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Keep getting Legacy System Warning but can't find the extension (from developer Matt Ingalls)

S

Schmactor

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 5, 2014
126
15
I keep getting a Legacy System Warning popup saying "Existing software on your system loaded a legacy system extension signed by Matt Ingalls which will be incompatible with a future version of macOS." I don't understand why the warning doesn't actually give the name of the extension or it's location. I've looked up Matt Ingalls online and the only possibility is an audio program called Soundflower which I may have downloaded and used at some point, but current searches of "soundflower" on my mac find zero results. This warning is getting annoying and it's even more annoying that it doesn't give any more information other than the developer name of the mysterious incompatible extension. How do I find this and stop this?
 
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You should tell us your version of macOS. This is because the rules regarding system/kernel extensions change with every release of macOS.

Matt Ingalls is the developer of one fork of Soundflower. Maybe you still have the Soundflower kext installed. Have you read https://github.com/mattingalls/Soundflower and related pages? It does talk about how to delete the kext from /Library/Extensions and /System/Library/Extensions. You would not have found that with a Spotlight search unless you specified to search System files.

On macOS 13.0.1, I do have /Library/Extensions/SoundflowerSigned.kext (v1.6.7 dated 2021-02-02) and I am not getting your alerts. Mine is signed by Corel Inc.

The version from Matt Ingalls is called version 2.0b2, but is dated from December 2014. So it is likely to be not compatible with recent versions of macOS.
 
I've just done a search for system extension signed by MATT INGALLS and one of the results was this thread. I didn't find Apple's error message terribly helpful in this instance, but I won't say what it reminded me of. :rolleyes:

However, thank you @gilby101 for referring to the GitHub page for instructions. I haven't gone there yet, so I'm hoping that I can make sense of it once I do!

Where did you get your more recent, Corel signed extension?
 
Kandrew said:
Where did you get your more recent, Corel signed extension?
Click to expand...
I was afraid someone would ask that! It must have come with something else. If/when I work it out I will let you know.

But, I am not confident that you should want mine. The version (1.6.7) suggests the code is older than the Matt Ingalls version even if it has been signed more recently and by a more recognisable organisation.
 
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gilby101 said:
I was afraid someone would ask that! It must have come with something else. If/when I work it out I will let you know.

But, I am not confident that you should want mine. The version (1.6.7) suggests the code is older than the Matt Ingalls version even if it has been signed more recently and by a more recognisable organisation.
Click to expand...
I did notice that the version numbers seem all way off. But the date of yours is much newer than the Matt Ingalls version. Maybe they are version numbers using different forks? That was my initial reaction when I saw the strange version numbering.

Another thing that I noticed is that Matt Ingalls' version says that M1 (probably means Apple Silicon) hardware isn't supported. That's not of concern to me on my iMac, but I have a MacBook Pro which does have an Apple processor.

Finally, I do have a reputation for asking questions that people wish weren't asked! 🤣
 
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Soundflower-2.0b2.dmg (Dec 19, 2014) works on Big Sur 11.7.1 (20G918)/Intel, along with SoundflowerBed 2.0.0
Soundflower.jpg

https://github.com/mattingalls/Soundflower/releases
direct link https://github.com/mattingalls/Soundflower/releases/download/2.0b2/Soundflower-2.0b2.dmg
https://github.com/mLupine/SoundflowerBed/releases
direct link https://github.com/mLupine/Soundflo....0.0-release/SoundflowerBed-2.0.0-release.dmg
 
I'm getting this message as well, and the GitHub uninstall instructions are not helpful because the .kext file indicated doesn't exist in either of the locations specified in the instructions, nor in any other location I can search (including hidden locations). I guess I'll just have to put up with this notification forever.

For what it's worth, I found BlackHole to be a decent replacement for SoundFlower, and was able to get it working with somewhat less tinkering: https://existential.audio/blackhole/
 
AlpacaLips said:
I'm getting this message as well, and the GitHub uninstall instructions are not helpful because the .kext file indicated doesn't exist in either of the locations specified in the instructions, nor in any other location I can search (including hidden locations).
Click to expand...
Have you checked /Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Extensions/?
Run in Terminal
Code: 
sudo kextcache --clear-staging
and
Code: 
sudo kextcache -i /

"clear-staging: Clear the staging directory managed by kernelmanagerd(8) and kmutil(8)."
"−i os_volume, −invalidate os_volume
Rebuild out-of-date caches and update any helper partitions associated with os_volume."
 
AlpacaLips said:
Not sure why this didn't show up in my searches.
Click to expand...
The name of the SoundFlower files may or may not contain a capital S and a capital F.
So, you should use the "-iname" option for the "find" command in the Terminal:

Bash: 
sudo find / -iname '*soundflower*' -ls 2> /dev/null

(This may take some time...)
 
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