[bug] error during installation: packaged safe R1 AOT kernels are unavailable

[raffaz00]

Component

not sure

What happened?

It looks like I can't install Darkbloom on a Mac Studio M1 Ultra.
I get this:

Error: packaged safe R1 AOT kernels are unavailable
  ✗ Packaged paged-kernel runtime smoke failed.
  Existing installation was left unchanged.

any solution?

Expected behavior

the install should work

Steps to reproduce

install Darkbloom with:
curl -fsSL https://api.darkbloom.dev/install.sh | bash

Environment

M1 Ultra Mac Studio
Sonoma 14.8.9

Logs

Confirmations

• I searched existing issues and this isn't a duplicate

[AdrienLF]

Confirming this on a second machine — M2 Max, 32GB, macOS 14.6.1, fresh install (no prior Darkbloom on the box), v0.8.11:

→ [2/5] Downloading Darkbloom v0.8.11...
  Bundle hash verified ✓
  Staging and verifying the complete app before touching the live install ...
Error: packaged safe R1 AOT kernels are unavailable
  ✗ Packaged paged-kernel runtime smoke failed.
  Existing installation was left unchanged.

Byte-identical to the report above, so it isn't specific to M1 Ultra.

This looks like the failure diagnosed in #661: since #607 (v0.8.2) the shipped mlx.metallib is built with MLX_METALLIB_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=26.2, and a metallib linked for 26.2 is rejected outright by older Metal runtimes — so load_default_library throws, the diagnostics snapshot swallows it and returns all zeros, and PackagedRuntimeSmoke surfaces it as a kernel/latch error rather than "this OS is below the floor." Both reporters here are on macOS 14.x, which fits. #674 looks like the same root cause with the older wording.

Two things that may be useful for anyone landing here from a search:

• Rolling back doesn't work. The installer has no version pin — it always reads /v1/releases/latest, and ?version= is ignored (still returns 0.8.11). /v1/releases/<version> and /v1/releases are 404. Only COORD_URL is overridable.
• Pre-0.8.2 builds fail too, for a different reason — @wronkiew's 0.8.1 result in fix(release): restore installs below macOS 26.2 with a baseline metallib, and stop misreporting the failure #661 is Function rbitsc is using language version 4.0 which is incompatible with this OS. So there's no release that both predates the metallib change and runs on Sonoma.

#661 is still marked draft. Is there anything blocking it, or a rough ETA for a release carrying the baseline metallib? Happy to test a build on 14.6.1 if that helps.

[raffaz00]

I'm trying another install on a Mac Mini M4 24GB, I get a similar error:

Error: safe R1 was not latched as requested
  ✗ Packaged paged-kernel runtime smoke failed.
  Existing installation was left unchanged.

[minimalic]

Yeah same here on macOS 15. Seems to work only on macOS 26 -.-

[granludo]

same bug with v0.8.13... ...

got:
╔══════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║ Darkbloom — Private AI on Verified Macs ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════════╝

Apple M3 Max · 48GB · macOS 15.7.5

→ [1/5] Fetching latest release from https://api.darkbloom.dev ...
Version: 0.8.13
Backend: mlx-swift
Signed by: Developer ID Application: Eigen Labs, Inc.

→ [2/5] Downloading Darkbloom v0.8.13...
######################################################################## 100.0%
Bundle hash verified ✓
Staging and verifying the complete app before touching the live install ...
Error: safe R1 was not latched as requested
✗ Packaged paged-kernel runtime smoke failed.

[raffaz00]

...Aaand the same error again, on an M2 Max macbook pro running Sequoia 15.7.5

Dear developers, why do you advertise that macOS 14 is enough, when clearly it isn't since macOS 15 has errors?
I guess we're wasting precious time...

[GumbiiDigital]

v0.8.13 still has confirmed safe R1 was not latched and packaged AOT-kernel failures on macOS 15.7.5, even though the release lists macOS 14 as its minimum.

The tracking issue is GitHub #725 and remains open. Reinstalling the same release repeatedly is not a demonstrated fix.

Please add your exact Mac model, macOS version, Darkbloom version, and complete installer error to that issue so the affected packaging and runtime combinations are documented.

[DB20162019]

I have the same issue on M1 Max (64GB) for macOS 14.8.9 with Darkboom version v0.8.11, v0.8.12 and v0.8.13

[raffaz00]

Please add your exact Mac model, macOS version, Darkbloom version, and complete installer error to that issue so the affected packaging and runtime combinations are documented.

`╔══════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║ Darkbloom — Private AI on Verified Macs ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════════╝

Apple M2 Max · 64GB · macOS 15.7.5

→ [1/5] Fetching latest release from https://api.darkbloom.dev ...
Version: 0.8.13
Backend: mlx-swift
Signed by: Developer ID Application: Eigen Labs, Inc.

→ [2/5] Downloading Darkbloom v0.8.13...
######################################################################## 100.0%
Bundle hash verified ✓
Staging and verifying the complete app before touching the live install ...
Error: safe R1 was not latched as requested
✗ Packaged paged-kernel runtime smoke failed.
Existing installation was left unchanged.`

[raffaz00]

Apple M1 Ultra · 64GB · macOS 14.8.9

→ [1/5] Fetching latest release from https://api.darkbloom.dev ...
Version: 0.8.13
Backend: mlx-swift
Signed by: Developer ID Application: Eigen Labs, Inc.

→ [2/5] Downloading Darkbloom v0.8.13...
######################################################################## 100.0%
Bundle hash verified ✓
Staging and verifying the complete app before touching the live install ...
Error: packaged safe R1 AOT kernels are unavailable
✗ Packaged paged-kernel runtime smoke failed.
Existing installation was left unchanged.

[raffaz00]

same on 0.8.14

Apple M1 Ultra · 64GB · macOS 14.8.9

→ [1/5] Fetching latest release from https://api.darkbloom.dev ...
Version: 0.8.14
Backend: mlx-swift
Signed by: Developer ID Application: Eigen Labs, Inc.

→ [2/5] Downloading Darkbloom v0.8.14...
######################################################################## 100.0%
Bundle hash verified ✓
Staging and verifying the complete app before touching the live install ...
Error: packaged safe R1 AOT kernels are unavailable
✗ Packaged paged-kernel runtime smoke failed.
Existing installation was left unchanged.

[michaelahlers]

The public attestation feed settles this empirically. Of the providers online right now, every one that reports an OS is on macOS 26 or later:

$ curl -s https://api.darkbloom.dev/v1/providers/attestation \
  | jq -r '.providers[] | select(.status=="online" or .status=="serving") | .mda_os_version' \
  | cut -d. -f1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn

 978 26
 125 27
 121 null

The 121 nulls are self_signed providers with no MDA data. Nothing below macOS 26 is running.

That matches every report in this thread. Failures here span macOS 14.6.1, 14.8.9, 15.6, 15.7.5 and 15.8, on M1 Max, M1 Ultra, M2 Max, M3 Max, M4 and M4 Pro, from 16 GB to 64 GB. The common factor is the OS version, not the silicon or the memory tier.

The documented minimum is macOS 14. If the paged-kernel path in fact requires Tahoe, correcting the stated requirement would save people a lot of wasted setup time, and doctor already hints at it by warning that macOS 15 is below the recommended macOS 26 posture.

Mine: Mac mini M4 Pro, 64 GB, macOS 15.8. Fails identically on 0.8.12, 0.8.13 and 0.8.14.