{"id":2680,"date":"2017-11-30T12:04:12","date_gmt":"2017-11-30T17:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/z-issue.com\/wp\/?p=2680"},"modified":"2017-11-30T12:04:12","modified_gmt":"2017-11-30T17:04:12","slug":"rebooting-macos-into-recovery-mode-to-disable-system-integrity-protection-sip-without-the-command-key","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/z-issue.com\/wp\/rebooting-macos-into-recovery-mode-to-disable-system-integrity-protection-sip-without-the-command-key\/","title":{"rendered":"Rebooting MacOS into recovery mode to disable System Integrity Protection (SIP) without the command key"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My love for Apple and especially MacOS does not run deep.  Actually, it is essentially nonexistent.  I was recently reminded of the myriad reasons why I don&#8217;t like MacOS, and one of them is that the OS should never stand in the way of what the operator wants to do.  In this case, I found that even the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Superuser\" target=\"_blank\">root account<\/a> couldn&#8217;t write to certain directories that MacOS deemed special.  That &#8220;feature&#8221; is known <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/System_Integrity_Protection\" target=\"_blank\">System Integrity Protection<\/a>.  I&#8217;m not going to rant about how absurd it is to disallow the root account the ability to write, but instead I&#8217;d like to present the method of disabling System Integrity Protection.<\/p>\n<p>First of all, one needs to get into the Recovery Mode of MacOS.  Typically, this wouldn&#8217;t be all that difficult when following the <a href=\"https:\/\/support.apple.com\/en-us\/HT201314\" target=\"_blank\">instructions provided by Apple<\/a>.  Essentially, to get into Recovery Mode, one just has to hold Command+R when booting up the system.  That&#8217;s all fine and dandy if it is a physical host and one has an Apple keyboard.  However, my situation called for Recovery Mode from a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Virtual_machine\" target=\"_blank\">virtual machine<\/a> and using a non-Apple keyboard (so no Command key).  Yes, yes, I know that MacOS offers the ability to set different key combinations, but then those would still have to be trapped by <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/VMware_Fusion\" target=\"_blank\">VMWare Fusion<\/a> during boot.  Instead, I figured that there had to be a way to do it from the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Terminal_(macOS)\" target=\"_blank\">MacOS terminal<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>After digging through documentation and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Man_page\" target=\"_blank\">man pages<\/a> (I&#8217;ll spare you the trials and tribulations of trying to find answers \ud83d\ude1b ), I finally found that, yes, one <strong>CAN<\/strong> reboot MacOS into Recovery Mode without the command key.  To do so, open up the Terminal and type the following commands:<br \/>\n<code><br \/>\nnvram \"recovery-boot-mode=unused\"<br \/>\nreboot recovery<br \/>\n<\/code><\/p>\n<p>The Apple host will reboot and the Recover Mode screen will be presented:<\/p>\n<p><center><a href=\"https:\/\/z-issue.com\/blog_imgs\/tech\/apple\/macos\/recovery_mode\/macos_recovery_mode_utilities_terminal.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/z-issue.com\/blog_imgs\/tech\/apple\/macos\/recovery_mode\/macos_recovery_mode_utilities_terminal_thumb.jpg\" width=\"636\" height=\"341\" alt=\"MacOS Recovery Mode - Utilities - Terminal\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<em>Click to enlarge<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Now, in the main window, there are plenty of tasks that can be launched.  However, I needed a terminal, and it might not be readily apparent, but to get it, you click on the &#8220;Utilities&#8221; menu in the top menu bar (see the screenshot above), and then select &#8220;Terminal&#8221;.  Thereafter, it is fairly simple to disable System Integrity Protection via the following command:<\/p>\n<p><code>csrutil disable<\/code><\/p>\n<p>All that&#8217;s left is to reboot by going to the Apple Menu and clicking on &#8220;Restart&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Though the procedures of getting to the MacOS Recovery menu without using the Command key and disabling System Integrity Protection are not all that difficult, they were a pain to figure out.  Furthermore, I&#8217;m not sure why SIP disallows root&#8217;s write permissions anyway.  That seems absurd, especially in light of Apple&#8217;s most recent glaring security hole of <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/information-technology\/2017\/11\/macos-bug-lets-you-log-in-as-admin-with-no-password-required\/\" target=\"_blank\">allowing root access without a password<\/a>. \ud83d\ude33<\/p>\n<p>Cheers,<br \/>\nZach<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My love for Apple and especially MacOS does not run deep. Actually, it is essentially nonexistent. I was recently reminded of the myriad reasons why I don&#8217;t like MacOS, and one of them is that the OS should never stand in the way of what the operator wants to do. In this case, I found &hellip; <\/p>\n<p><a class=\"more-link btn\" href=\"https:\/\/z-issue.com\/wp\/rebooting-macos-into-recovery-mode-to-disable-system-integrity-protection-sip-without-the-command-key\/\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[151,139,15,152,153,35,59],"class_list":["post-2680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-apple","tag-code","tag-image","tag-mac","tag-macos","tag-security","tag-software","item-wrap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/z-issue.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/z-issue.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/z-issue.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/z-issue.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/z-issue.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2680"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/z-issue.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2689,"href":"https:\/\/z-issue.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2680\/revisions\/2689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/z-issue.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/z-issue.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/z-issue.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}