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Change SIP on a macOS VM

Disable or enable System Integrity Protection from paired macOS Recovery and verify the result.

Use lume sip to change System Integrity Protection (SIP) on a stopped macOS VM. Lume runs csrutil in the VM's paired Recovery environment and verifies the result after a normal boot.

For the policy model behind this workflow, read How SIP works in Lume VMs.

Before you start#

The VM must:

  • run macOS;
  • be stopped;
  • have a working administrator account; and
  • have Remote Login enabled.

VMs created with Lume's unattended setup meet these requirements. Their initial username and password are both lume.

Install the optional Recovery VNC driver:

python3 -m pip install --user vncdotool

Recovery input currently supports administrator passwords made from lowercase ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens. The Recovery password prompt must name the account passed with --admin-user.

Disable SIP#

With the default lume account, run:

lume sip off macos-tahoe

Confirm the change when prompted. Lume validates the account, changes the policy in Recovery, boots normally to run csrutil status, and leaves the VM stopped. A successful run ends with:

System Integrity Protection status: disabled.
SIP is disabled.

For another administrator account, enter its password without exposing it in the process arguments:

lume sip off macos-tahoe \
  --admin-user admin \
  --admin-password-stdin

For non-interactive use, provide confirmation with --yes so the password is the only line read from standard input:

printf '%s\n' "$LUME_ADMIN_PASSWORD" | \
  lume sip off macos-tahoe \
    --admin-user admin \
    --admin-password-stdin \
    --yes

Enable SIP#

Run the same command with on:

lume sip on macos-tahoe \
  --admin-user admin \
  --admin-password-stdin

A successful run ends with the canonical enabled status and leaves the VM stopped.

Prepare a reusable SIP-disabled VM#

Change SIP on a stopped seed, then clone it:

lume sip off macos-tahoe-seed --yes
lume clone macos-tahoe-seed macos-tahoe-worker-001

Lume copies disk.img and nvram.bin together. Do not replace either file independently because the signed policy, personalized boot files, and anti-replay state belong to one paired VM state.

Boot a worker and inspect its policy when you need an extra check:

lume run --no-display macos-tahoe-worker-001
lume ssh macos-tahoe-worker-001 'csrutil status'
lume stop macos-tahoe-worker-001

Related pages#