Just yesterday, we commented on a somewhat mysterious problem involving Macs Pro supposedly would have installed software from Avid, especially Media Composer. As several users were affected, many followed the carriage floor, which has now had a "twist".
With the increasing number of reports, many users first began to assert that the problem also affected other Macs besides the workstation. Then another portion of the injured people said they had no Avid software installed on their machines, causing the root of the problem to become unknown until then. Google publish a new report about an error that could affect some macOS systems.
According to the company, Google Keystone version 1.2.13.75 ("hidden" company update software) has been dispatched with a bug that damages macOS on Macs where System Integrity Protection (PIS) is disabled.
More precisely, the operating system's security feature helps "prevent potentially malicious software from modifying protected Mac files and folders." Although the feature was included with OS X El Capitan (10.11), the Google bug also affects computers that do not support PIS.
Google has said it has stopped distributing the aforementioned Keystone update until a solution is released. On computers where the update has already been installed, the company recommends that users follow the next steps to recover their bug-affected machines (only for Macs with OS X El Capitan 10.11 or later installed).
- In Recovery Mode, choose the volume installed with the Google app (in most cases “Macintosh HD”).
- Open the Terminal app and enter the following commands:
# chroot /Volumes/(nome do volume instalado) # mv var vv # ln -s private/var var # chflags -h restricted /var # chflags -h hidden /var # xattr -sw com.apple.rootless "" /var
For OS X Yosemite 10.10 and earlier users, proceed to step 2 above and enter the following codes into Terminal:
/Users/(nome do usurio)/Library/LaunchAgents/ OU /Library/LaunchAgents/ - com.google.keystone.agent.plist - com.google.keystone.xpcservice.plist # exit (recomendado) # csrutil enable (10.11+)
These commands will specifically remove the affected version of the Google software update and restore the damaged part of the macOS file system. After performing any of the above methods, the user should restart the machine.
Plot twist: The problem does not involve, after all, Avid software. Still, video professionals were particularly affected as PIS must be disabled to support third party video cards, while most users should not be harmed by the failure as PIS is enabled by default.
via Mr. Macintosh
