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turn off FileVault with Terminal

J

johnbclark

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 19, 2010
3
0
How to turn off FileVault with Terminal.
sudo fdesetup disable

returns a message "command not found"

any suggestions would be appreciated...
MacBook Pro 2012
Mac OS High Sierra installed, unfortunately FileVault was turned on during the install
The machine has been running for 3 days..
760 GB HD with 700GB free space...

have tried:
disconnecting Internet
reboot in Recovery
ran Disk First Aid on HD
 
60GB used? Can you just give up and erase the drive, then reinstall macOS?
I guess my real question is: do you have a backup of your drive, so you could simply start over with a fresh install, then restore your files and apps?
 
That is strange that it isn't finding fdesetup. You may want to try running this instead:
Code: 
sudo /usr/bin/fdesetup disable
 
If you're doing this from the Terminal while running Recovery, you don't need "sudo". I think the same would apply from single-user mode.

If you're not in Recovery or single-user mode, in Terminal, you can type "which fdesetup" and it should tell you the path of the command. If some how "/usr/bin" isn't in the path you can try "sudo /usr/bin/fdesetup" (or whatever the full path is).
 
I am curious if johnbclark is actually booting to Internet Recovery. Some terminal commands are not available when booted to internet recovery.

@johnbclark: Internet Recovery boots up showing a spinning globe, and not the usual Apple icon.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Shadow Jolteon
Never heard of the method that was suggested above, but I have my own way that I've used before. Given model and size of drive I am going to assume this is a mechanical drive and not an SSD. Also assuming the drive is fully encrypted and not still in the process, go to recovery, then terminal and first do 'diskutil cs list' and get the UUID for the encrypted Macintosh HD volume and copy it. Then do 'diskutil cs unlockvolume PasteUUID' hit enter and put in the password. Then do 'diskutil cs decryptvolume PasteUUID' hit enter and put in password.

I of course do agree with the idea of just backing up the data, nuking the drive and restoring backup as a better and faster solution.
 
I was in the middle of troubleshooting another issue (my MacBook Pro 2016 crashes after running a couple minutes, then gives me the flashing ? folder icon) and got too brave for my own good. I was decrypting (via System Preferences), got impatient, and put in the following:

sudo fdesetup disable

Success! Except, now I'm in this weird limbo. According to the Sys Pref window, FileVault is on, but the option to turn it off is disabled. I can't turn it off again in terminal. When I try to reinstall MacOS, it says it can't install to that disk since files are decrypting. Any ideas? Someone advised me to look for terminal commands to kill filevault and repair it, but I haven't found those.
 
Shadow Jolteon said:
Try running the following and see what it shows:
Code: 
sudo /usr/bin/fdesetup status -extended -verbose
Click to expand...

I typed this code and the terminal says


fdesetup: device path = /
FileVault is On.
Volume is APFS. (FileVault Enabled)
Encryption in progress: Percent completed = 13. Estimated completion in (Calculating)


Then what should I do?
 
Last edited:
DeltaMac said:
What was the result after the wait time?
Click to expand...

Encryption had successfully completed, so now I‘m waiting for decryption to complete. I found your reply just today but I really appreciate your kindness :)~ Have a good day!
 
Last edited:
Hi, I have the same issue, I cannot turn off File vault as it is greyed out. I tried starting in recovery and all that. When I try with terminal I get this message:
Can anyone please help?

fdesetup: device path = /


FileVault is On.


Volume is APFS. (FileVault Enabled)


Rods-MBP:~ rodzahra$
 
Help: so I turned off FileVault 3 days ago and it's still decrypting - been having issues with my account login disappearing.

when I copy and paste
sudo /usr/bin/fdesetup status -extended -verbose

this error pop's up

sudo: unable to mkdir /var/db/sudo/ts: No such file or directory

Password: ( I enter my password)


response:


fdesetup: device path = /


FileVault is On.


Volume is APFS. (FileVault Enabled)


Decryption in progress: Percent completed = 0. Estimated completion in (Calculating)





other times : I get this error message

FileVault was not disabled (11).
or

FileVault was not disabled (2).


can someone help me
 
Shadow Jolteon said:
Try running the following and see what it shows:
Code: 
sudo /usr/bin/fdesetup status -extended -verbose
Click to expand...
can you help w/ that? mine "
FileVault is On.


Volume is APFS. (FileVault Enabled)


Decryption in progress: Percent completed = 88. Estimated completion in (Calculating)"

Like that, but my I'm currently having a problem with the charger. I turn it on and it restarts my notebook. How do I complete this %?
I'm not able to reinstall macMonterrey because of this decryption problem.
 
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