Other Chromium Legacy: Google Chrome for OS X 10.7 – 10.9

[MacBiter]

That'll do it! This doesn't technically have anything to do with Chromium Legacy, older versions of macOS simply lack the certificate. The problem does not occur in Firefox because Firefox does not use the system certificate store. This is yet another setup thing my Preference Pane will fix automatically should you want to use it.

Alternately, the below Terminal command will install the certificate:

curl 'http://x1.i.lencr.org' > /tmp/ISRGRootX1.pem && sudo security -v add-trusted-cert -d -r trustRoot -k /Library/Keychains/System.keychain /tmp/ISRGRootX1.pem

Please run this command over a trusted private internet connection. (i.e., home internet good, public wifi at coffee shop bad.)

It not only fixed Chrome, it's also fixed a minor annoyance in Mail I've had for some time, where some messages come with their images intact, others came with the little blue square with a white ?. Now all images are present! (This was only ever a minor annoyance but nice to see it fixed).

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Thanks to a great deal of help from @f54da, I now have a kext that should make those kernel panics go away once and for all.

It's very early days, and I really don't like working in the kernel, so I can't promise this won't do anything terrible. However, I've confirmed that it fully fixes the panic on 10.9.5 (13F1911), and that it loads and appears to do the right thing on 10.8.4 (12F2560) and fully-updated 10.7.5.

Feel free to give it a try. It can be installed the same way as any other kext. I'm going to purposefully leave out more detailed instructions until I've tested for a much longer period.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

The latest version of my Preference Pane includes the aforementioned kext. Let me know if you run into any issues.

 

[MacBiter]

The latest version of my Preference Pane includes the aforementioned kext. Let me know if you run into any issues.

So far so good...

 

[Wowfunhappy]

So far so good...

To know whether it's working, go into Utilities → Console.app, and look for anything that begins with "Chromium Helper" under "User Diagnostic Reports" in the sidebar.

If the "Crashed Thread" is Chrome_ChildIOThread, that crash would have been a full kernel panic if not for the KQueueScanContinuePatch kext.

Note that if you don't see any crashes like this, it doesn't necessarily mean the kext isn't working. It just means you wouldn't have run into a kernel panic yet with or without the kext.

 

[StellarVixen]

I might be wrong but Chrome is Google's browser. For what I know Google Chrome was based on Chromium which was open-source and had nothing to do with Google

Nope, ain’t gonna be. Chromium is Google’s brainchild, it was never an open source project that the Google forked and claimed credit.

 

[MacBiter]

To know whether it's working, go into Utilities → Console.app, and look for anything that begins with "Chromium Helper" under "User Diagnostic Reports" in the sidebar.

If the "Crashed Thread" is Chrome_ChildIOThread, that crash would have been a full kernel panic if not for the KQueueScanContinuePatch kext.

Note that if you don't see any crashes like this, it doesn't necessarily mean the kext isn't working. It just means you wouldn't have run into a kernel panic yet with or without the kext.

No crashes yet (the last one involving Chromium Helper is there under System Reports but predates my downloading your updated Pane).

On a different note, the latest version of Chromium is telling me that to get future updates I need to upgrade to 10.13 and that "this computer" is running 10.11. It isn't, it's running 10.9!

 

[Wowfunhappy]

On a different note, the latest version of Chromium is telling me that to get future updates I need to upgrade to 10.13 and that "this computer" is running 10.11. It isn't, it's running 10.9!

Yeah, Google assumes that anything below 10.12 must be 10.11, since Chromium isn't supposed to work on anything older than that. Chromium Legacy will continue to receive updates as long as Bluebox keeps producing updates.

 

[MacBiter]

Yeah, Google assumes that anything below 10.12 must be 10.11, since Chromium isn't supposed to work on anything older than that. Chromium Legacy will continue to receive updates as long as Bluebox keeps producing updates.

Bit of a puzzle why I never got that message before?

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Bit of a puzzle why I never got that message before?

Google is preparing to drop support for 10.11 and 10.12, so they added a new warning to the latest versions of Chromium. But it doesn't affect us.

 

[MacBiter]

Google is preparing to drop support for 10.11 and 10.12, so they added a new warning to the latest versions of Chromium. But it doesn't affect us.

Ah, it's a new thing. I understand.

 

[MacBiter]

I'm at my wits end, going around banging my head against the wall.

I had an auto-update of Chromium this morning, and as usual it reverted to the horrible Chrome icon. So I did what I usually do - Get Info on the application, paste the nice blue icon (.png) into the top left corner but... for once it doesn't work. First attempt I got a non-alpha blue icon (i.e. with the transparent parts turned white), and all subsequent attempts have resulted in a black icon. For now I'm having to live with the 'orrible red/yellow/green default Chrome icon, but I'd love to get the blue one back. I cannot understand why my blue .png alpha icon won't paste. .

 

[MacBiter]

 

[Wowfunhappy]

I'm at my wits end, going around banging my head against the wall.

I had an auto-update of Chromium this morning, and as usual it reverted to the horrible Chrome icon. So I did what I usually do - Get Info on the application, paste the nice blue icon (.png) into the top left corner but... for once it doesn't work. First attempt I got a non-alpha blue icon (i.e. with the transparent parts turned white), and all subsequent attempts have resulted in a black icon. For now I'm having to live with the 'orrible red/yellow/green default Chrome icon, but I'd love to get the blue one back. I cannot understand why my blue .png alpha icon won't paste. .

Honestly, there's a good chance it's some sort of caching that will eventually fix itself.

But as I think I've recommended before, the permanent way to fix this is to open:

Library/PreferencePanes/Chromium Legacy Downloader.PrefPane/Contents/Resources

...and replace app.icns and document.icns with your preferred icons. (Your icon will of course need to be in the native icns format).

After that, reboot (to clear out the cache) and reinstall your preferred Chromium build from the PrefPane. Future automatic updates will use your preferred icon(s).

 

[MacBiter]

Excuse me asking, but how do I create "icns" format?

 

[Wowfunhappy]

One way is using Preview. In the "Save As..." dialog, hold down the option key while expanding the format dropdown to see extra options, such as icns.

You can also pull them out of official app bundles, which is better because they contain different sizes. For example, here are the ones from Chromium 36 (so they are less flat, and of course don't use the Big Sur-style white background.)

 

[MacBiter]

Damn! It's not my day...

I tried the Preview option and selected ICNS but it just gave an error "<File> could not be saved as <file.icns>". So I Googled and discovered there is a createicns command, which I entered in Terminal, and just got "... command not found".

 

[Wowfunhappy]

If Preview isn't working something is weird, that's a bit beyond the scope of what I can help with.

There are various online converters you can use. Search "convert to icns" or something along those lines in your preferred search engine. Or use the icons I attached in my last post. Or pull some out of a Chromium app bundle yourself. Lots of options.

 

[MacBiter]

All good - thanks! 👍.

 

[otetzone]

The latest version of my Preference Pane includes the aforementioned kext. Let me know if you run into any issues.

Just panicked. Here's the log -

7/16/22 8:02:56.000 PM kernel[0]: KQueueScanContinuePatch: Pre-Patch: Bytes at kqueue_scan_continue panic location: 48 8d 3d bb f3 19 00 48 8d 35 11 f4 19 00 44 89 fa 30 c0 e8 bc b5 c5 ff 45 31 e4 49 8b b5 80 00 00 00 4c 89 f7 44 89 e2
7/16/22 8:02:56.000 PM kernel[0]: KQueueScanContinuePatch: Post-Patch: Bytes at kqueue_scan_continue panic location: 41 bc 09 00 00 00 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 49 8b b5 80 00 00 00 4c 89 f7 44 89 e2

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Just panicked. Here's the log -

7/16/22 8:02:56.000 PM kernel[0]: KQueueScanContinuePatch: Pre-Patch: Bytes at kqueue_scan_continue panic location: 48 8d 3d bb f3 19 00 48 8d 35 11 f4 19 00 44 89 fa 30 c0 e8 bc b5 c5 ff 45 31 e4 49 8b b5 80 00 00 00 4c 89 f7 44 89 e2
7/16/22 8:02:56.000 PM kernel[0]: KQueueScanContinuePatch: Post-Patch: Bytes at kqueue_scan_continue panic location: 41 bc 09 00 00 00 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 49 8b b5 80 00 00 00 4c 89 f7 44 89 e2

Oh no! When you say it panicked—did you get a panic at 8:02 am, right after the KQueueScanContinuePatch.kext loaded, or did you get the normal kernel panic while using Chromium Legacy?

In both cases, I'd love to see the panic backtrace. Also, can you check to make sure there aren't any other lines in console from KQueueScanContinuePatch? There should be more.

 

[otetzone]

It just froze to the point that I had to restart by pushing the Power button. And it happened at 8:02 pm. I figure it was a normal panic while using Chromium Legacy only I wasn't using it at the moment. I kept it open and had been doing something different and then suddenly it all froze. After restart I dived into console and found those lines. How can I provide you with the panic backtrace? After having searched Console for KQueueScanContinuePatch I got the following:

Spoiler

7/16/22 8:02:56.698 PM com.apple.kextd[12]: WARNING - Invalid signature -67062 0xFFFFFFFFFFFEFA0A for kext "/tmp/KQueueScanContinuePatch.kext"
7/16/22 8:02:56.000 PM kernel[0]: KQueueScanContinuePatch START
7/16/22 8:02:56.000 PM kernel[0]: KQueueScanContinuePatch: found kernel mach-o header address at ffffff8010000000
7/16/22 8:02:56.000 PM kernel[0]: KQueueScanContinuePatch: Pre-Patch: Bytes at kqueue_scan_continue panic location: 48 8d 3d bb f3 19 00 48 8d 35 11 f4 19 00 44 89 fa 30 c0 e8 bc b5 c5 ff 45 31 e4 49 8b b5 80 00 00 00 4c 89 f7 44 89 e2
7/16/22 8:02:56.000 PM kernel[0]: KQueueScanContinuePatch: Disabled interrupts
7/16/22 8:02:56.000 PM kernel[0]: KQueueScanContinuePatch: Disabled write protection
7/16/22 8:02:56.000 PM kernel[0]: KQueueScanContinuePatch: Memory rewritten
7/16/22 8:02:56.000 PM kernel[0]: KQueueScanContinuePatch: Re-enabled write protection
7/16/22 8:02:56.000 PM kernel[0]: KQueueScanContinuePatch: Re-enabled interrupts
7/16/22 8:02:56.000 PM kernel[0]: KQueueScanContinuePatch: Post-Patch: Bytes at kqueue_scan_continue panic location: 41 bc 09 00 00 00 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 49 8b b5 80 00 00 00 4c 89 f7 44 89 e2

There are also some lines that refer to 5:25 pm -

Spoiler

7/16/22 5:25:54.425 PM com.apple.kextd[12]: WARNING - Invalid signature -67062 0xFFFFFFFFFFFEFA0A for kext "/tmp/KQueueScanContinuePatch.kext"
7/16/22 5:25:54.000 PM kernel[0]: KQueueScanContinuePatch START
7/16/22 5:25:54.000 PM kernel[0]: KQueueScanContinuePatch: found kernel mach-o header address at ffffff8001200000
7/16/22 5:25:54.000 PM kernel[0]: KQueueScanContinuePatch: Pre-Patch: Bytes at kqueue_scan_continue panic location: 48 8d 3d bb f3 19 00 48 8d 35 11 f4 19 00 44 89 fa 30 c0 e8 bc b5 c5 ff 45 31 e4 49 8b b5 80 00 00 00 4c 89 f7 44 89 e2
7/16/22 5:25:54.000 PM kernel[0]: KQueueScanContinuePatch: Disabled interrupts
7/16/22 5:25:54.000 PM kernel[0]: KQueueScanContinuePatch: Disabled write protection
7/16/22 5:25:54.000 PM kernel[0]: KQueueScanContinuePatch: Memory rewritten
7/16/22 5:25:54.000 PM kernel[0]: KQueueScanContinuePatch: Re-enabled write protection
7/16/22 5:25:54.000 PM kernel[0]: KQueueScanContinuePatch: Re-enabled interrupts
7/16/22 5:25:54.000 PM kernel[0]: KQueueScanContinuePatch: Post-Patch: Bytes at kqueue_scan_continue panic location: 41 bc 09 00 00 00 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 49 8b b5 80 00 00 00 4c 89 f7 44 89 e2

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Thank you! So if it happened at 8:02, it's my kernel extension that's causing the panic—although it happened after the patch was successful. Sorry about that!

I assume you restarted at some point between 5:25 and 8:02, which is why the kext loaded again? That's also interesting—so the kext worked successfully the first time around, but triggered a panic the second time.

I pinged f54da on Github because I'm a bit confused as to what could cause this. You can of course delete /Extensions/KQueueScanContinuePatch.kext in the meantime if it continues causing problems.

 

[otetzone]

You can of course delete /Extensions/KQueueScanContinuePatch.kext in the meantime if it continues causing problems.

I had the exact same panics before installing this kext so there's actually nothing has changed since. Thanks!

 

[Wowfunhappy]

...oh. So then KQueueScanContinuePatch probably isn't the cause of the panic.