FileVault Decryption stuck at 100% in Terminal

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FileVault Decryption stuck at 100% in Terminal

I'm having a problem with decrypting in recovery mode using command line. I have setup an institutional recovery and have successfully encrypted the hard drive on my Mac. I am testing unlocking and decrypting the hard drive with the institutional recovery key I setup which works, up until the final decyrption. I reboot into recovery (command+R), open terminal and I can successfully unlock the encrypted hard drive with the recovery key giving me access to its contents. I then decrypt the hard drive with the recovery key using the following command: diskutil corestorage revert <UUID> -recoveryKeychain /path/to/FileVaultMaster.keychain

The decryption successfully starts and I use diskutil corestorage list to show the status of the decryption. The progress in the Logical Volume section continues going up until it reaches 100% and it appears to stay stuck there at 100%, even after leaving it over night. In the Logical Volume Family section, the conversion status still shows "Converting" and the conversion direction still shows "backward" even though under Logical Volume, it shows "Conversion progress: 100%" Why does the conversions status never change to complete?

Should I have used the decryptVolume command instead, like so: diskutil corestorage decryptVolume <UUID> -recoveryKeychain /path/to/FileVaultMaster.keychain

What is the difference between the revert command and decryptVolume command?

I'm running 10.9.4 Mavericks and have reproduced the problem on both a Macbook Pro and an iMac.

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.4)

Posted on Aug 7, 2014 1:09 PM

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Answer 1

Linc Davis

Level 10

210,621 points

Aug 7, 2014 11:11 PM in response to CB79LLD

The "revert" verb reverses the effect of "convert" on an HFS volume. The "decryptVolume" verb reverses the effect of "encryptVolume."

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Answer 2

CB79LLD Author

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Aug 8, 2014 12:15 PM in response to Linc Davis

I tested this again, but this time used the decryptVolume command like so: diskutil corestorage decryptVolume <UUID> -recoveryKeychain /path/to/FileVaultMaster.keychain

Doing this produced the same behavior with the conversion progress going all the way to 100% and hanging there. The conversion status and conversion direction never changed to complete, even after leaving it over night again. I restarted and now the Mac won't boot at all, I guess the drive became corrupted since I restarted while it was still "stuck" decrypting.

I reinstalled OS X and will test again, but this time after it reaches 100%, I will quit out of terminal and open Disk Utility and turn off encryption there to see if that actually finishes the process.

If you have any suggestions, Linc, I'd appreciate any.

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Answer 3

Linc Davis

Level 10

210,621 points

Aug 8, 2014 1:02 PM in response to CB79LLD

When you have the problem, note the exact time: hour, minute, second.

These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the administrator.

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.

The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select

SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages

from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select

View ▹ Show Log List

from the menu bar at the top of the screen.

Each message in the log begins with the date and time when it was entered. Scroll back to the time you noted above.

Select the messages entered from then until the end of the episode, or until they start to repeat, whichever comes first.

Copy the messages to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.

The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of it useless for solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.

Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.

Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.

Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

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Answer 4

CB79LLD Author

Level 1

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Aug 11, 2014 11:51 AM in response to Linc Davis

Okay I think I figured out a solution. This time after decrypting from the terminal and letting the progress reach 100%, I then quit terminal and opened Disk Utility and selected to turn off encryption on the encrypted volume which worked (all while being booted in recovery mode cmd+r). I then restarted and was able to login and confirm that FileVault has been turned off in System Preferences. I don't know what extra thing turning off encryption through Disk Utility does after decryption reaches 100% in terminal, but it seems to fully remove encryption attributes from the disk/volume.

I also tested another way by again, booting into recovery mode (cmd+r), going through terminal to unlock the disk with my institutional recovery key but NOT decrypting the drive through terminal. Instead, after unlocking the disk with the recovery key, I then quit terminal and open Disk Utility and select to turn off encryption on the volume. I get prompted for the password for my institutional recovery key and after entering it, I'm prompted that decryption has started and that I can track the progress in Sys Pref>FV. I then proceed to restart and I can login and confirm in Sys Pref>FV that the disk is being decrypted.

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