The problem turns out to be a corrupt /Library/Preferences/com.apple.networkextension.plist file. This needs to be deleted, such that the system can create a new one. Unfortunately that’s not possible because in Apple’s “infinite wisdom“ even the root user has been degraded to a lowly user account with selective admin privileges, instead of being the God account it’s supposed to be. As a consequence, one must boot into recovery mode, open a terminal session, and then delete the file from there.

Not sure if it’s related, but sometimes I get configd crashed messages within a few minutes of such attempts, but not always, and mostly with some significant delay, i.e. not as a direct sequence, so this may or may not be related.

It’s also about a third thing: capability! KeychainAccess.app can do things Password.app can’t: Certificate management with Certificate Assistant Storing, exporting, managing certificates secure notes for bank accounts, credit cards, software licenses, etc. (which I guess theoretically one could painstakingly move one-by-one to Notes.app as locked notes) And then there’s the issue of cloud based things being convenient, but I still believe in the resilience of the master data being stored locally, and being available deep in the African bush, even without Starlink internet…