How to fix SyncMate kernel panic at El Capitan boot

I've recently installed El Capitan. The other day I restarted my computer for the first time for a while, and now it doesn't boot. I restarted in verbose mode and can see that there's a kernel panic relating to com.eltima.SyncMate.kext. It seemed like that was probably an incompatible extension, so I took a copy of the kext and then deleted EltimaAsync.kext from /System/Library/Extensions.

Sadly, when I rebooted, the problem persisted with the same kernel panic. I've searched high and low for other references to "eltima" anywhere on the drive, but I haven't found anything that looks relevant. I'm wondering if perhaps the kext has been pre-compiled in somewhere. I don't know if it's relevant, but the drive in question is encrypted with FileVault.

Is there something I can do to properly disable this kext so I can get the computer to boot? If possible I'd really like to avoid having to start from a clean install, even though I do have a good backup.

Thanks in advance for any help!

hollandlef

Posted 2015-10-15T10:39:20.340

Reputation: 111

Try http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/114446/how-can-i-clear-the-kernel-extension-caches-while-using-filevault-2 or even perhaps http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/154872/panic-on-boot-need-to-use-single-user-mode-was-need-to-rebuild-kext-cache (which seems a bit of a long-shot)

– Tetsujin – 2015-10-16T12:53:07.343

Answers

So, for anyone who is in a similar position to me, the critical step that I was missing after getting rid of the offending .kext, was removing the various caches that were resulting in it still getting loaded during the FileVault startup process.

Removing /var/vm/sleep* and /var/folders/* from the FileVault volume caused all the caches to be rebuilt and the system booted correctly.

hollandlef

Posted 2015-10-15T10:39:20.340

Reputation: 111

Had the same problem, turned out its a quite common issue. That's what I found on SyncMate developer's website:

If your Mac doesn’t boot, please follow these instructions:

Start your Mac from Recovery.

Run Terminal.app

Execute command (this command is a default one, if you have other OS partition, please type in your system disk title instead of “HD”): cd /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/System/Library/Extensions

Execute command: ls -la | grep EltimaAsync.kext

If nothing appeared after this command, then the problem is not caused by SyncMate 4, else execute: rm -rf ./EltimaAsync.kext

Next execute: kextcache -update-volume /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/

Reload your Mac.

It worked for me, pity they didn't warn users prior.

Alina Uvarova

Posted 2015-10-15T10:39:20.340

Reputation: 1