Is there an option to create a macOS filter driver for the IONVMeFamily Driver that would enable sending NVMe Admin commands( likes security send , security receive, Firmware download)? This approach would allow us to reuse the IO path provided by the family driver.

We have developed a library and a DriverKit driver on Mac platform. And we need to disable SIP to install dext and later point of time if we enable SIP then the dext is non functional. So is it mandatory to disable the SIP for whole life time of dext? Also it is not recommended to disable the SIP for a long time, as it may create a security hole. Standard ways are given on Apple support page that how to notarise an application to distribute over the internet. Here one mandatory account is required that is Apple Developer account which is a paid account we believe. Standing at this point can you share the complete steps of software distribution process which will include code signing, notarisation process and stapling.

We have been doing a R&D work related to the NVMe controller on Mac platform, where we need to get control of the admin queues(submission as well as completion). From the spec of NVMe it’s very clear that what are all registers do we need to deal with to get access of the queues. We are accordingly following those registers to create our own queues. Also we have prepared and enqueued a sample admin command to the newly created submission queue. But surprisingly we can’t get any assurance whether the command got processed by the controller or not, because from the completion queue entry we can see all the entries are zero, which is not expected anyway. So here the question is, how to communicate with the controller properly ? We are also aware of the fact of existing NVMe driver(IONVMeFamily) on Mac platform, is this somehow crossing our way ? We have done all the proper setup for registers, DMAs and interrupt. Path is very ok if we use builtin driver with the XNVME user space application (we can trigger limited admin commands over there). But here we need to have our own created queues up and running with seamless admin command transaction. Here we must tell about our setup, we have one SSD which is connected via a thunderbolt cable to Mac laptop using type C usb port. We have tried to access pre-configured admin queues from IONVMeFamily driver but that is also a blocker for us, as we can’t see any valid data from submission/completion queues. Request you to all please help us coming out of this trapped zone.

Few user space applications are available in market for example xnvme, but does not have any interaction with Admin Submission/Completion queues. Also IOCTLs are not very prominent . Is there any ways to get access to the native NVMe Mac driver source code? Thanks, hopefully we will get some positive response here.