Unable to boot into safe mode with FileVault 2 enabled

Question

Level 1

0 points

Unable to boot into safe mode with FileVault 2 enabled

I was trying to boot into safe mode earlier to try and fix a few things. It looks like I can't and I suspect it is because of FV2.

When the system starts I press shift after the tone, but then I have to release shift and enter the password and then Lion will only boot into normal mode.

I've also tried with sudo nvram boot-args="-x" from the terminal, but while it seesm that this way Lion starts to boot into safe mode, after a while it just restarts as if something crashed etc and then again, I have to enter the password for FV and all again as in a loop, i.e. Lion won't even start this way.

So I went into the recovery mode and I could make Lion start again at least in normale mode with sudo nvram boot-args="".

Any idea of what could be preventing Lion from entering safe mode?

Thanks in advance

Posted on Jan 8, 2012 4:25 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,756 points

Jan 8, 2012 4:51 PM in response to Vito Botta

I just tried by holding down the shift key while hitting return after entering the FileVault password. It started booting into Safe Mode, but then restarted twice before finally booting normally. I'll try again later when I've got some time to fool around with it.

Reply

Answer 2

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,739 points

Jan 8, 2012 6:32 PM in response to Vito Botta

I can confirm that you can't log in to a FileVault volume in safe mode. But all the things that a safe boot is supposed to do, such as rebuilding the system caches, do seem to happen.

Reply

Answer 3

Jan 9, 2012 2:35 AM in response to Vito Botta

The symptom may be unrelated to FileVault 2. I encountered the symptom with FileVault 2 disabled and with backward conversion (decryption) complete.

Apple reference for my bug report: 152162960. If the symptoms on your Mac compare to those on mine: progress may seem to cease during safe fsck.

Vito, as you are comfortable with the nvram command, please try the following:

sudo nvram boot-args="-v -x"

Restart the computer and note the last verbose lines that appear before you sense that progress has ceased. Then please add a note of those lines to this topic.

Additional questions

What model is your Mac?

What type of disk for the startup volume?

How many files on that volume?

Approximately how large are the attributes file and catalog file? (You might gain this information with a demo version of iDefrag.)

My current envronment

MacBookPro5,2
8 GB memory
startup from internal 320 GB rotational disk, Serial-ATA, Hitachi HTS723232L9SA62 (probably Travelstar 7K320)
3,961,791 files
495,744 folders /* not including the root folder */
catalog file 3.0 GB, not fragmented
attributes file 2.2 GB, not fragmented.

At http://www.wuala.com/grahamperrin/public/2012/01/09/a/?mode=gallery file speedy.txt includes details of the volume.

Reply

Answer 4

Jul 7, 2012 4:28 AM in response to Vito Botta

Reference: 152162960

Reply