Resolved SBIG Drivers for macOS 10.15 (Catalina)

Many thanks again, Don. I just tried your workaround exactly as you said--sorry, I know more about astronomy than about MacOS. It wouldn't accept that command in Terminal--here's a copy of my session (I hid the name of my HD below):

(HD Name):~ sf$ sudo mount -uw /
mount_apfs: volume could not be mounted: Operation not permitted
mount: / failed with 77
(HD Name):~ sf$

Any advice?? Running Catalina 10.15.1.

Thanks,
stan in Brooklyn

 

I haven't had this experience, but I'm guessing it's because System Integrity Protection (SIP) is enabled. To determine if it is enabled:

1. Open Terminal and at the prompt type: csrutil status
2. Press return and if it comes back with the status as: System Integrity Protection status: enabled. You'll need to disable it.

Here's how...

1. Boot to Recovery OS by restarting your machine and holding down the Command and R keys at startup.
2. Launch Terminal from the Utilities menu.
3. Enter the following command: csrutil disable
4. Close Terminal and Restart the computer.

Note that it can take a little while to boot into the recovery OS. I am assuming this is the problem, but having never seen that in my testing, it's the only potential difference between our computers that quickly comes to mind.

Hope this is it.
Don

 

Yup. That was it. SIP. But it's late now and I'll disable it and try again in the morning. Will report back.

Thanks so much, Don.

-stan

 

Good. I just tested it by enabling SIP on my desktop computer and got the same error message you reported when attempting to make the system volume writable. I'll update the instructions in my previous post. You should be good to go once you disable SIP.

Do not re-enable SIP once you have the drivers installed. The drivers are not signed and the system will not allow them to be functional with SIP enabled. This is a correction to a previous statement I made and have since deleted.

Have a good night. - Don

 

Hi Don,

Just tested kStars with my STF-8300 after following your instructions. Worked like a charm! Thank you so much on behalf of all of us

 

That is outstanding Stan. Very glad I could be of help!

 

Thanks, Don, for posting the workaround, that's very helpful. One quick question - I'm a bit worried about disabling SIP since it is a security feature, but I'm not a computer person and don't really understand it's significance. Should I stop using my desktop for banking, etc., if it's disabled?
Thanks, Kit

 

One more thing...I just tried the workaround, but unfortunately I was still prevented from installing the SBIG driver installer due to it being "incompatible with this OS". I checked and confirmed that SIP was off, but it still wouldn't allow the installation.

 

Hi Kit. If you still have questions about SIP, you can find answers here:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204899

I have not had the message you received and have installed this workaround on a number of different Macs running Catalina. Since the latest SBIG drivers are 64 bit, there shouldn't be any reason for the message. Regardless, if you've followed the instructions given here exactly, let me know your macOS version number i.e.(10.15.x) and I'll see if I can repeat the error.

 

Hi, Don, thanks for your reply. I was eventually able to install the drivers, the problem was operator error on this end. When typing in terminal to make the system volume writable, I didn't put in the / at the end. I thought it meant return. Anyway, I redid everything and then was able to install the drivers and reboot. Unfortunately The Sky still said the driver was missing. Am planning on using Parallels or boot camp at this point, so I've cleared the SIP configuration so that it's back on, and I think you mentioned that the system drive becomes readable only again when the computer reboots, right? The one thing I'm not sure about is when I originally tried to make the drive writable, but didn't end the command with /, but used a space instead. I got asked for my password after that, and when I entered it Terminal replied with a few lines that didn't make any sense to me. Unfortunately I didn't think to copy it. Is it possible that I did something seriously wrong? Thanks, Kit

 

If you didn't include the '/', you would have been presented with a list of the current disks attached to the computer. This is because the '-u' flag was used, which signified that the status of attached disks should be changed. In short, nothing would have happened; so, you did nothing wrong. Once rebooted, all disks would have returned to their normal state anyway.

 

That's great news, Don, thanks so much. I appreciate your time and expertise, thanks for sharing them. Cheers, Kit

 

Well! My STF8300 stopped working reliably on my macBook Air, so I figured i'd test it on my iMac. So I went through the above procedure today, disabling SIP, "sudo mount -uw /" etc. Downloaded the latest version of the Driver. But when I tried to install the driver, after the usual message saying that it was incompatible with the OS, I got a new message (pic attached)--the installation failed, contact the developer. Note: I just updated the OS on my iMac to 10.15.5, maybe that's why??

After all this time I would have thought SBIG would produce clean 64-bit drivers...

-stan in Brooklyn

 

Hi Stan,

I am running 10.15.5 as well and haven't had any issues connecting with the cameras. I'll test the installation process again as soon as I have the opportunity, but it seems like there's something else going on given the error message you received.

Regards,
Don

 

Thanks, Don,

I thought there was a hardware problem with my camera, so I brought it home. I just tested it with my iMac in Windows using Parallels, and it's working fine. Since I was unable to install the drivers for OS X, I can't test it in OS X on my iMac. I'm about to test it both in Windows and OS X Catalina on my Air (where I had previously installed the driver using your workaround). Will report back in a little while.

-stan

 

Yes, I normally run kStars on my Air. But for testing purposes, to reassure myself that I didn't have a hardware problem, I tested it with CCOps and Maxim DL via Windows. Happy to report that both applications worked fine with the camera on my Air when running Windows 7 in Parallels. Now I'm going to try it again on my Air using kStars 3.4.2 under Catalina (again).

 

Very strange. The camera is now working fine in kStars under Mac OS 10.15.5 Last night the cooler didn't work well, kStars couldn't get a temperature read from the camera and trying to take a picture just hung. Now all works fine.

I wonder if re-installing everything in Windows (the 64Driver Checker updated everything) and new ASCOM install (although that shouldn't affect the Mac side). Could the new Driver in Windows have leaked over to the Mac side??

I'm still puzzled by the refusal to install the latest driver on the Mac side to my iMac. I'm going to try again. But happy the camera is now working on my Air, which is the computer I use with my telescope in the mountains.

-stan

 

Nope. Just got the same "Installation Failed" message on my iMac when I tried to install driver 4r84. Tried to run it in kStars anyway and am getting messages like "Error reading temperature RX Timeout" and the like. But since I was unable to reinstall the latest driver in OS X, maybe that's not surprising.

To summarize:
1. All now mysteriously appears to be running fine on my Air. Both through Windows and OS X.
2. all works fine in Windows on both my Air and iMac, using CCDOps or Maxim DL.
3. On my iMac, I'm unable to reinstall the driver so it doesn't work with kStars on the Mac side.

-stan

 

Colin and Stan,

It looks like macOS Catalina Update 10.15.5 (+ Supplemental) has broken the installer's ability to register the I/O device...that's a fair guess. It's easy enough to manually install the driver's payload, but without knowing what's being registered with macOS's I/O registry, it's impossible to get it to work. If SBIG drivers were installed before updating to 10.15.5, then all should continue to work fine.

Stan...my best advice is to do what I did...since your startup disk is formatted as APFS, you can use Disk Utility to create another APFS volume and install a bare bones High Sierra or Mojave on it for running your observatory (I installed High Sierra). Note however that this is in-and-of-itself a drawback from the perspective that you cannot generally install a macOS version that predates the computer. So, if you have a new iMac that came with Catalina installed, you're hosed. However, if it came with Sierra, High Sierra or Mojave installed, this would be a good option. Albeit, not an ideal situation.

This one is going to be up to SBIG to solve and from what's already been stated, that may sadly not be an option. I am going to continue trying a few work-arounds, but I fear we may be at a dead-end.

Best Regards,
Don