Via its latest security update to its Mac lineup, Apple has unexpectly ended up bricking their Ethernet ports. This update was apparently issued this Friday, and has affected ports of the iMac, MacBook Pro as well as Mac mini machines.
The Cupertino company has been quick to acknowledge the issue and release a fix for it. If you can connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi, the new software will be downloaded automatically. However, if you’re not patient enough and wish to do the same manually, you can follow the steps right below.
In System Information under the Software section, you will need to find out the version number of the Mac’s Incompatible Kernel Extension Configuration Data software. Here if the most recent version happens to be 3.28.1 you will be needed to open the Terminal app, type the command sudo softwareupdate –background and restart your Mac.
As for those who cannot connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi, the process for solving this problem is a bit longer. They will be required to start their Mac in Recovery mode, select Disk Utility from OS X Utilities and choose the main drive from list of internal drives on their computers.
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They can then go on to launch the Terminal app and enter the command rm -rf "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/System/Library/Extensions/AppleKextExcludeList.kext" in order to delete the current kernel extension file. It must however be noted that a drive’s name can be different for different people. Once that’s done, a restart will solve the problem.
For those unable to follow these instructions, there’s always the option of reinstalling the OS on their Macs by entering Recovery Mode.