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Missing System Integrity Protection (SIP) / csrutil command

S

SackJabbit

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 21, 2011
90
16
Hello,

After 2 days of trying to upgrade my Mid-2011 13" MacBook Air from Yosemite to El Capitan, I finally managed to have it up and running (after over 10 re-installations/system restore/clean install tries).

So I have a Dell UltraSharp U2413 attached as an additional external monitor, and after each OS upgrade, I have to re-force RGB mode to enable the picture quality to be clear. However, I found out with El Capitan's SIP feature, I have to enable rootless, as per instructions here:

http://www.ireckon.net/2013/03/forc...ix-the-picture-quality-of-an-external-monitor

However, the csrutil command appears to be missing from my system. I took a screen shot, and attached here.

Background:
1. For my first upgrade/installation attempt of El Capitan, I rebooted into Recovery Mode after the complete install, to disable csrutil. That function appeared then. Subsequent attempts to reinstall El Capitan, csrutil command seemed to have disappeared.
2. My most recent successful (12th attempt) installation of El Capitan, I resorted to this thread and followed his advice to move 3rd party kexts to another folder:
https://forums.developer.apple.com/message/67556

So, is there another way to disable SIP? Or how do I go about to re-instating the csrutil command?

Thanks!
 

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You have to access Terminal in Recovery mode to turn on/off SIP. Is this what you're doing?
sorry, just re-read your post. I saw you did that already
 
Last edited:
I’m a bit confused why you installed El Capitan twelve times. So, to clarify: you downloaded El Capitan from the App Store, opened the installer, let it do the preliminary installation of El Capitan, reboot and continue the installation. After the installation was complete, you rebooted into Recovery and used csrutil, which worked. Then you reinstalled El Capitan again (from Recovery), rebooted into Recovery and the csrutil was gone. Then you did that eleven times, without success. Correct?

When you open the installer application on your Mac and start the installation, it will update your Recovery partition. Then it will reboot and kickstart the installation from your Recovery partition. This has succeeded, as you were able to access csrutil afterwards. It doesn’t make sense why it disappeared afterwards, because you only reinstalled the system from the recovery partition.

I don’t think that there is a straightforward way to reinstall the Recovery partition. Have you tried starting the installer from your Mac once more? It will always install the Recovery partition first, then it wil reboot and start the installation from the installation files on the Recovery partition.

Peter118 said:
Do you use a internet recovery or a local recovery?
Click to expand...
Their Mac is from 2013 and the screenshot shows a UI of Yosemite or El Capitan. Internet recovery would have shown the OS their Mac shipped with.
 
Autistic Behaviour said:
[URL]https://pikeralpha.wordpress.com/2015/08/19/csrutil-updated/[/URL]

may have a few avenues to solve your problem....

Your last attempt to install El Cap was a clean install? that is, clean erase of HD and installed from another drive or thumb drive?
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, it keeps saying no such file or directory.

The last El Cap was a clean install. However, bad news, the subsequent reboot after I replied to your last post resulted in the same white screen, stalled zero progress bar like before. Yes, I erased the HD of the partitions and downloaded a clean install from internet from the Recovery Mode Clean Install option. I then resorted to restore image from my Time Machine from another older date. This image ran on Yosemite. After successful restore, and logged into Yosemite, I restarted. The same white screen appeared. I then did another Recovery Mode to try a clean install again. But this time only offered me a clean install of Yosemite.

At present, I have managed to complete a clean install of Yosemite. I am awaiting for Time Machine to complete preparation for decryption as I decide maybe further failed installations could be sped up with a decrypted Time Machine.
 
KALLT said:
I’m a bit confused why you installed El Capitan twelve times. So, to clarify: you downloaded El Capitan from the App Store, opened the installer, let it do the preliminary installation of El Capitan, reboot and continue the installation. After the installation was complete, you rebooted into Recovery and used csrutil, which worked. Then you reinstalled El Capitan again (from Recovery), rebooted into Recovery and the csrutil was gone. Then you did that eleven times, without success. Correct?

When you open the installer application on your Mac and start the installation, it will update your Recovery partition. Then it will reboot and kickstart the installation from your Recovery partition. This has succeeded, as you were able to access csrutil afterwards. It doesn’t make sense why it disappeared afterwards, because you only reinstalled the system from the recovery partition.

I don’t think that there is a straightforward way to reinstall the Recovery partition. Have you tried starting the installer from your Mac once more? It will always install the Recovery partition first, then it wil reboot and start the installation from the installation files on the Recovery partition.


Their Mac is from 2013 and the screenshot shows a UI of Yosemite or El Capitan. Internet recovery would have shown the OS their Mac shipped with.
Click to expand...

Sorry, I should clarify. In the last 48 hours, I now did over 12 restore from Time Machine and/or clean installation of Yosemite and/or El Cap. I did various combinations because each time one option initially seemed to be working, but later restarting showed that white screen (OR prohibited bar sign), led me to try other options, or either restoring from:

1. previous Yosemite image from the last few days, or
2. previous El Capitan image from the last 48 hours, or
3. clean install of Yosemite from Recovery Mode from internet, or
4. clean install of El Capitan from Recovery Mode from internet.

So, no I did not do a clean installation of El Capitan 11 times without success because, I only did that 3 times, as the reboot after the installation was clean left me with that white screen with static zero progress bar. So, I was more concerned that I could to reboot into El Capitan. And proceeded to try one of the above options to have a functional running Mac with a OS X. Those 3 times, SIP was missing though. Note, each time I erased partition for clean install.

As for installing from the recovery partition, the end result was a reboot leading to a hung progress bar.

At this very point now, I'm at a completely fresh install of Yosemite, and while this is very unfavourable to manually reinstall apps and look folder after folder from my eternal data hard drive, and may take hours to days to get it back to before, I'd rather a working Mac than none at all.

But before painfully attempting to copy over data and documents, I may attempt to upgrade to El Capitan one very last time before giving up.
 
Last edited:
man, that sucks. Sorry I cant help much more....The prohibited sign usually means there's a problem with system files, the actual drive, bootfile corruption....

I suppose you could try resetting the PRAM (I know, unlikely, but it seems that a problem with PRAM could also lead to the prohibited sign at boot)
 
Autistic Behaviour said:
man, that sucks. Sorry I cant help much more....The prohibited sign usually means there's a problem with system files, the actual drive, bootfile corruption....

I suppose you could try resetting the PRAM (I know, unlikely, but it seems that a problem with PRAM could also lead to the prohibited sign at boot)
Click to expand...

Thanks indeed for your help. Yes, I too have been advised the prohibited sign means problems/corruption with system files.

I have tried resetting the PRAM several times already. Latest progress I've made is I've made a completely clean install of Yosemite, and immediately upgrade to El Capitan. I've proceeded to install several softwares over 12 hours, but have only rebooted 3 times. So far so good. I hope this will be the end of my problems.
 
Hi, experts:

Can anyone give a helpful response to the problem I am experiencing with El Capitan? The other day, from the App Store, I downloaded the public version of Mac OSX 10.11. I used Apple’s own script, found on a respected website, to put the installer onto a flash drive. Then, I installed El Cap on a spare partition alongside what, up until then, had been my regular partition, which runs (with no problems) Yosetime.

All my settings and apps were transferred at the same time as the El Cap installation. Now, at least two of the apps/utilities that I have come to love using cannot run on El Cap, and this is because of System Integrity Protection (SIP).

Whether it was wise to want to do so or not, after looking on the Web for Terminal commands to disable SIP, and after booting up with El Cap, then booting from there into Recovery Mode, I opened Terminal from the three utilities there. The first command I entered was: csrutil disable; reboot. Well, it certainly worked as regards the reboot bit, since the machine re-booted immediately I pressed Return. However, on opening Terminal in El Cap, and typing in the Status commmand (csrutil status), Terminal stated that SIP was enabled! I did this several times, without any success.

After that, I tried various other Terminal commands in Recovery Mode (among them, sudo nvram boot-args=”kext-dev-mode=1 rootless=0). Also, before doing so, I restarted while holding down Command + Option + P + R (after taking advice from someone I know).

With the Terminal commands that I also entered, but which did not end with reboot, in every case, the response of Terminal was: Command not found.

I even erased all the stuff in this spare partition, and re-installed El Cap, but this time without transferring a single file from Yosemite. When it started up, it was a 100% virgin installation. Immediately, I re-started in Recovery Mode and typed in a command to disable SIP (in fact, I did this more than once, using a different command each time — all of which are stated, by others, to work). With each one, the response of Terminal was: Command not found.

I should dearly like to start using El Cap. However, I am not prepared to pay the price of not being able to use apps/utilities that I have come to rely on. Further (and, to me, this is just as important an issue), I feel aggrieved by the fact that, whereas others confidently state that the terminal commands they recommend not only do work, but, in their case, they HAVE INDEED worked. Why will they not work on my machine? And what can be done that has not been done, to get at least one of them to work and disable the dreaded SIP?

If anyone can help with this, I should be eternally grateful!

With thanks in hopeful anticipation,

CLOD-HOPPER

PS: Since I do not know any members of this forum, I have chosen one at random (KALLT). Kallt is welcome to participate, of course, but I hope he or she will forgive me for entering their name without knowing them. (It seems that, without a name, I would not have been able to post this message.)
 
to the OP : did u fix that already? maybe your recovery partition is not for el cap, hence the missing cmd.

if you have nvram, try adding this key :

csr-active-config w%00%00%00

that should disable SIP on 10.11 retail.
 
b0fh666 said:
to the OP : did u fix that already? maybe your recovery partition is not for el cap, hence the missing cmd.

if you have nvram, try adding this key :

csr-active-config w%00%00%00

that should disable SIP on 10.11 retail.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure that I am the OP, because I inserted my posting into an existing thread. However, I do have the same problem with disabling SIP, so may I ask you: doesn't every user have nvram? (I don't know what it is — to me, it's just a term). Also, you say "try ADDING this key". Sorry if I seem dense, but to what should it be added? I would like to try what you suggest, but I also want to be sure that I type in the right command, when in Recovery Mode. Thanks in advance for clarification. (Now, you will know why I chose the screen name CLOD-HOPPPER!)
 
no probs... command would be:

nvram csr-active-config=w%00%00%00

that would set the variable the same way 'csrutil disable' does for me. might work...

cheers!
 
CLOD-HOPPER said:
I'm not sure that I am the OP, because I inserted my posting into an existing thread. However, I do have the same problem with disabling SIP, so may I ask you: doesn't every user have nvram? (I don't know what it is — to me, it's just a term). Also, you say "try ADDING this key". Sorry if I seem dense, but to what should it be added? I would like to try what you suggest, but I also want to be sure that I type in the right command, when in Recovery Mode. Thanks in advance for clarification. (Now, you will know why I chose the screen name CLOD-HOPPPER!)
Click to expand...

what is the output when you enter"csrutil disable"? without the "reboot"...
also, you may want to check -about my mac -system report -sata and choose your drive. in the description, are there 2 different Recovery hd, to go along with your 2 different partitions?
 
b0fh666 said:
nvram csr-active-config=w%00%00%00
Click to expand...

I don’t think that works anymore. I remember reading that this variable requires an Apple private entitlement. The only program that has this entitlement is csrutil.
 
b0fh666 said:
no probs... command would be:

nvram csr-active-config=w%00%00%00

that would set the variable the same way 'csrutil disable' does for me. might work...

cheers!
Click to expand...
Thanks for the try, friend, but the command above did not work for me. I think it is time to give up on this SIP disablement business, and stick with Yosetime (sigh).
 
CLOD-HOPPER said:
Thanks for the try, friend, but the command above did not work for me. I think it is time to give up on this SIP disablement business, and stick with Yosetime (sigh).
Click to expand...

What I understood from your problem is that you can’t access the csrutil command from Recovery. You didn’t notice it at first, because you appended the reboot command. This means that your Mac will reboot immediately, even though it can’t execute the csrutil command. That is a sign that your Recovery partition is not up to date.

You have a somewhat unusual setup: you have a main drive with Yosemite, you added another partition, you booted from the thumb drive and installed El Capitan manually to that second partition. I presume that this is the problem. This process has not updated your Recovery partition. Reinstalling El Capitan doesn’t change anything because it is the Recovery partition that you want to update.

You need to do the installation differently, some suggestions:
  • Launch the El Capitan installer application from your Yosemite partition and choose the El Capitan partition as the target partition. This is how Apple intended it.
  • Clone your Yosemite partition to the El Capitan partition, then boot into the El Capitan partition and launch the installer application from there.
The installer should update your Recovery partition accordingly. Just forget about the thumb drive, you don’t need it as long as you don’t plan on formatting your whole drive.
 
did you try that nvram command from recovery terminal? the one that is missing csrutil?

it won't work from inside sip-enabled el capitan... for sure.
 
CLOD-HOPPER said:
Hi, experts:

Can anyone give a helpful response to the problem I am experiencing with El Capitan? The other day, from the App Store, I downloaded the public version of Mac OSX 10.11. I used Apple’s own script, found on a respected website, to put the installer onto a flash drive. Then, I installed El Cap on a spare partition alongside what, up until then, had been my regular partition, which runs (with no problems) Yosetime.

All my settings and apps were transferred at the same time as the El Cap installation. Now, at least two of the apps/utilities that I have come to love using cannot run on El Cap, and this is because of System Integrity Protection (SIP).

Whether it was wise to want to do so or not, after looking on the Web for Terminal commands to disable SIP, and after booting up with El Cap, then booting from there into Recovery Mode, I opened Terminal from the three utilities there. The first command I entered was: csrutil disable; reboot. Well, it certainly worked as regards the reboot bit, since the machine re-booted immediately I pressed Return. However, on opening Terminal in El Cap, and typing in the Status commmand (csrutil status), Terminal stated that SIP was enabled! I did this several times, without any success.

After that, I tried various other Terminal commands in Recovery Mode (among them, sudo nvram boot-args=”kext-dev-mode=1 rootless=0). Also, before doing so, I restarted while holding down Command + Option + P + R (after taking advice from someone I know).

With the Terminal commands that I also entered, but which did not end with reboot, in every case, the response of Terminal was: Command not found.

I even erased all the stuff in this spare partition, and re-installed El Cap, but this time without transferring a single file from Yosemite. When it started up, it was a 100% virgin installation. Immediately, I re-started in Recovery Mode and typed in a command to disable SIP (in fact, I did this more than once, using a different command each time — all of which are stated, by others, to work). With each one, the response of Terminal was: Command not found.

I should dearly like to start using El Cap. However, I am not prepared to pay the price of not being able to use apps/utilities that I have come to rely on. Further (and, to me, this is just as important an issue), I feel aggrieved by the fact that, whereas others confidently state that the terminal commands they recommend not only do work, but, in their case, they HAVE INDEED worked. Why will they not work on my machine? And what can be done that has not been done, to get at least one of them to work and disable the dreaded SIP?

If anyone can help with this, I should be eternally grateful!

With thanks in hopeful anticipation,

CLOD-HOPPER

PS: Since I do not know any members of this forum, I have chosen one at random (KALLT). Kallt is welcome to participate, of course, but I hope he or she will forgive me for entering their name without knowing them. (It seems that, without a name, I would not have been able to post this message.)
Click to expand...
If you held down Command-R to enter the Recovery OS, you might have booted into the Yosemite one, which does not have csrutil. Instead, try holding down Option and selecting the one for El Capitan.
 
Try running:

Code: 
/Volumes/*/usr/bin/csrutil disable

This way the command will be found even if it doesn't exist on your recovery partition as long as you have El Capitan installed.
 
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KALLT said:
What I understood from your problem is that you can’t access the csrutil command from Recovery. You didn’t notice it at first, because you appended the reboot command. This means that your Mac will reboot immediately, even though it can’t execute the csrutil command. That is a sign that your Recovery partition is not up to date.

You have a somewhat unusual setup: you have a main drive with Yosemite, you added another partition, you booted from the thumb drive and installed El Capitan manually to that second partition. I presume that this is the problem. This process has not updated your Recovery partition. Reinstalling El Capitan doesn’t change anything because it is the Recovery partition that you want to update.

You need to do the installation differently, some suggestions:
  • Launch the El Capitan installer application from your Yosemite partition and choose the El Capitan partition as the target partition. This is how Apple intended it.
  • Clone your Yosemite partition to the El Capitan partition, then boot into the El Capitan partition and launch the installer application from there.
The installer should update your Recovery partition accordingly. Just forget about the thumb drive, you don’t need it as long as you don’t plan on formatting your whole drive.
Click to expand...

KALLT, I will try what you suggest. However, I'm not certain what you mean by cloning a partition to another one. Will you kindly explain, as if to an idiot? Thanks.
 
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