[HN Gopher] macOS Sonoma Boot Failures
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macOS Sonoma Boot Failures
Author : ColoursofOSINT
Score : 277 points
Date : 2023-10-31 18:33 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| gcr wrote:
| TL;DR: Recent macOS Sonoma and 13.6 Ventura have upgrade bugs
| that brick some macs and make recoveryOS unusable, causing a
| black screen that requires a DFU revive.
|
| Issues on Sonoma appear most often on dual-booting macs:
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208891
|
| Ventura upgrades can also bite you if your display refresh rate
| is set to anything other than ProMotion, for unclear reasons.
|
| The doc is on the Asahi Linux wiki because their developers
| discovered this issue, but it's not unique to Asahi. In fact,
| _running the Asahi Linux installer_ can detect whether your mac
| will be affected by this issue, even if you ultimately choose not
| to install Asahi Linux. See the article for details.
| neilalexander wrote:
| Interestingly I ran into this exact problem with my work MacBook
| Pro M1 upgrading to Ventura 13.6 and assumed it was a totally
| isolated incident. I don't have a dual-boot setup either, just a
| single macOS install.
|
| The computer was connected to a Thunderbolt Display during the
| update which I assume had the same effect of changing the refresh
| rate to something other-than-ProMotion that the linked article
| mentions. I had to do a DFU restore from another Mac and then run
| the macOS Sonoma installer from USB, which thankfully detected
| the existing install and did an in-place upgrade, preserving all
| of my data. Nothing else worked.
|
| I also wasted far too much time trying to get the DFU restore to
| work before discovering that you cannot use a Thunderbolt cable
| -- it has to be done using a plain USB-C cable, otherwise the
| Apple Configurator simply won't detect the other Mac.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| > I also wasted far too much time trying to get the DFU restore
| to work before discovering that you cannot use a Thunderbolt
| cable -- it has to be done using a plain USB-C cable, otherwise
| the Apple Configurator simply won't detect the other Mac.
|
| I would have expected a Thunderbolt cable to be required, if
| either was. This is quite surprising to me. Usually, the more
| capable (higher bandwidth) cable works if one isn't supported.
| I'll hope to remember this is I ever find myself reviving a
| bricked Mac in the future.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I restored my Macbook just one hour ago with crappy USB-C
| USB-A cable, god bless the libimobiledevice creator.
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| I am currently restoring an MBP using Configurator and a
| thunderbolt cable. You definitely can use one, perhaps your
| TB cable is buggered ?
| brigade wrote:
| It's done over USB 2.0 largely because that's simpler than
| involving newer and faster specs, and partly because that's
| how the original iPhone did it.
|
| My understanding is that all complaint _USB_ USB-C cables
| should work for USB 2.0, even USB4 /TB4 cables, but active
| TB3 cables might not hook up the USB 2.0 pins.
| phillco wrote:
| I've used a Thunderbolt cable as well successfully, but one
| note is that they're very picky about which port you use. On
| my Mac mini, I had to use the exact port outlined here or it
| did not show up: https://support.apple.com/guide/apple-
| configurator-mac/reviv...
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Exact same thing happened to me.
| tpmx wrote:
| What kind of HW?
| tpmx wrote:
| This is depressing. They clearly have they ability ($$$) to do
| the required amount of manual QA, but don't. Or there was QA
| and someone decided that your case still wasn't enough to hold
| up the release.
|
| In my mind, when we pay that ridiculous Apple premium on RAM
| and storage, we pay for excellent quality in SW/HW. They also
| need to deliver that quality.
| mort96 wrote:
| Or they did QA but just happened to miss this issue. Most
| companies would consider "the upgrade sometimes bricks the
| device" to be a release-stopping bug, I'm betting Apple is
| among them.
| tpmx wrote:
| That would be: not delivering while still charging a
| premium.
| krackers wrote:
| Apple still hasn't put up any official page about the issue
| though, nor does it appear they've pulled the update. Even
| if it missed QA, why haven't they made any official
| comment?
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| You clearly don't know Apple as a company. Last most big
| companies, they never EVER publicly admit any faults or
| mistakes with their products (unless forced to by large
| scale fiascos) because that would damage their perfect
| brand image. It's why they have comments disabled on all
| their social media accounts.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _they never EVER publicly admit any faults or mistakes
| with their products_
|
| Of course they do. They're just secretive in general, and
| keep communications edited. Compared to the word salad of
| modern companies on social media, I find it refreshing.
| Just fix the problem, issue replacements for those
| affected and move on quietly.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Of course they do. _
|
| Where? Do you have any examples?
| codr7 wrote:
| Used to be, while Jobs was still around.
|
| These days it's just a bunch of wannabes trying too hard to
| be him.
| pb7 wrote:
| It's a bug...
| tpmx wrote:
| It's a _device bricking_ bug. For a $2.5-10k device.
| user9163 wrote:
| ya - I cant update my m1 macbook air without going into DFU
| mode and using configurator to "revive" my macbook. Otherwise
| it just tells me "Failed to personalize the software update".
| Made the mistake of going to the Apple Store where they
| promptly restored my machine deleting all my data - only to
| encounter the exact same issue when the next update is shipped.
| This way you cant even show them that their fix did not
| actually fixed it permanently.
| atregir wrote:
| Also what's with the magic trick of entering DFU mode by
| pressing the buttons at a very specific time for a very
| specific number of seconds? Felt like singing a song to some
| fictional Mac OS gods and hoping for the stars to align for the
| laptop to show up in the second Mac. Ah, also the port you use
| for the USB-C cable matters!! Has to be the first from the
| left? But why?
|
| Anw, I followed a video by Mr. Macintosh and managed to get
| mine up and running, whew.
| racl101 wrote:
| I am so terrified of this upgrade that I think I'll wait a whole
| year. That's not a good thing.
| hbn wrote:
| I pretty much always wait 6 months or so for Mac upgrades on
| whatever machine is important to me. There seems to pretty
| consistently be regular bugfix updates for the few months
| following a release.
| cramjabsyn wrote:
| Its realistically what you should be doing unless your machine
| is a test host itself.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Unless you aren't doing anything important on your Mac that's
| always good advice.
| rangestransform wrote:
| this happened to my work macbook while I was trying to upgrade
| to ventura, a 1 year old macos version
| shever73 wrote:
| That's probably wise. I wish I had waited. Since upgrading to
| Sonoma, I have recurring issues with the system file dialog.
| Sometimes the dialog will open, but not allow me to save, other
| times it will just fail to open altogether.
|
| Any time I start a new video project now, I save it instantly
| because Command+S still works, but if it opens the Save As
| dialog then it frequently won't.
| krackers wrote:
| See also his twitter for some speculation as to how on earth
| simply changing refresh rate would cause boot corruption:
| https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/111329614147717090
|
| >Why? I can tell you why: because Apple _hates_ display modeset
| flicker, and switching modes between ProMotion on /off causes a
| modeset flicker, so of _course_ they made it so that is stored in
| nvram somewhere and applied when the screen is turned on during
| early boot, so when macOS boots it doesn 't have to flicker
| again.
|
| >And they didn't test it with older OS bootloaders, so display
| handoff/init just fails catastrophically with those when this
| mode is enabled.
| NavinF wrote:
| Interesting. I wonder why anyone would turn ProMotion off
| considering that 120Hz massively improves responsiveness. I've
| only encountered one app that doesn't work with variable
| refresh rate and that's Genshin on Windows. Even that's
| probably not an issue with newer monitors that can handle VRR
| down to 60Hz without my monitor's frame-doubling flicker as it
| keeps switching been 60Hz and 120Hz
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > I wonder why anyone would turn ProMotion off considering
| that 120Hz massively improves responsiveness.
|
| The first reason that comes to mind is battery life. That's
| probably the most broadly applicable use case.
|
| But also, if I was still doing e.g. frontend web development,
| I would want to confirm that my css animations looked nice at
| 60 hz.
|
| Edit: My first use case is likely wrong, thank you to replies
| for reminding me Apple uses adaptive refresh down to 1 hz.
| vvillena wrote:
| Isn't battery life a reason to keep it on? The refresh rate
| will be down to 24hz most of the time.
| jwells89 wrote:
| macOS is very good at adaptively reducing refresh rate when
| nothing is happening on screen, with the panel reportedly
| supporting the full range of 1-120hz so barring badly
| engineered apps that are permanently pinned at max refresh,
| the battery impact of keeping ProMotion on is minimal for
| most use cases.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Oops, thank you, I completely forgot they were doing the
| adaptive refresh thing!
| londons_explore wrote:
| Which raises the question even more why the refresh rate
| matters during early bootup - surely you could just start
| with an apple logo and a 1 Hz refresh rate, and then up
| the rate later during boot when it's time to do some
| animation...
| beebeepka wrote:
| Why would 60 FPS CSS animations look bad on high refresh
| displays?
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Well the CSS transition wouldn't run at 60 fps, it would
| run at 120 fps, no?
|
| An animation that looks slick at 120 fps might look too
| fast/slow/complex/whatever on a common 60 hz screen. So
| if I was still doing this sort of development, I'd prefer
| to be working on a 60 hz monitor.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Aren't CSS animations capped at 60, same as
| requestAnimationFrame?
|
| I've been advocating (and using) high refresh displays
| for over two decades and I find your reasoning
| preposterous. Downgrading to crappy 60 Hz monitor for
| nothing.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > Aren't CSS animations capped at 60, same as
| requestAnimationFrame?
|
| Did some quick Googling to make sure I wasn't just out of
| the loop on this, as far as I can tell they are not the
| same: https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/5025
| beebeepka wrote:
| Can you point me to the part confirming your claim? If
| anything, it's confirming mine that they both are stuck
| at 60 Hz.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| The link says:
|
| > As such, on their 120hz devices, requestAnimationFrame
| is throttled to 60hz, whereas CSS animations run at
| 120hz.
|
| Please let me know if I am misunderstanding, it has been
| a few years since I've done this type of work.
| c-hendricks wrote:
| I'm not even sure CSS animations can go above 60fps, and
| am unsure why you'd think it would be faster / slower on
| a different refresh rate screen: CSS transitions are
| defined by time, not frames.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Sorry, I meant the animation might _look_ too fast,
| psychologically. The frame rate changes how we perceive
| movement.
| MagerValp wrote:
| To run x64sc at a buttery smooth 50 fps.
|
| Admittedly rather niche use case.
| zippergz wrote:
| I turn it off because I can't tell the difference and if it
| doesn't improve anything for me, I might as well not have the
| system wasting battery and other resources on it.
| pb7 wrote:
| It does the opposite: it goes well below 60Hz when there is
| no motion on screen.
| userbinator wrote:
| _I wonder why anyone would turn ProMotion off considering
| that 120Hz massively improves responsiveness._
|
| ...and I bet that 's exactly the attitude Apple had when
| implementing things, which lead to this mess.
| jwells89 wrote:
| The messiness of resolutions during boot always annoyed me on
| PCs. It was understandable back in the days of BIOS, but ith
| the advent of UEFI it seems like it should be possible to run
| EFI config screens and the like at monitor native rez (or at
| minimum, native aspect ratio) but I've never seen this... it's
| always 1024x768 or somesuch stretched to fit a 16:9 monitor
| which looks awful.
| wmf wrote:
| Good UEFI like Surface devices is native resolution so you
| can have flicker-free boot. My Gigabyte motherboard recently
| got native resolution with a UEFI update.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Nice to hear that good implementations exist somewhere out
| in the wild. I hope my AM4 and LGA1700 boards by Asus get
| similar updates at some point.
| ddalex wrote:
| I don't understand why modeset causes flicker - fade to
| black, turn off screen, change resolution, turn on screen,
| fade to image.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Fancy fade in/out effects this early?
| mjg59 wrote:
| "Fade to black, turn off screen, turn on screen, fade to
| image" is just slower flicker.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| This summer I went into an apple store, and there was
| this 2019 Intel Mac Pro tower hooked up to the shiny 6k
| XDR display. I brought up the System Settings, and set
| the resolution one notch towards "More Space". It faded
| to black and never came back.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| EFI config screens should be text mode only, full-stop. So
| they can easily be used over serial console redirection.
|
| Ran into one recently that was high-rez graphical. It needed
| a USB mouse to change critical settings because the tab order
| for the onscreen widgets didn't work.
|
| Anyone responsible for creating graphical EFI config screens
| should stop writing software for the good of humanity.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Even for text-only I'd prefer native rez if possible to
| reduce scrolling, label truncation, etc.
|
| That said yes, there's no reason why there shouldn't be a
| low rez textual fallback.
| secondcoming wrote:
| Then you'd need scaling and all that. Seems a bit
| overkill for something people rarely use.
| userbinator wrote:
| Text-only BIOS setup was the norm for a long time before
| the stupidly bloated EFI graphical stuff became common.
| Even then, there were the better full-featured TUIs:
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/Award_B
| I...
|
| https://liveusb.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/awardbios-
| firstb...
|
| And the simplified crap with tabs that often came with
| prebuilt PCs but later seems to have spread to others too:
|
| https://cdn.staticneo.com/a/Intel_Sandy_Bridge_Z68_P67/S%20
| B...
| tripdout wrote:
| My old AM3+ motherboard has an option for full screen boot
| logo, and it starts in full HD, continuing with systemd boot,
| all in 1080p.
|
| I thought this wasn't really a problem anymore.
| JasonSage wrote:
| This is fine if you have a 1080p monitor. I was impressed
| when this first happened to me, now on an ultrawide monitor
| it's back to being not great.
|
| I do recall my last motherboard had an option for a splash
| which was centered in a black screen, so you could
| basically display it at native resolution with no
| stretching and it would look great and seamless. I wish
| every motherboard had that splash option now.
| vondur wrote:
| Ha, back in the day when I was a student assistant in a
| campus computer lab, we flashed the BIOS boot screen with a
| full screen image of Darth Maul. The staff person who
| oversaw us was not amused. (This was in the Pentium 3 era
| IIRC)
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| By the time my Dell monitor finally wakes from sleep,
| finishes negotiating whatever crap DisplayPort has to
| negotiate these days, and starts actually displaying frames,
| the computer has long since finished booting and is already
| idling at the desktop.
| dm319 wrote:
| My Amiga in the 1990s seemed to do a pretty good job at boot.
| tomxor wrote:
| At least it works. I find low-res bios screens reassuring...
| something I can depend on.
| mattchamb wrote:
| Not sure if related, but my 2020 M1 macbook air bricked a week or
| so after upgrading to Sonoma. I was suspicious if this was
| related to the update. Luckily the logic board was replaced for
| free under warranty laws here, though it put me off switching to
| iphone which I was a day away from doing.
| bscphil wrote:
| Upgrades bricking hardware seems to be a common failure mode
| for macOS. For example Big Sur bricked a bunch of 2013 and 2014
| MBPs: https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/15/macos-big-sur-
| update-br...
|
| I was affected by this and like many users the problem was
| fixed after replacing the I/O board. In my case, I did it
| myself using a $10 part from Ebay since the machine was well
| out of warranty at that point.
| miles wrote:
| From comments #736 and #747 attached to the forum post you
| kindly shared, it sounds like simply disconnecting and
| reconnecting the I/O board may be sufficient (found those
| comments linked in #831):
|
| https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-big-sur-update-
| br...
|
| https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-big-sur-update-
| br...
|
| https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-big-sur-update-
| br...
| fifteen1506 wrote:
| And this is why there will never be a Year of the Linux
| Desktop -- no-one wants to have to depend on forum posts to
| fix these kind of issues.
|
| /troll
| coldtea wrote:
| Why the "/troll"? You're 100% right non-ironically: the
| problem being that on Linux the need to consult forum
| posts to fix these kind of issues is way more frequent
| than in macOS.
| fsflover wrote:
| On Linux it's as rare as on MacOS, _if you buy
| preinstalled_.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| This issue in GP is unrelated to Linux, it happens on
| single-boot macOS.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Seems like a weird rationale. Any manufacturer is going to have
| its share of software and hardware issues.
| windowsrookie wrote:
| The logic Board failed in my 2020 M1 Air as well. Opened the
| lid one day, and it wouldn't power on. I have AppleCare on it,
| otherwise it would have been a $500 repair.
|
| About two weeks ago I'm sitting in a hotel room with the air on
| bed with the lid open. I grab it by the screen to slide it
| closer to me and the screen shatters from the light pressure of
| my finger.
|
| There are instances of both these things happening to the Air
| all over the internet. At first I really liked the M1 Air, but
| it has now proven too unreliable for me.
| theodric wrote:
| My 2020 M1 Air generally requires a hard reboot if left
| closed and on a charger overnight, but that's been the worst
| of it until now (besides the rapidly degrading battery that
| seems calibrated to hit 79% a month after my AppleCare+
| expires, while my 2015 Air's is still going strong).
|
| Premium(tm)
| aetherspawn wrote:
| FWIW I have been using iPhones for 10+ years and not once has
| an update ever failed or had any issues.
|
| But my Google Pixel phone used to brick itself all the time, I
| think twice in the two years I had it.
| bitigchi wrote:
| I am somewhat glad that there is a 3rd party that actively helps
| finding macOS issues.
| jiripospisil wrote:
| > Do not let them charge you any money for it. This is a problem
| Apple caused, and purely a software issue. If the technicians
| claim there is hardware damage, they are wrong.
|
| Good luck with that.
| crazygringo wrote:
| The Apple Store is usually great with this stuff.
|
| If there's a documented problem that affects your hardware
| model and the given software versions, they're extremely
| unlikely to try to charge you for anything.
| baz00 wrote:
| If it's not documented and you have a problem then you are
| usually shit out of luck. The early days of butterfly
| keyboards was hell for a lot of people. I managed to get mine
| back to them for a full refund 3 days after I got it thank
| fuck.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Documented by whom? Are you going to show a marcan post to
| then and claim it's an Apple issue?
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| I didn't have much trouble. When MacbooksAir 2011 version had
| those SSD hardware failures, I told multiple classmates of mine
| about the hardware failure page and they got the repairs for
| free instead of spending $800.
| asylteltine wrote:
| I'm an apple fanboy and let me be the first to say their SDLC
| since the pandemic has been AWFUL. I have never had so many bugs
| with apple devices. And I'm not talking about giant catastrophic
| bugs you would expect with windows or Linux. I mean little
| things, like random phone reboots, overheating, my mac restarting
| when I wake up from sleep, internet issues, etc. They need a
| shake up and to stop focusing on all these features NO ONE uses.
| Can one person tell me they use the features they just announced?
| Nobody even knows you can edit an iMessage still.
| aetherspawn wrote:
| I agree, I started buying some Macbooks for work and was
| horrified when the Launchpad just wouldn't open on a brand new
| Mac.
|
| Like, you press Launchpad, and it just ... doesn't open.
| sometimes. This kind of rancid stuff you would expect on
| Windows but it never used to happen on OS X.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Today I had to DFU restore my macbook because I wanted to
| reinstall it, but built-in restore over the web did not work. My
| base system was 13.2, it downloads all the files for 13.6, it
| filled bar to 100% and then spewed error.
|
| It's obvious that it's some incompatibility between 13.2 base
| system and 13.6 install. Apple quality is atrocious these days.
| One would have thought they would test the most basic scenarios
| before releasing their x.6 software.
|
| And worse of all, there's no official (or even unofficial, at
| least I wasn't able to find one) way to create USB boot installer
| without another Mac or to DFU restore Mac without another Mac. Do
| they think I live in Apple Store? I don't have other Mac. I was
| able to DFU restore with libimobiledevice, god bless its creator,
| but it really should not happen. Windows or Linux are so much
| more transparent compared to macOS.
| baz00 wrote:
| Yeah the Apple bootloader and restore stuff scares the shit out
| of me. The network access requirement, firmware on SSD and
| hardware lock are always lurking waiting for the most
| inconvenient time to go wonky when I hose something.
|
| Conversely windows, just got a USB stick in the drawer I can
| boot off.
| jamesfmilne wrote:
| Yes same here. I did install then uninstall Avahi Linux a year
| or so ago, but now I can't upgrade past 12.6.
|
| I'll need to get an external drive, back everything up, then do
| a DFU restore on my M1 Max MBP to get it upgraded to Sonoma.
| alberth wrote:
| Abstraction Layers.
|
| We've gotten to point with the huge number of abstraction layers
| (and now AI as well) that troubleshooting what causes system to
| do what it did, has become so unwieldily difficult to diagnosis.
| jahewson wrote:
| This doesn't seem to be the problem here? It's an issue of
| having a combinatorial number of versions to test when
| upgrading software and firmware.
| mstep wrote:
| does anyone have info if this is fixed in ventura 13.6.1?
| https://support.apple.com/de-at/HT213985
| cramjabsyn wrote:
| This is exactly why I lag one major version behind the latest.
| als0 wrote:
| Well, this also affects the previous major version, macOS
| Ventura 13.6
| supportengineer wrote:
| This is exactly why I lag two or three versions behind the
| latest.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| This is why I'm still using RHEL 7.
| silverwind wrote:
| Just don't upgrade to any version ending in 0.
| theodric wrote:
| This is why I'm still on Big Sur-- it mostly works!
| Apocryphon wrote:
| One of my machines is still on Mojave- my 32-bit games still
| work!
| nusaru wrote:
| > macOS Ventura 13.6
|
| Well dang, I just upgraded yesterday, too. Fingers crossed that
| nothing breaks...
| cleansingfire wrote:
| Only affects Apple silicon chips (intel unaffected) with
| ProMotion display. Just a quick Exit clause for people with older
| machines.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Lost a workstation to this last week. infuriating.
| KingLancelot wrote:
| I think my 2014 MacBook on MacOS 12.5 was affected by this too.
|
| I had Ubuntu installed in a second partition and it refuses to
| boot ever since I installed 12.5.1 on it.
| tempodox wrote:
| Holy fuck, thanks for the warning! I'm just glad I didn't upgrade
| to 13.6 yet. And installing Sonoma on a second volume to try it
| out is also out of the picture for the foreseeable future.
| Apple's OSs seem to get worse with every turn. Maybe I shouldn't
| touch Sonoma at all. What's the point on an Intel Mac anyway?
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| This seems like a very unusual bug by Apple standards. Makes me
| consider upgrading to new macbooks...
| dgellow wrote:
| At this point it's kind of common knowledge to wait a while
| before upgrading macOS to latest major version. I don't
| remember a major update that didn't come with its own set of
| problems.
| da768 wrote:
| Can something be done using VoiceOver boot mode? I've already
| recovered macs stuck on 0 brightness after an upgrade with
| that... Can't find the documentation now, but it definitely
| exists.
| jug wrote:
| I wonder if this is behind a failed Sonoma upgrade I saw on eBay
| today; Mac Mini M2 Pro sold as-is for a very decent price, about
| $300-$400 off despite from this year. :) Seller didn't know what
| was wrong with the Mac, only that it happened during Sonoma
| upgrade and this sounds mighty suspicious for such a new machine
| if it's widespread.
| dharma1 wrote:
| Had another weird refresh rate bug with 14.1 - external display
| doesn't have a HDR option in settings at 120hz anymore - only
| works with HDR if I change the refresh rate 100hz or lower. Was
| fine in earlier MacOS
| doubloon wrote:
| in 30 years we have gone from the idea that your computer could
| accidentally brick your monitor, to the idea that your monitor
| could accidentally brick your computer.
|
| https://trixter.oldskool.org/2006/02/02/computing-myth-1-sof...
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(page generated 2023-10-31 23:00 UTC)