Third party kexts no longer loading: VirtualBox on Big Sur 11.4

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Mac OS X hosts.
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virtualnoob2021
Posts: 3
Joined: 3. Jul 2021, 19:44

Third party kexts no longer loading: VirtualBox on Big Sur 11.4

Post by virtualnoob2021 »

Hello everyone,

I am as new to virtualization as I am to this forum so any help is very much appreciated:

After installing VirtualBox 6.1.22 on my MacPro 7.1 to run some 32bit apps I noticed that the Mac would not recognize my external TB3 nor my internal PCI Hardware anymore. I abandoned my virtualization efforts and uninstalled VirtualBox in order to solve this problem first.

It appears that the Mac won’t load any kexts in Library/Extensions anymore which should happen automatically on login. Necessary kexts from System/Library/Extensions are loaded as usual.

Loading the kexts manually after login gets the hardware working again, hence solves the problem, but I would of course prefer it to load the kexts on its own as it had been before:

Executing: /usr/bin/kmutil load -p /Library/Extensions/BJUSBLoad.kext -p /Library/Extensions/HighPointIOP.kext -p /Library/Extensions/HighPointNVMe.kext -p /Library/Extensions/HighPointRR.kext -p /Library/Extensions/SoftRAID.kext -p /Library/Extensions/UAD2System.kext

Is there anything I can do? Might this be a Mac OS security / T2 problem? I already added the kext IDs in recovery mode to no avail…

Thanks a lot in advance!
scottgus1
Site Moderator
Posts: 20965
Joined: 30. Dec 2009, 20:14
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Windows, Linux

Re: Third party kexts no longer loading: VirtualBox on Big Sur 11.4

Post by scottgus1 »

I am not a Mac guru, or a mac "anything", I don't even know what a kext is. But there is something you post that leads me to believe this is not a Virtualbox problem, but a host OS problem.
virtualnoob2021 wrote:the Mac would not recognize my external TB3 nor my internal PCI Hardware anymore....It appears that the Mac won’t load any kexts in Library/Extensions anymore which should happen automatically on login.
I suspect that this is more a host OS problem, because Virtualbox theoretically should not have interfered with seeing physical PCI hardware or an "external TB3".

I am probably completely wrong, but it sounds like your host OS is bunged, and you might also benefit from searching on a Mac forum as well as here.

Only other thing could be having turned something on/off on the host OS to get Virtualbox to run that interferes with these other things too. What it is, sorry, you got me there....
virtualnoob2021
Posts: 3
Joined: 3. Jul 2021, 19:44

Re: Third party kexts no longer loading: VirtualBox on Big Sur 11.4

Post by virtualnoob2021 »

scottgus1 wrote:I am not a Mac guru, or a mac "anything", I don't even know what a kext is. But there is something you post that leads me to believe this is not a Virtualbox problem, but a host OS problem.
virtualnoob2021 wrote:the Mac would not recognize my external TB3 nor my internal PCI Hardware anymore....It appears that the Mac won’t load any kexts in Library/Extensions anymore which should happen automatically on login.
I suspect that this is more a host OS problem, because Virtualbox theoretically should not have interfered with seeing physical PCI hardware or an "external TB3".

I am probably completely wrong, but it sounds like your host OS is bunged, and you might also benefit from searching on a Mac forum as well as here.

Only other thing could be having turned something on/off on the host OS to get Virtualbox to run that interferes with these other things too. What it is, sorry, you got me there....
Thanks a lot for your quick reply! That is kind of what I thought: while installing, VirtualBox somewhat touches the Hardware drivers installed (kext) in order for it to reroute hardware to a virtual machine. At the same time, it needs Mac OS security permissions which have to be manually enabled via the system preferences - probably for the same reason. Maybe something went wrong there?

I was wondering whether to move the kexts from the L/E to the L/S/E folder but I have been told that's not how kexts work...

To narrow it down: I think VirtualBox probably messed up the "driver loading part" of Mac OS, but I do not know how to tackle that problem...
virtualnoob2021
Posts: 3
Joined: 3. Jul 2021, 19:44

Re: Third party kexts no longer loading: VirtualBox on Big Sur 11.4

Post by virtualnoob2021 »

Good news: I just upgraded to Mac OS 11.5.1 via the Mac system preferences, which fixed the problem. All kexts are loaded on login. :)
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