MacOS – csrutil: command not found

macosrecoverysipterminal

I am using a Mid 2012 MacBook and recently upgraded it to OS X 10.11 El Capitan. I was having trouble with it's new SIP feature and wanted to disable it.

I tried to boot into OS X Internet Recovery using Cmd+R, which started Internet Recovery. When I tried csrutil disable in Terminal, it returned -bash: csrutil: command not found.
Then I tried booting into Recovery HD and tried the same command in the recovery mode there to get the same error.

My question is how can I access csrutil command to disable SIP? Am I missing something?

Update
I am putting the recovery terminal commands I have tried in the following screenshot. Kindly zoom it to see clearly

Best Answer

The netboot image loaded by booting to Internet Recovery Mode apparently doesn't contain the executable csrutil.

The OS X Base System loaded while booting to Recovery Mode should contain it though. By pressing cmdR a 2-step procedure is initiated: First the Mac is booted to Recovery HD and then after expanding BaseSystem.dmg to "OS X Base System" (which is the name of the mounted BaseSystem.dmg). If you see an animated globe after pressing cmdR your Mac probably doesn't have a Recovery HD.

Check the system version (or product version) of the Recovery HD/Base System:

To check the system version (1 in the screenshot below), boot to your main volume and enter the following in Terminal:

diskutil list #to get the disk identifier of your Recovery HD; usually it's disk0s3 with a size of ~650 MB
diskutil mount disk0s3
cat /Volumes/Recovery\ HD/com.apple.recovery.boot/SystemVersion.plist | grep -A 2 ProductVersion

Additionally you may mount BaseSystem.dmg and check the system version (2 in the screenshot below) there also:

open /Volumes/Recovery\ HD/com.apple.recovery.boot/BaseSystem.dmg
cat /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist | grep -A 2 ProductVersion

Download and reinstall the latest OS X El Capitan full installer if the system version of the base system is 10.10.x or lower.

Related Solutions

MacOS – Using the -Bless Command on Multiboot Macs with 10.11 El Capitan

I've had good luck using AutoDMG and munki's crgateosxintallpkg scripts with 10.11 in beta. I haven't done the work yet on the current build, but i think these SIP issues and bless changes were fit in by Apple before release so you shouldn't have issues using these tools.

Are you running into a specific error? What MDM or deployment framework are you using? If you have scripts, it might be easier to adopt one of the standard tools than re-working yours, but both are on github so you can see how they are handling SIP/bless if you need that level of detail.

The last link is Apple's official word on how you will need to script your client Mac to trust the netboot server and the commands needed to navigate the SIP changes for distribution of 10.11 images.

In a nutshell, you can list the "blessed" netboot servers as opposed to blessing the image itself.

csrutil netboot add 10.0.10.10
csrutil netboot list

MacOS – How to start Internet Recovery Mode of El Capitan with multiple OS installed

3 Solutions, or more likely workarounds
(Found them myself, but thanks to Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen anyways!)

To reiterate and clarify: I want to start in recovery mode of El Capitan on a MacBook Pro 2011 which has said OS as a partition and on another the ("factory set") Snow Leopard. Since El Capitan had - for an for me unknown reason?! - no recovery partition installed, my actual goal was to start internet recovery mode of El Capitan. This did not work since whenever I pressed [Cmd + R] at the chime, it started into recovery mode of Snow Leopard, which doesn't contain the wanted terminal command "csrutil" yet.

I went with option E)2. (above) and installed OS El Capitan on an empty external disk. After rebooting and holding the [Opt key] at the chime, I was able to choose the recovery partition of the newly installed system on the external drive, and afterwards disable SIP.

Thorbjørn Ravn Andersens solution will probably work too: A bootable USB stick - that's essentially the same as I did, but might be faster (?)... A third solution is probably (E)2.) reinstalling El Capitan to get the recovery partition (again?).

But even though those solutions (might) work, all of them include the time and space consuming (re-)installing of El Capitan. Since El Capitan should also have a internet recovery mode option it's unfortunate that one does not seem to be able to boot into that, if you have multiple (and older and "factory set") OS installed. (Option D)2., change the default start up disk to El Capitan and hit [(Opt +) Cmd + R] at the chime, should be working, but doesn't...)

So my Question is actually not solved completely, so I'll leave it open...
Thanks to every one who can give further advise! :D

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MacOS – Using the -Bless Command on Multiboot Macs with 10.11 El Capitan

MacOS – How to start Internet Recovery Mode of El Capitan with multiple OS installed

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