Catalina reboot to allow extensions

[ifbell]

Well thanks apple for making Mac management so much easier once again. It seems we gained a new feature in the latest release.

what I am referring to is the

Installing third party kernel extensions now requires that you restart your Mac before they’re permitted to load.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos_release_notes/macos_catalina_10_15_beta_10_release_notes

[sshort]

Yep, I've encountered this during my Catalina beta testing. Dropbox was a bit annoying because the app doesn't autolaunch following installation, so I had to add a postinstall script to have it open in order to receive that message. Sophos/other apps need a reboot to enable their kernel extensions as well, but Dropbox was left out of the mix because the app doesn't typically launch itself.

Before: Policy installs Dropbox, then later after other policies are run the Mac reboots. User opens Dropbox to sign in for the first time, then gets the message to reboot to allow the kernel extension.

Now: Policy installs Dropbox and then opens the app, message appears that kernel extension needs reboot. After other policies are run the Mac reboots. User is now able to sign into Dropbox without an additional reboot.

[gabester]

A key question - if you're building a new Mac to organization spec, do you need separate reboots for each extension or will one reboot cover all the ones that are installed (unless there is a dependency where Ext Z needs Ext Y to be loaded first...)

[sshort]

@Sterritt I'm still testing the official Catalina release, but so far through the betas and GM you could handle everything with a single reboot if the app is open/launched prior to the reboot. So in my example above, Dropbox was installed prior to a reboot, but because the app didn't launch automatically post-install the user would get a separate request to reboot.

[ifbell]

Looks like they removed this in the current release.