blog.polarweasel.org/2025/02/25/filevault-key-trouble

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https://blog.polarweasel.org/2025/02/25/filevault-key-trouble

Removing an ancient FileVault key

When I tried to enable FileVault on a new machine today, I got a message I didn’t like: A recovery key has been set by your company, school, or institution. Turns out, it was a leftover from many laptop migrations ago. The clue was in an Apple support forum post. I deleted the following two files, dated 2007, then rebooted, and the problem was gone: /Library/Keychains/FileVaultMaster.cer /Library/Keychains/FileVaultMaster.keychain Note that this is very unlikely to work on a machine that actually does have an institutional recovery key set, but it works great when you have migration-cruft messing things up.



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Removing an ancient FileVault key

https://blog.polarweasel.org/2025/02/25/filevault-key-trouble

When I tried to enable FileVault on a new machine today, I got a message I didn’t like: A recovery key has been set by your company, school, or institution. Turns out, it was a leftover from many laptop migrations ago. The clue was in an Apple support forum post. I deleted the following two files, dated 2007, then rebooted, and the problem was gone: /Library/Keychains/FileVaultMaster.cer /Library/Keychains/FileVaultMaster.keychain Note that this is very unlikely to work on a machine that actually does have an institutional recovery key set, but it works great when you have migration-cruft messing things up.



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https://blog.polarweasel.org/2025/02/25/filevault-key-trouble

Removing an ancient FileVault key

When I tried to enable FileVault on a new machine today, I got a message I didn’t like: A recovery key has been set by your company, school, or institution. Turns out, it was a leftover from many laptop migrations ago. The clue was in an Apple support forum post. I deleted the following two files, dated 2007, then rebooted, and the problem was gone: /Library/Keychains/FileVaultMaster.cer /Library/Keychains/FileVaultMaster.keychain Note that this is very unlikely to work on a machine that actually does have an institutional recovery key set, but it works great when you have migration-cruft messing things up.

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      When I tried to enable FileVault on a new machine today, I got a message I didn’t like: A recovery key has been set by your company, school, or institution. Turns out, it was a leftover from many laptop migrations ago. The clue was in an Apple support forum post. I deleted the following two files, dated 2007, then rebooted, and the problem was gone: /Library/Keychains/FileVaultMaster.cer /Library/Keychains/FileVaultMaster.keychain Note that this is very unlikely to work on a machine that actually does have an institutional recovery key set, but it works great when you have migration-cruft messing things up.
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      When I tried to enable FileVault on a new machine today, I got a message I didn’t like: A recovery key has been set by your company, school, or institution. Turns out, it was a leftover from many laptop migrations ago. The clue was in an Apple support forum post. I deleted the following two files, dated 2007, then rebooted, and the problem was gone: /Library/Keychains/FileVaultMaster.cer /Library/Keychains/FileVaultMaster.keychain Note that this is very unlikely to work on a machine that actually does have an institutional recovery key set, but it works great when you have migration-cruft messing things up.
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