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Re: macOS High Sierra (10.13) FTDI Driver Bug Workaround

PostPosted: Mon Feb 05, 2018 4:51 pm
by sarahcat
A vast majority of the reports of problems have been with the PowerLinc 2413U which uses the FTDI driver. Not many reports of new Z-Stick problems with High Sierra, although we seem to get a few USB problem across the board (all interfaces) with each new macOS release.


My bad. I didn't intend to conflate the two interfaces. My Z-Stick never failed, even though my Insteon MODEM did. I just assumed that it was just good luck and that the Z-Stick would fail on a subsequent reboot. I have very mixed feelings concerning my predominantly Insteon dual-band mesh deployment, although my years of signal problems seemed to be related to an intermittently failing Insteon 2413u MODEM, which worked just well enough out of the box to have me running around troubleshooting problems. My original 2413u ultimately failed last year and after replacing it with a new one, all my flakey connectivity problems vanished. The new one is really solid in every way, but appears to have much newer firmware.

I bugged Matt and Jay for a while with a problem that appeared to be a signal-to-noise problem that now appears not to be that there was too much noise on the network, but too little signal from the 2413u. I also suspect that it's possible that the wireless signal from the 2413 may been extremely weak or absent, as deploying a bunch of dual band devices never really fixed the problem. Live and learn.

I also just found out that slow or unsuccessful restart problems on my Mac Mini were not OS problems or even hardware problems, per se, but were a result of some USB device (hub or endpoint) that cratered the Power On Self Test so that it almost never executed successfully. Again, it's a USB issue. Attempting to work around USB problems, I now have a really poorly structured USB hub topology that I will be straightening out. I may have made a separate post about the USB hub problems, so if this is redundant, my apologies. :oops:

Re: macOS High Sierra (10.13) FTDI Driver Bug Workaround

PostPosted: Mon Feb 05, 2018 5:39 pm
by jay (support)
Yeah - apparently, USB is REALLY REALLY hard to implement well. Apple has a history of breaking it (every release since 10.9 has had USB issues upon release) in a variety of ways over the years.

Re: macOS High Sierra (10.13) FTDI Driver Bug Workaround

PostPosted: Tue Feb 13, 2018 8:13 pm
by tachyonflare
Jay,
Maybe I am missing something, perhaps because I am running an encrypted volume, but when enter into recovery mode and enter "cd "/Volumes/Boot Drive" .... replacing my "Boot Drive" with my HD name while adding the quotation it says it cannot find directory, all I see is the OS X Base System, what am I missing?

J.R.

Re: macOS High Sierra (10.13) FTDI Driver Bug Workaround

PostPosted: Wed Feb 14, 2018 11:54 am
by jay (support)
tachyonflare wrote:
Jay,
Maybe I am missing something, perhaps because I am running an encrypted volume, but when enter into recovery mode and enter "cd "/Volumes/Boot Drive" .... replacing my "Boot Drive" with my HD name while adding the quotation it says it cannot find directory, all I see is the OS X Base System, what am I missing?


Sorry, that's beyond my experience. Sounds like @lanbrown has some idea of what's going on. You can do:

Code: Select all
ls /Volumes/


to see what disks are mounted in the normal place. If your drive doesn't show up there then I don't know what you'd do next (but I suspect it has something to do with the volume being encrypted - something we've never tested with).

Re: macOS High Sierra (10.13) FTDI Driver Bug Workaround

PostPosted: Fri Feb 16, 2018 1:44 pm
by sarahcat
Just an update. I’ve restarted my 2012 i7 Mini several times recently and I haven’t had a problem with initialization of the 2413U MODEM. Magically, everything works perfectly, even though I have not applied the FTDI fix. I don’t really believe in magic, except at the Chicago Magic Lounge (shameless plug for a great new club that some friends are involved in). I’m not happy about the magic disappearance of symptoms. I’ve not changed anything in the system.

Re: macOS High Sierra (10.13) FTDI Driver Bug Workaround

PostPosted: Fri Feb 16, 2018 4:03 pm
by jay (support)
sarahcat wrote:
Just an update. I’ve restarted my 2012 i7 Mini several times recently and I haven’t had a problem with initialization of the 2413U MODEM. Magically, everything works perfectly, even though I have not applied the FTDI fix. I don’t really believe in magic, except at the Chicago Magic Lounge (shameless plug for a great new club that some friends are involved in). I’m not happy about the magic disappearance of symptoms. I’ve not changed anything in the system.


Are you using a USB hub or is your PowerLinc plugged directly in? Do you have any of the old drivers lying around as mentioned in the blog post?

Re: macOS High Sierra (10.13) FTDI Driver Bug Workaround

PostPosted: Fri Feb 16, 2018 7:50 pm
by sarahcat
Are you using a USB hub or is your PowerLinc plugged directly in? Do you have any of the old drivers lying around as mentioned in the blog post?


Using the same Insignia USB2 hub for the interfaces. As I said, everything is working under High Sierra without any driver updates. Previously, I had to disconnect and recommend the Insteon 2413U whenever I restarted my Mac. Now, the MODEM initializes without the FTDI driver update being applied (the workaround).

As I said, I made no changes to the hardware or software.

Re: macOS High Sierra (10.13) FTDI Driver Bug Workaround

PostPosted: Sun Feb 18, 2018 6:38 pm
by jay (support)
sarahcat wrote:
Using the same Insignia USB2 hub for the interfaces. As I said, everything is working under High Sierra without any driver updates. Previously, I had to disconnect and recommend the Insteon 2413U whenever I restarted my Mac. Now, the MODEM initializes without the FTDI driver update being applied (the workaround).


And did you check to see if you had a copy of the FTDI driver installed as described in the blog post?

I think the USB hub may help with the driver load order part of the equation so I'm curious if it's finding a different FTDI driver.

Re: macOS High Sierra (10.13) FTDI Driver Bug Workaround

PostPosted: Mon Feb 19, 2018 11:22 pm
by cdeggz
Workaround did not work for me.


Not sure if it means anything, but FTDIUSBSerialDriver was in System/Library/Extensions/ only when I started

After finishing the procedure I find it only located in Library/Extensions/

Any other ideas?.

Re: macOS High Sierra (10.13) FTDI Driver Bug Workaround

PostPosted: Tue Feb 20, 2018 9:59 am
by jay (support)
cdeggz wrote:
Not sure if it means anything, but FTDIUSBSerialDriver was in System/Library/Extensions/ only when I started

After finishing the procedure I find it only located in Library/Extensions/


I'd start again, making sure that you follow each step exactly. If something doesn't seem to work after one of the steps then take notes and post back here.

Re: macOS High Sierra (10.13) FTDI Driver Bug Workaround

PostPosted: Tue Feb 20, 2018 11:36 pm
by cdeggz
My troubleshooting for tonight

-Removed the old drivers per the instructions
-Recovery mode -> Terminal
-Tried to move the Apple driver (could not be found)
-Verified that I successfully moved it last time by moving it again and again
-Restarted
-Started Indigo, still no luck
-Unplugged the USB and plugged it back in. Still no luck
-Unplugged the powerlinc modem, waited a bit, plugged it back in. No luck, time to get a beer.
-Thought maybe I had a different modem than the one described, so I unplugged it to verify I had a 2413U. Indeed I do. Plugged it back in.
-Boom, now it works.


So either repeated plugging in or having a beer in hand was the critical steps I missed the previous night.

Re: macOS High Sierra (10.13) FTDI Driver Bug Workaround

PostPosted: Wed Feb 21, 2018 6:35 am
by DaveL17
In my experience, beer is almost always the right answer.

Re: macOS High Sierra (10.13) FTDI Driver Bug Workaround

PostPosted: Wed Feb 21, 2018 9:32 am
by jay (support)
DaveL17 wrote:
In my experience, beer is almost always the right answer.


:lol:

Re: macOS High Sierra (10.13) FTDI Driver Bug Workaround

PostPosted: Sat Mar 03, 2018 2:09 am
by sarahcat
And did you check to see if you had a copy of the FTDI driver installed as described in the blog post?


I actually did not do that yet. I had some serious OS problems with Sierra and High Sierra (that had nothing to do with Indigo) and I wound up reformatting the hard drive and loading a fresh copy of High Sierra. I used High Sierra 'out of the box' (download) and I did not actively update any drivers that were not native to the standard load. I will check, now that my Mac is stable.

I'm curious as well, but I've been distracted. The system is working really well and I'm probably a little complacent. :oops:

Re: macOS High Sierra (10.13) FTDI Driver Bug Workaround

PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2018 7:22 am
by eme jota ce
Thanks for this solution. I followed the instructions (including the quotes, spaces, extra periods, etc).

Indigo is working on a clean High Sierra installation, and reboots without problems.