Sequoianoia

I'm happy that I've been able to move on with updates to all my key applications from 2014 with my new Mac Mini Pro with M4 Pro processor.  But system security, what I sometimes call securianoia, has been the main thing I've had to struggle with.  (I'm happy at least that in every case I've eventually been able to find the solution, though sometimes it's taken quite awhile, and I would have been completely stumped had I not been able to scour the internet for answers.)

Frankly I'd turn most of the security off, and I have whenever I can.  I really don't care much if people are watching me, etc.  In 44 years of personal computing I've never had a virus, worm, or serious trojan horse.  (My one and only rule: I avoid stuff that looks iffy, and especially stuff telling me I've been infected, etc.).

Meanwhile I've had endless problems with add on virus protectors, and now system security "features."  And going forwards.  (Though I appreciate that Macs don't seem to "require" external virus protectors like PC's do, so I suppose a little bit of pain might be worth it.  I'd still prefer less pain, though.)

I had to struggle for days to get both Roon and Sonos S1 working on my new Mac, mainly to find just the right combination of permissions for them and their background servers.  With each of those permissions hidden behind a different set of Settings panels which are often infernally misleading.  Such as "Network" doesn't really control everything related to Network.

Today another routine Roon update made it impossible for Roon to see any of my external audio devices again.  I'm thinking this happens every time now.  I couldn't quite remember how I fixed this last time, and I scanned through the Network and Privacy and Security pages to find anything useful.  Indeed both Roon and Roon Server had permission to communicate with devices on my network, which is found in:

System Settings->Privacy and Security->Local Network

But the story is that after an update, you have to un-check and then re-check both Roon and Roon Server, then quit and restart Roon.

Well, I did that, but it didn't fix the problem.  So I progressed to the usual thing I do (which helped fix inexplicable internet loss a few days ago too), I restarted my Mac.

It was then that I realized that although I had quit Roon, I had not quit Roon Server, because for a moment Roon Server blocked the shutdown.

Well, the combination of the restart and the checking and unchecking cured the problem, but perhaps just the restart would have done it, or if I could have restarted both Roon and Roon server.  I'm noting this here to jog my memory next time.