Before the end of March, Apple released macOS Catalina 10.15.4 to the public. And while the update process appears to have gone well enough, some users are now experiencing random system crashes.
Some macOS Catalina users running the latest software are experiencing some frustrating issues, as reported today by MacRumors based on information shared by SoftRAID. According to the forum post, the issue is typically tied to users who are trying to make large file transfers. According to SoftRAID the issue is a bug in the software, and they are working with Apple to release a workaround, or a fix that will be released in the upcoming macOS Catalina 10.15.5 — which Apple is currently beta testing.
Apple-formatted disks are mixed up in the problem, too:
There is a serious issue with 10.15.4.
It shows up in different scenarios, even on Apple disks but is more likely when there are lots of IO threads. We think it is a threading issue. So while SoftRAID volumes are hit the hardest (its now hard to copy more than 30GB of data at a time), all systems are impacted by this.
In our bug report to Apple, we used a method to reproduce the problem with ONLY Apple formatted disks. Takes longer to reproduce, but that is more likely to get a faster fix to the user base.
It’s not an issue just for the users who are trying to transfer large files, though. Some folks running macOS Catalina 10.15.4 who have run into the problem have also experienced it when waking their Mac from sleep, which results in a kernel panic and forcing the machine to restart. There is a new post on Apple’s Support Communities forum, as well as on Reddit and other social networking sites as well.
Have you experienced this issue at all? Let us know in the comments below if you have.