom of the windows stack. Even when it's been on top for a while, it will suddenly vanish. And it will occasionally get a messed up display.



Sometimes I get solid red over the top of Mail or the tabs on Finder. Pretty seldom, though.


Ventura will make things worse? Then what's the point of upgrades? I should stay on Monterey as long as possible?


A restore will cause problems with the OS? I've read in this thread that backup now doesn't back up the OS, only the data. Had that when I was trying to recover from my hard drive dying on my old Mac. 






Sep 14, 2023 11:25 AM in response to betaneptune

betaneptune wrote:

Final Cut Library Manager gives the wrong sizes, at least on external disks. Then the Delete Render Files, and optimized and proxy and flow files can't be done. If I open one of the libraries listed with the wrong size, it fixes the size and I can proceed. But the whole point is that you can delete render files en masse! 

I don't know anything about that app. I recommend you contact the developer. Perhaps your external drives have some sort of unusual or unexpected formatting.

The last update was v 3.97 and was copyrighted 2014. So in 9 years, I'm the only one who has this problem?

I don't think that date is accurate. I downloaded the app and looked at it. It is properly constructed. It is a universal binary. It was last updated a couple of months ago. I see an awful lot of junk apps. Final Cut Library Manager looks pretty good.


The only thing that is risky about it is the fact that it is an add-on to someone else's product. But looking at the developer's web site, they seem to be doing a good job testing with Final Cut Pro and proactively informing users about compatibility issues (or a lack thereof). This developer looks like they would be very helpful and responsive.

Time Machine (I mean the System Preferences TM) often goes to the bottom of the windows stack. Even when it's been on top for a while, it will suddenly vanish. And it will occasionally get a messed up display.

Sometimes I get solid red over the top of Mail or the tabs on Finder.

I don't know about those problems. At least the solid red sounds like GPU video RAM corruption. That's not uncommon with apps that make very heavy use of the GPU.


I think the Time Machine problem is related to your video settings. It looks like you have high contrast set or something. Maybe change that back to the default and/or review your display calibration. For all Apple's talk about accessibility, they do tend to favour tiny grey text on a grey background. I think that's what you're seeing, or not seeing.

Ventura will make things worse? Then what's the point of upgrades? I should stay on Monterey as long as possible?

All good questions. If your current setup is working well for you, why would you want to change it? If you know of specific bugs or annoyances and know positively that an upgrade will fix those, then it might be worth the upgrade. But never assume that any upgrade is going to magically fix anything. Except for really major problems, I see no evidence that Apple makes any effort to fix bugs at all. They are continually adding features to iOS and then porting those the Mac. But the only way that most bugs ever get fixed is when Apple does major rewrites like they did with System Settings in Ventura as part of their ongoing effort to turn macOS into iOS.


If you are interested in keeping up-to-date, and you need your computer for your livelihood, I strongly recommend having more than one and doing the regular testing procedure I described above.


Boy I hate that 5000 character limit!

Sep 14, 2023 11:25 AM in response to etresoft

A restore will cause problems with the OS?

A restore won't cause any problems, but it won't fix them. I suppose if all of your problems were caused by one specific database cache file, and that specific file just happens to be a true volatile cache file and not a persistence file (meaning it is intended to be automatically rebuilt, if needed), than a restore might help. But that is extraordinarily unlikely. In theory, a Safe Mode restart will clean out those kinds of volatile cache files. A Safe Mode restart is also unlikely to fix anything, but it is a lot faster and less risky than a wipe and restore.

I've read in this thread that backup now doesn't back up the OS, only the data. Had that when I was trying to recover from my hard drive dying on my old Mac. 

I believe there was a statement above that a Time Machine backup only backed user files. That is not accurate. Time Machine backs up everything. I'm not entirely sure if you can restore the entire system with just Time Machine anymore. With all the new volumes, write-protection, and cryptographic sealants, Apple really wants people to install the operating system by itself and then restore data.


But that's still a moot point. The operating system isn't ever going to get corrupt unless there is a physical failure of the hard drive or logic board (or due to severe user vandalism). If that happens, a restore isn't going to help.


It may be that, if you are experiencing some kind of corruption, that corruption might be at the "system" level. It isn't part of the operating system, but it also isn't a user file. These kinds of files aren't write-protected or sealed. They can, and do, get corrupted. But in most cases, the corruption is caused by some 3rd party system modification, hacking tool, or software piracy tool. So if you do a full restore, you will be restoring that.


To be honest, from everything that you've said, I don't see any problem of any kind. So you had dozens of Firefox tabs open. That overloaded the CPU, blanked out part of your display, turned some parts red, and eventually panicked. Maybe use Safari instead. Maybe use bookmarks or reading list instead of keeping open tabs. For problems with your well-maintained 3rd party app, you've got a developer sitting there waiting for your support e-mail.



Sep 16, 2023 11:13 AM in response to etresoft

The thing about Final Cut Library Manager (FCLM) is that it seems to work for others, but not for me. I saw a link on someone's Final Cut channel with a link to the site for this app. I guess it's working for him. The website itself (FCLM) doesn't indicate anyone having problems like I am.


I stopped using FCLM some time in 2021 and have been on hiatus from working on videos. Now I am back into it, and I want to clean up and organize all my libraries. And it is incredibly frustrating that I'm having this problem while others aren't. I worked with Arctic Whiteness on this very problem around the 3rd quarter of 2021. They couldn't find a problem and I gave up. (The app worked great initially, but suddenly broke at some point.)


Well, now I'm resuming video work and the thing still comes up with anything from exactly Zero bytes to about 400 KB for libraries that are like 20 GB, e.g. Even 40 GB. A few sizes come out okay. Since everyone else seems to be having no trouble with it, I thought I'd follow the Mac website troubleshooting pages. I've decided that I should contact the power user in the Final Cut "support community" and the guy with the channel I mentioned and see if they had anything useful to say.


>----o----<


Yes, I have "Increased Contrast" set, because the default is unusable to me. Maybe everyone else has no trouble making out gray over ever so slightly darker gray, but I tired of it quickly. The undesired side effect is that the colors of the tags and flags are dark and sometimes hard to distinguish. But I live with it.


>----o----<


Re browser use, yeah I have too many tabs open. But Safari? I don't care for Safari. Not in the least. Lousy user interface. Cannot find and press links with the Find/Search function. Not keyboard-friendly like FF is. Oh, and they hide Bookmarks search box. WHY?! Why would anyone think to scroll the thing DOWN except to return to the top? And what is the benefit to hiding it? I can't think of any. Well, I can think of one reason they do that. 


I waste more time struggling with things being hidden (elapsed time and other things on Music now, e.g. WHY?) than any benefit I might get. So I use Safari only when absolutely necessary. 


>----o----<


"All good questions. If your current setup is working well for you, why would you want to change it?"


It isn't! FCLM is a disaster. Works for others; not for me; arctic support can't fix it (though I'll start a new round with them soon).


Apple and others always say, "update your device and apps to their latest versions." Well, as I said, that often breaks things or makes things I like go bye-bye.


Fortunately I don't depend on my Mac for my livelihood, presently, anyway.


>----o----<


Quick question: WHY do external devices cause so much trouble? Often the first or second step in troubleshooting is to disconnect all your devices. I don't recall any such problems with OpenVMS (the OS I "grew up" on) or any other OS. And suppose you _do_ find a troublesome device. What are you supposed to do, just throw it out?

EtreCheck reports a kernel panic today. Also, I can't resintall macOS Monterey.

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