hoakley April 26, 2021 Macs, Technology, Updates

Apple has released Big Sur 11.3 update

Apple has just released the update to Big Sur 11.3. It’s huge: for M1 Macs, it weighs in at 6.62 GB and it’s around 6.2 GB for Intel models, making it the largest update to macOS since Mojave, and quite possibly the largest ever.

Among the many bugs which it fixes are a major security vulnerability explained in detail by Patrick Wardle. The message is clear that all Big Sur users should update as soon as they can.

Apple has provided the longest set of release notes for 11.3 that I can recall seeing for years! The full list includes:

Support for AirTags in Find My.
Improvements to running iOS/iPadOS apps on M1 Macs.
Enhanced emojis (well, there had to be some).
Improvements to Siri, Music, Podcasts, News, Safari, Reminders, support for two wireless controllers in gaming, hibernation support for M1 Macs, and more.
There are several significant bug fixes, including two for AirPods support, and full resolution on external 4K displays connected via USB-C.

There’s also improved support for SMB Multichannel, which Apple explains here. Additional release notes intended for system administrators are here.

Apple’s list of security fixes included in this update are here. This list contains more than fifty entries, includes several serious vulnerabilities, and five bugs in the kernel. And the Gatekeeper bypass detailed by Patrick Wardle.

Apple has also released the next Security Updates to Catalina (2021-002) and Mojave (2021-003). Standalone updaters for those have just been released, and are available from here for Catalina, and here for Mojave.

I suspect that most, if not all, models of Mac will have firmware updates following installation of macOS 11.3 or one of the security updates. I will update the list of versions accessed by SilentKnight as soon as I can, over the next day or two.

Those updating to macOS 11.3 may well notice that this downgrades XProtect from 2144 to 2143, and MRT from 1.77 to 1.75. Ensure that your Mac is updated again to their later versions, once the 11.3 update has been installed.

I’ll post more details later as they come in. Get updating!

Updated 1645 UTC 27 April with standalone installer links.

28Comments

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1

Dakotamoons on April 26, 2021 at 5:47 pm

Thank you Howard, as always, for the heads up. All the best, John in Ocean City, NJ

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2

Francesco on April 26, 2021 at 5:59 pm

Hi Howard, thank you, as always, for your precious informations. Yes, you’re right, they released today also the “macOS Mojave Security Update 2021-003 10.14.6”. All the best.

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3

Apple Does Not Care on April 26, 2021 at 7:27 pm

SilentKnight reports: ❌ KEXT 16.3.0 should be 16.0.4
on a 2017 MacBookPro14,3.

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- 4
  
  hoakley on April 26, 2021 at 7:29 pm
  
  That’s because you’ve just updated it. Please give me a chance to update and then I can update the database.
  Howard
  
  LikeLiked by 1 person
  - 5
    
    Apple Does Not Care on April 26, 2021 at 7:39 pm
    
    Thought so, but was not sure how this is handled. Take your time and thanks so much for your efforts as always ❤️
    
    LikeLiked by 1 person
- 6
  
  hoakley on April 27, 2021 at 12:39 am
  
  That is now fixed, thank you.
  Howard.
  
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7

kapitainsky on April 26, 2021 at 7:37 pm

on Intel macs update size must depend on model – in my case it was 6.2 GB for MBP

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- 8
  
  hoakley on April 26, 2021 at 7:39 pm
  
  Oof! The figure given is for my iMac Pro.
  Howard
  
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  - 9
    
    kapitainsky on April 26, 2021 at 7:46 pm
    
    definitely it varies – updating now one Big Sure virtual machine and it is 5.71 GB
    
    LikeLiked by 1 person
10

Bruce Michel on April 26, 2021 at 9:29 pm

I’ll join the chorus in thanking your for the timely notice.

Seemed to update a bit quicker, the “About one minute remaining…” message was true for the first time I recall.

One aggravation that Apple does not seem to want to correct is a simple one. I posted to http://www.apple.com/feedback/macos.html about an unresolved issue after this update. However, the dropdown list has not been updated to show 11.3. With all of the other effort to roll out an update, couldn’t they manage to have a simple clerical task done simultaneously?

Any of us who fixed or managed commercial software would want to know what version is used.

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11

Headache on April 27, 2021 at 12:56 am

How can I downgrade if 11.3 doesn’t work out? Is it possible? Is it sufficient just to image Data with CCC, and if the upgrade doesn’t work, downgrade and restore Data from CCC image? CCC can’t image the System volume on Apple Silicon Macs, so I can’t make a true 1:1 backup.

I was running 11.2.1 last week, then finally updated to 11.2.3. I wasn’t able to login after. It was a nightmare to get it running again, even with Time Machine backups. Reinstalling from Recovery Mode wasn’t sufficient — I had to do a full disk wipe beforehand, then Migration Assistant restore, which quit unexpectedly. (TM/Migration Asisstant would stall near the end of restoring and my external drive would audibly click and spin down…so I just disconnected the drive, then TM said the restore was successful?! Now my machine is in working condition and seemingly in fully restored condition now, except that Rosetta wasn’t restored…)

Anyways…I think since I had no System volume after wiping and since TM doesn’t back up the System volume anymore, I had to install macOS to a version newer than the one before, then use the Migration Assistant to restore instead of just restoring from Time Machine. It’s all very convoluted…a process I don’t want to go through again!

Another note…DMG files created with “Image from folder” in Recovery mode’s Disk Utility are corrupt. I tried unpacking them on macOS and on Linux. Other users have reported this too: https://superuser.com/questions/1353732/unable-to-open-dmg-files-corrupt-image

Any ideas why?

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- 12
  
  hoakley on April 27, 2021 at 8:47 pm
  
  Thank you.
  You should find tomorrow morning’s article a help.
  I wasn’t aware of any problem with Disk Utility in Recovery mode, but note that article is almost three years old. Which version of macOS are you referring to? Big Sur?
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
  - 13
    
    j on April 27, 2021 at 9:20 pm
    
    Dear Howard,
    
    Thank you for your help. Yes, the problem with Disk Utility still exists in Big Sur. After failing to update to 11.2.3, I went into Recovery Mode to try to make a second “flat” backup just in case my other backup measures did not restore. I tried Disk Utility’s “Image from folder” repeatedly with both the “read-only” and “compressed” options, imaging the whole Data “folder” or just my home folder to an external USB SSD. I tried to open the DMGs on Fedora with 7zip and dmg2img but was not able to. After getting my Mac back up and running again, I tried to open them again “natively” with Finder and hdiutil (with various options to suppress errors and verification) but also failed.
    
    Some other notes:
    
    i) I also just `tar`-ed up the Data folder with Terminal in Recovery Mode. It seems that the version of tar in Recovery Mode creates malformed tar output files when there are sparse file inputs? I extracted the tarballs (both gunzipped and uncompressed) on Linux and kept running into “tar file EOF” and “forced exit” errors (as well as warnings about undocumented tar file headers). I tried `bsdtar` on Linux and native tar on macOS too. I was able to circumvent this by excluding those folders when extracting. I think the problematic files are sparse files but could be something else? For example, I ran into an EOF error when extracting a folder containing Docker images inside the Library path.
    
    ii) Are the log files accessible in Recovery Mode? I wanted to figure out what exactly was causing my login issues on 11.2.3, but I could not find them anywhere. Perhaps it was a bad kext or startup login item — something that I could fix without having to wipe and reinstall!
    
    Thanks!
    
    LikeLiked by 1 person
    - 14
      
      hoakley on April 27, 2021 at 10:38 pm
      
      No problems.
      First, the Data volume is a whole APFS volume not a folder, and that may well be the root of the problem. I don’t know how well it would image normally, and it may be better to try imaging its constituent folders separately. They can be pretty huge!
      I don’t know how APFS sparse files should be handled when tarred, but their native file format is peculiar to APFS and unlikely to be supported on Linux. I’m not sure that tar is the best tool for doing this, and even copying them to another volume won’t normally expand them to normal files.
      I don’t think that the log command is provided in Recovery mode, at least not on Intel Macs. Without that, the logs are inaccessible, I’m afraid. Unless you’re really adept with the log show command, you’re going to be very lucky doing anything useful with them anyway. The best way to examine login issues is with a log browser like my free Ulbow, or Consolation 3, which require to be run from an admin user account in normal mode. They can look back through log stored on your boot volume, unlike Console.
      I hope those help.
      Howard.
      
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  - 15
    
    J on April 28, 2021 at 12:27 am
    
    Thank you, Howard.
    
    Would copying the files to an (external USB) APFS volume be a good solution then? Say I am in a similar situation again, where I cannot boot (normally nor into safe mode) and can only access my soldered-in storage via Recovery Mode*. Maybe the best option (only option?!) to rescue my files will be to do a `cp` in Terminal to an external APFS volume?
    
    * With a Linux or Windows machine, I could boot a live USB and image the disk (e.g. `dd`). Until now, I thought I could only interact with the volume via the machine itself (i.e. Recovery Mode). On (M1) Macs, there is:
    
    “Mac Sharing Mode” a.k.a. Target Disk Mode: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/mac-help/mchlb37e8ca7/mac
    
    but the client must be a Mac?! Do you have any experience with this (could it be used as a way to do a 1:1 image, a la “dd” or CCC)?
    
    I am looking forward to your article tomorrow on 11.3.
    
    Thanks again,
    Justin
    
    LikeLiked by 1 person
    - 16
      
      hoakley on April 28, 2021 at 8:01 am
      
      A straightforward copy should suffice for a Data volume, although you’re better off making a faithful copy using Carbon Copy Cloner if you can.
      Howard.
      
      LikeLiked by 1 person
  - 17
    
    Sab Gigo on April 29, 2021 at 4:08 am
    
    I was having trouble with the 11.3 update on my M1 Mac mini. After the Software Update preference pane made a seemingly successful download, I entered the “15 minutes remaining…” interval, and in short order, was presented with a “download error” message. This happened repeatedly, even thought 2 other Intel Macs that I own updated to 11.3 with no problems of any kind around the same time period. I then proceeded to download the full 11.3 Install app from the Mac App store and attempted to install Big Sur 11.3, but this also failed with an error (I should have recorded the specific error, but did not.) I then used terminal to create an 11.3 USB Installer per the method documented by Apple, and tried to install from Recovery using that USB installer. This also produced an error regarding my M1 Mac mini’s internal drive. I rebooted into Recovery and ran Disk Utility First Aid on my internal drive. This produced several errors on the Data volume within several snapshots, and these were not corrected with repeated First Aid attempts, even after rebooting (which sometimes helps.) I decided to erase my internal drive (again with Disk Utility) and then install 11.3 from the USB Installer (requiring yet another reboot.) This was successful. One initial startup of 11.3, I used the migration portion of macOS Setup (which is run on the first boot of a clean macOS installation) to restore my data from my Time Machine backup. This all took a bit of work and time, but ultimately, erasing the internal drive completely solved the issues. What caused the disk errors? That is unknown. My advice would be that when the Big Sur macOS Installer runs into problems repeatedly, consider taking a step back and using Disk Utility to check the system and data volumes for problems. If issues are found that cannot be repaired, then erase the drive to get a fresh start… you did make a backup of your drive beforehand, right?. Of course you did!
    
    LikeLiked by 1 person
    - 18
      
      hoakley on April 29, 2021 at 9:15 am
      
      I’m sorry to hear that – yes, one of the last checks before updating should be to run Disk Utility’s First Aid to ensure that there are no underlying disk errors. I must admit in the four updates to 11.3 that I’ve now completed, I didn’t do it once, but we should really.
      Howard.
      
      LikeLike
19

Nishant on April 27, 2021 at 2:25 am

How can we download the security updates for Mojave & Catalina to package and push it by MDM?

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 20
  
  hoakley on April 27, 2021 at 8:47 pm
  
  Thank you.
  I have now posted links to the standalone installers – Apple didn’t post them until today.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
  - 21
    
    Nishant on April 28, 2021 at 1:34 am
    
    Thanks Howard
    
    LikeLiked by 1 person
22

Ian on April 27, 2021 at 2:12 pm

Not sure what that update accomplished, but it looks like I am going to have to use TimeMachine to put it back to the previous incarnation of Big Sur. The only thing that work sare browsers and email. Everything else is giving me errors all over the place

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- 23
  
  hoakley on April 27, 2021 at 9:03 pm
  
  I’m sorry to hear that – something serious went wrong. I have an article coming in the morning with suggestions.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
24

Michael Tsai - Blog - macOS 11.3 on April 27, 2021 at 8:13 pm

[…] Apple (MacRumors, Howard Oakley): […]

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25

Rob Menke on April 28, 2021 at 3:54 am

Howard,
Having a late 2015 imac that is now updating firmware, I’ll let you know in the morning what the change is. Now at 429.80.1.0.0

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 26
  
  Rob Menke on April 28, 2021 at 12:55 pm
  
  My firmware was updated again to 429.100.7.0.0. I see many posts with problems in today’s article. I hope my experience is more benign.
  
  LikeLiked by 1 person
27

Stéphane on April 28, 2021 at 8:03 am

From Belgium, I have 400 Mbps yes 4×100, and it takes 15 min then Error try later from the Syst-Pref – Update.
It’s like that since… Will search for another way…

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28

hstriepe on April 30, 2021 at 9:17 pm

Not improved is Music’s glacial and sometimes capricious iTunes Match. My eclectic tastes are not always available in Apple Music, so I like a syncing library across my devices. But that can be quite the pain. I have been looking at one track “Waiting” all morning. Sometimes it takes days.

LikeLiked by 1 person