Mac Mini 2018 Kernel panic bug_type 210 after Security Update 2020-002

[Ray2]

These days I clone my system partition to an external drive and verify that I can boot from it, BEFORE I install ANY of Apple’s system/security updates. Yes this extra step it’s a pain. But nowhere near as painful as dealing with Apple’s recent buggy updates.

GetRealBro

That’s of no use on this one. The firmware was updated and rolling back isn’t going to change that. I take the same approach. Had to restore with a clone after the March security update. Got my display and ports working again but every day I still get BridgeOS crashes. It’s useable.
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Hello -- I have the same problem as I wrote, but yesterday from the Apple Discussions group someone sent this suggestion, which has worked for me to keep my Mac from crashing / restarting / shutting-down 2-6 times per day-- this suggestion prevents the Mac from going to sleep and it seems to be that it is in the sleep mode when it crashes or restarts:

He wrote: I have not had the issue with my machine randomly restarting but that may be because I do not allow it to go to sleep on it's own. I have heard the restart issue is related to sleep mode. There is a way to turn that off, which I have done. Maybe you can try this setting on the Energy Saver control panel to see if it fixes it for you.

See the attached screenshot. It shows just the very first box being 'ticked' - to prevent the Mac from sleeping when the display goes off. View attachment 904909

Hope this helps and again, this is not a "cure" -- it just lets us use our Macs until Apple comes-out with an update to the Apple Security UpDate 2020-002 which is causing these issues.

Best regards,

Steve Schulte
Friday 10 April 2020

My mini never shuts down or sleeps, its our media server. Still crashes at least once a day after the March security update.

 

[Ray2]

Has anyone actually spoken to Apple? I have.

All the stupidupereinstalOS can’t help because none of it touches the T2 firmware, controlled by Bridge OS.

At the moment, Apple doesn’t have a solution though they’re working on it. We’re iscussing replacing my iMac Pro under AppleCare which I do not want. Upgrading to Catalina won’t fix this yet but there’s a fix in the works for Catalina 15.5.

I like Catalina but one of the apps I use to make a living has yet to be updated So I have it on a test machine only.

I’m holding them to the fact that they own this issue till Oct. 2021 till AppleCare runs out.

I never let my Mac sleep so it only bothers me when I have to reboot. Unfortunately, my USB 3 ports collapse on occasion and a reboot is the only thing that brings them back. Thunderbolt is unaffected. My reboot time is now 7 minutes and a number of Apple engineers have sat on the phone with me timing it And observing the crash report that, oddly enough, says that my Mac shut down with a problem and bla, bla, bla...

As I went through my normal diagnostics, I tried a Safe Boot — holding down the Shift key, it always booted normally. Finally, I went into the Repair Partition and disabled the T2 security in the utility. Then it would go into Safe Mode And I could clear the NV RAM. The USB ports haven’t collapsed since.

Apple has promised a follow up by Friday. We’ll see what happens.

Thanks for that. Need to think over a few things. I also had a talk with one of Apple's tech guys. Very helpful but his advice is to live with it until the stores reopen, then take it to the store and let them deal with it. As of last week they will not attempt to repair this issue over the phone/net. They want (or need, don’t know) a properly configured host machine to attempt any repair. That makes sense as the now not recommended MBP T2 chip repair required another Mac and specialized software.

 

[wywh]

These days I clone my system partition to an external drive and verify that I can boot from it, BEFORE I install ANY of Apple’s system/security updates.

Ditto (although I don't always verify booting). In some rare extreme cases the (usually unadvertised and unexpected!) firmware update might fail and brick the Mac. Then the BridgeOS can be revived with no data loss. But sometimes the BridgeOS might have to be restored which also erases OS & User data. I don't want to lose any data doing that. Better safe than sorry.

How to Restore BridgeOS on a T2 Mac + Boot a Mac to DFU Mode

macOS Update brick your Mac? This article will show you how boot to DFU Mode and restore BridgeOS on a T2 MacBook Pro, Air, iMac Pro, Mac Mini & Mac Pro!

mrmacintosh.com

 

[wayne_rowley]

Thanks for that. Need to think over a few things. I also had a talk with one of Apple's tech guys. Very helpful but his advice is to live with it until the stores reopen, then take it to the store and let them deal with it. As of last week they will not attempt to repair this issue over the phone/net. They want (or need, don’t know) a properly configured host machine to attempt any repair. That makes sense as the now not recommended MBP T2 chip repair required another Mac and specialized software.

I don’t like the sound of that. This error with my Mini was caused by an Apple software update. Apple need to fix this, ideally with another update, as they did the T2 audio issues last year. I’m not paying Apple to fix an error they caused. My Mac is out of warranty and if I take this to an Apple store(when they reopen) they will likely charge for any work they do. Not acceptable.

i don’t like they way Apple are going with this whole T2 / Bridge OS nonsense. Frankly this might be the last straw for me and Apple computers. It wouldn’t be so bad if you could trust their updates but you can’t anymore, and their eyes are clearly on iOS and Services. Macs and their quality are well down the list it seems.

Very frustrating and disappointing.

Wayne

 

[getrealbro]

These days I clone my system partition to an external drive and verify that I can boot from it, BEFORE I install ANY of Apple’s system/security updates. Yes this extra step it’s a pain. But nowhere near as painful as dealing with Apple’s recent buggy updates.

That’s of no use on this one. The firmware was updated and rolling back isn’t going to change that. I take the same approach. Had to restore with a clone after the March security update. Got my display and ports working again but every day I still get BridgeOS crashes. It’s useable.

FWIW I view cloning the system partition as "necessary" for all three of our macs but maybe not "sufficient" on our one Mac with a T2. For my 2018 Mini I add another step -- wait awhile. Most Apple "security" and OS updates are not critical on our Macs. So waiting a week or so is probably not as risky as applying Apple's updates. IOW I'd rather have our macs stable, but potentially vulnerable, than have them "safe" but unstable or turned into bricks.

GetRealBro

 

[howdytom]

@wywh Thank you for your comment. I have updated my original post. As a workaround I have switched to Firefox. Also make sure to set the default browser to Firefox, Chrome, Brave... which prevents opening Safari by accident.

I can confirm, the shutdown message no longer shows upon a cold boot. As soon as you open Safari the shutdown message keeps appearing.

 

[wayne_rowley]

@wywh Thank you for your comment. I have updated my original post. As a workaround I have switched to Firefox. Also make sure to set the default browser to Firefox, Chrome, Brave... which prevents opening Safari by accident.

I can confirm, the shutdown message no longer shows upon a cold boot. As soon as you open Safari the shutdown message keeps appearing.

Sadly that same has not worked for me. Downloaded and installed Chrome and set it as default browser. Still getting the same error on cold boot.

:-(

Wayne

 

[Ray2]

FWIW I view cloning the system partition as "necessary" for all three of our macs but maybe not "sufficient" on our one Mac with a T2. For my 2018 Mini I add another step -- wait awhile. Most Apple "security" and OS updates are not critical on our Macs. So waiting a week or so is probably not as risky as applying Apple's updates. IOW I'd rather have our macs stable, but potentially vulnerable, than have them "safe" but unstable or turned into bricks.

GetRealBro

That’s a very good point. I do that with versions. I will now extend that to ”dot” updates. For more than a week.

 

[Hessel89]

Update: Yesterday I did the DFU mode restore, but all it did was reinstall the latest firmware (on presumably the T2 chip). It seems there is no (safe) way to downgrade the T2 firmware to the factory pre-installed version. The issue is still consistently replicable by putting the mini to sleep and the error message still tells me the current build is ''BridgeOS 4.4 (17P4281)''

Reinstalling your OS completely and not updating to the ''dot'' updates does not solve the problem. Once your Mac Mini is on BridgeOS 4.4, you cannot go back.

There may be one final (VERY RISKY) option, which would be to DFU restore using an older ISPW file for the firmware, assuming you can even get a hold of that file but I would not recommend this at all, if it even works.

 

[wayne_rowley]

Update: Yesterday I did the DFU mode restore, but all it did was reinstall the latest firmware (on presumably the T2 chip). It seems there is no (safe) way to downgrade the T2 firmware to the factory pre-installed version. The issue is still consistently replicable by putting the mini to sleep and the error message still tells me the current build is ''BridgeOS 4.4 (17P4281)''

Interesting. After installing 2020-002 on my Mac mini, my T2 firmware version is 17P4263.

Not the same as yours!

I'm almost tempted at this point to upgrade to Catalina to see if that helps. My software should be compatible, and it might upgrade the firmware again.

Wayne

 

[shambo79]

Hello, here is my story and very confused. I got the i5 2018 model off the refurb store 1 month ago, it shipped with Catalina. It was having the same issues so I restored from a time machine to Mojave. Those issues persisted, I thought screw this and returned to Apple. I really wanted a mini as I recently got the UA Arrow audio interface so I decided to go for the new 2018 (20) i7 3.2 with the 512SSD. Arrived on the 15th April, shipped with Catalina. I downgraded and installed Mojave from scratch 10.14.6 - then applied the security update last week - I had no idea about any of these issues. It went mental, restarted, KPs etc. I thought screw this and rang Apple Support this morning as I have until Wednesday of next week to return (which I do not want to do) Got this guy who told me this isn't good but advised me to install Catalina from the web alt+cmd+R - he said I have been unlucky and his iMac with 10.15.4 which is connected to UA Apollo is great. He then told me to take with a piece of salt all these problems on the internet as everything is fine. To my surprise no problem with Catalina on 10.15.4 - firmware is 17P4281 - I bit my lip and thought you plank, ok I will give you a chance. I'm still not convinced with Catalina, however no issues at all to my surprise. I asked him if I bought a pre T2 machine would this help as the whole T2 party is just crazy, he declined to answer. Been using Mac 22 years, spent a lot of dough and I ready to just keep m old Mac Pro and live in the past. The Mini is a great little machine, i7 with 32gb is a dream but a poor os will cripple it. Very annoyed but have a few days to decide. Rant over.

 

[newellj]

Update: Yesterday I did the DFU mode restore, but all it did was reinstall the latest firmware (on presumably the T2 chip). It seems there is no (safe) way to downgrade the T2 firmware to the factory pre-installed version. The issue is still consistently replicable by putting the mini to sleep and the error message still tells me the current build is ''BridgeOS 4.4 (17P4281)''

Reinstalling your OS completely and not updating to the ''dot'' updates does not solve the problem. Once your Mac Mini is on BridgeOS 4.4, you cannot go back.

There may be one final (VERY RISKY) option, which would be to DFU restore using an older ISPW file for the firmware, assuming you can even get a hold of that file but I would not recommend this at all, if it even works.

Interesting. After installing 2020-002 on my Mac mini, my T2 firmware version is 17P4263.

Not the same as yours!

I'm almost tempted at this point to upgrade to Catalina to see if that helps. My software should be compatible, and it might upgrade the firmware again.

Wayne

Ignorant question - where are you checking the T2 firmware version? I looked in System Report but couldn't find it; probably looking in the wrong places.

 

[getrealbro]

Ignorant question - where are you checking the T2 firmware version? I looked in System Report but couldn't find it; probably looking in the wrong places.

System Report > Hardware > Controller

 

[Hessel89]

--- Rant over.

This is an issue that only happens on Mojave. Catalina is fine. If your Mac mini does this on Catalina I'd say return it because that seems like a hardware issue.

 

[newellj]

Question: is there a way to hide the notification for Security Update 2020-002 to make it more difficult to unintentionally install it on a machine that's running Mojave?

Or, more likely, am I just going to have to be careful about individually selecting future updates, because clicking 'install all' is always going to be an option if there's more than one update, and there's no way to completely prevent the system from identifying 2020-002 when it checks for updates to Mojave?

And what do we make of the fact that problems with 2020-002 seem to be somewhat unusual, meaning that most (whatever that means - less than 50% of users, at any rate) don't experience problems after installing 2020-002?

 

[getrealbro]

...And what do we make of the fact that problems with 2020-002 seem to be somewhat unusual, meaning that most (whatever that means - less than 50% of users, at any rate) don't experience problems after installing 2020-002?

Your question might be better posed as… What % of Macs still running Mojave have T2 chips AND have installed Security Update 2020-002?

Although I haven’t installed Security Update 2020-002 on any of our three Macs. I suspect I would have no issues on the two Macs without T2 chips. IOW 2/3 of our Macs would probably not have any issues.

GetRealBro

 

[newellj]

Your question might be better posed as… What % of Macs still running Mojave have T2 chips AND have installed Security Update 2020-002?

Although I haven’t installed Security Update 2020-002 on any of our three Macs. I suspect I would have no issues on the two Macs without T2 chips. IOW 2/3 of our Macs would probably not have any issues.

GetRealBro

Yes, that's better. My late 2012 Mini has 2020-002 installed and has no problems...no surprise.

But the % of Macs still running Mojave must be significant, and a large % of those probably have 2020-002 installed. If every T2 chip was borked by this update it would be all over everywhere, right? It wouldn't be a few threads here, it would be an awful lot of the forum threads.

 

[wayne_rowley]

This is an issue that only happens on Mojave. Catalina is fine. If your Mac mini does this on Catalina I'd say return it because that seems like a hardware issue.

There was another post in this forum from a user who had upgraded their Mac to Catalina and it was bricked. They took it to an Apple store and they were told it was because they had upgraded the RAM themselves rather than via Apple, and the new software doesn‘t accept that.

I‘ve also upgraded the RAM in mine. I don’t know whether this chap from Apple was telling the truth, but it makes me reluctant to find out...

Wayne

 

[newellj]

There was another post in this forum from a user who had upgraded their Mac to Catalina and it was bricked. They took it to an Apple store and they were told it was because they had upgraded the RAM themselves rather than via Apple, and the new software doesn‘t accept that.

I‘ve also upgraded the RAM in mine. I don’t know whether this chap from Apple was telling the truth, but it makes me reluctant to find out...

Wayne

When upgrading, it's worth saving the original parts so that it can be returned to Apple in its original configuration. With that said, I had a HDD fail on my late 2012 less than a week before Apple Care expired. I had upgraded the RAM to 16GB and installed an SSD as disk 0 and moved the original HDD to disk 1. I sent the Mini in with the upgraded parts. Apple replaced the HDD with no questions about any of the upgrades - I think they could conceivably have dinged my warranty claim based on having replacing the primary HDD with an SSD and moving the HDD to the secondary disk position.

 

[Hessel89]

There was another post in this forum from a user who had upgraded their Mac to Catalina and it was bricked. They took it to an Apple store and they were told it was because they had upgraded the RAM themselves rather than via Apple, and the new software doesn‘t accept that.

I‘ve also upgraded the RAM in mine. I don’t know whether this chap from Apple was telling the truth, but it makes me reluctant to find out...

Wayne

This is very typical warranty avoiding behavior a lot of companies will try at first and this statement is simply not true. I have also upgrading my Mac mini to 32GB and swapping the memory to the original 8GB was one of the first things I tried when troubleshooting this problem. The issue still happens, so it's not in any way connected to the memory not being original.

 

[Hessel89]

update: I've turned of sleep completely but the kernel Panic now also happens when I only put the screen to sleep. Pretty furious to say the least!!

 

[Fishrrman]

newellj answered his own question by writing:
"Or, more likely, am I just going to have to be careful about individually selecting future updates, because clicking 'install all' is always going to be an option if there's more than one update, and there's no way to completely prevent the system from identifying 2020-002 when it checks for updates to Mojave?"

Turn off ALL "automatic updating" features.
Install multiple updates ONE AT A TIME.

 

[newellj]

newellj answered his own question by writing:
"Or, more likely, am I just going to have to be careful about individually selecting future updates, because clicking 'install all' is always going to be an option if there's more than one update, and there's no way to completely prevent the system from identifying 2020-002 when it checks for updates to Mojave?"

Turn off ALL "automatic updating" features.
Install multiple updates ONE AT A TIME.

Definitely, those have all been off on every device for years. I worry about the possibility of user error, though.

 

[mikehalloran]

I've been working with Apple a few weeks on this now. They've recommended removing a number of .kext libraries — none of which has resolved the issue other than I no longer get crash reports with those .kext files in them.

Boot time still 6–10 minutes.

The 4 that Apple wanted to blame were old versions of PACE (iLok), NIGuitar Rig, Soundflower and the current version of Avira antivirus. Removing the first three did not affect functionality as they were old and the current versions are stored somewhere else. I'm ok living without Avira for now.

FWIW I view cloning the system partition as "necessary"

Good for you but FIWN (frankly, it's worth nothing) as it has nothing to do with this issue.

Among things that have been tried are a complete wipe and clean install of the OS and the Apple apps. Problem still there.

So I restored from a TimeMachine backup that predated the security update—again no change.

I have yet another appointment day after tomorrow.

 

[mikehalloran]

This is an issue that only happens on Mojave. Catalina is fine. If your Mac mini does this on Catalina I'd say return it because that seems like a hardware issue.

You are wrong on this.

There are a number of users who experienced this with the 10.15.4 update.

Apple's working a patch for this in the next beta of 10.15.5. I was asked to test it but I still need to be on Mojave for now until two of the apps I use to make my living are Catalina ready.