Problems Using Edirol Um-1sx, Driver fails to load Options

Hello,

For the first time ever I am trying to hook up a MIDI device (in this case an Alesis QS8.1) to my Power Mac G5. I purchased an Edirol UM-1SX interface and followed the instructions precisely on how to install the driver (not that there's much to follow...it's a simple pkg installer).

Unfortunately, the moment I try to plug my MIDI interface into the USB port (after rebooting of course) I get an error dialog from the OS:

"System extension cannot be used.
The system extension "/System/Library/Extensions/RDUSB0009Dev.kext" was installed improperly and cannot be used. Please try reinstalling it, or contact the product's vendor for an update."

Well then. Lovely. The driver is the latest download from Edirol's website (v1.1.1). I submitted a tech support question to Edirol and they just told me to re-install the driver, which I've done countless times now following their instructions explicity. I always get the dialog and the system does not recognize the MIDI input.

Has anyone seen this problem and know how to resolve it? Is anyone out there successfully using the UM-1SX under Mac OS X Panther (10.3.3)?

Thanks,
Scott

After some experimentation I discovered why the Edirol UM-1SX was not being properly loaded by the USB Manager so I thought I'd share in case someone else has this problem.

I was almost ready to go out and find a different MIDI interface, but after discovering a few things I don't have to. First off, since I knew the the driver wasn't being loaded (the OS told me so!) I decided to check the System Profiler ("About this Mac" then "More Info") to see what extensions were loaded. It listed my suspect driver as not being loaded due to "owner/permissions" problems. Aha! For some reason, the installer didn't assign the proper owner and permissions to the installed files.

Here's what I had to do (using the Terminal application):

••• WARNING...these steps involve changing file owner and permissions settings and require admin capabilities...if you are not comfortable with this or do not understand file permissions and owners, do not proceed. •••

1. cd to the /System/Library/Extensions folder.
2. if you issue 'ls -al' you'll get a complete listing of files, including owner/permissions info.
3. I noticed that my RDUSB0009Dev.kext driver (for the Edirol device) had different permissions so I compared them to another driver and made them the same. Mostly it was changing so that group and everyone were NOT writable, e.g. "sudo chmod 755 RDUSB0009Dev.kext" (entering password as needed). This was also true of files inside the RDUSB0009Dev.kext directory, so CD in there an make similar changes.
4. Permissions correction was not enough, however, the System still complained and refused to load the driver. This was because the file owner was my account rather than root. So check the RDUSB0009Dev.kext owner and the owner of any nested files and folders and make sure they are root. If not, issue "sudo chowner root <filename here>".
5. Reboot and then connect the MIDI interface. At this point, I checked in System Profiler again and saw that the MIDI interface was correctly detected and its driver loaded successfully.

Now if I could only get GarageBand to recognize the fact! It "sees" 1 MIDI interface but I cannot seem to select or use it. /sigh

Regards,
Scott