Why do I get a broken seal on my root filesystem APFS?

I already found this practical question which might be a beginning of an answer:

Answer to FileVault reporting Sealed Brok… - Apple Community


On my system, I got this kind of output from diskutil:

### 18:57       noether:/       % diskutil apfs list
APFS Containers (4 found)
|
+-- Container disk1 C492EC11-0203-4F01-928A-DB1D85A937D8
|   ====================================================
[...]
|   +-> Volume disk1s5 6D9F6C55-5A78-46CE-A3F0-48E7B911E6EB
|       ---------------------------------------------------
|       APFS Volume Disk (Role):   disk1s5 (System)
|       Name:                      noether 1 250 Go (Case-sensitive)
|       Mount Point:               /Volumes/noether 1 250 Go 1
|       Capacity Consumed:         15321800704 B (15.3 GB)
|       Sealed:                    Broken
|       FileVault:                 Yes (Unlocked)
|       Encrypted:                 No
|       |
|       Snapshot:                  E7B5A378-DBBD-4D57-8EDB-FE378C260987
|       Snapshot Disk:             disk1s5s1
|       Snapshot Mount Point:      /
|       Snapshot Sealed:           Yes
[...]


I clearly understand that the line:

|       FileVault:                 Yes (Unlocked)

means that this volume is unlocked, because I opened it upon opening my session.

But I don't see what the line:

|       Sealed:                    Broken

means.


Disk Utility > First Aid doesn't detect any anomaly on this volume.

This is a problem I experience on macOS 11.7.8, nickname Big Sur. I think the question is the same for any version

of macOS supporting APFS format.

man diskutil

doesn't show the word seal or broken.


What did break this filesystem seal?

How may I fix it?

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 11.7

Posted on Jul 26, 2024 4:30 PM

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2 replies

Jul 27, 2024 9:41 PM in response to Zorba_le_grec

I've personally encountered a broken seal on several of my organization's Macs. Each time the Mac was running perfectly fine. All I did was select the default Startup Disk in System Settings & rebooted which resulted in a boot loop. Doing some digging I discovered the broken seal. From what I can tell, this is a bug in macOS when a pending software update exists and manually selecting the default Startup Disk confuses the system perhaps because it may be selecting an APFS snapshot of the update that is not quite ready for use (my best guess).


The solution has been to reinstall macOS over top of itself. So far this has worked every time for me. Reinstalling macOS over top of itself should not affect any apps, data, or settings. This reinstall just creates a new signed & sealed system volume.


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Why do I get a broken seal on my root filesystem APFS?

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