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Just upgraded. Can't delete apps. Anyone figured this out yet? Admin accound sudo rm -rf "game center.app" is returning operation not permitted. Appcleaner is not even able to find the packkages much less delete them. I have the GM though. What is this about?

Edit: upgrading to the appstore version. Not sure if this was GM specific, or they are locking the Os down even more.

Edit2: if you forget your password immeadiately and use the resetpassword feature in terminal, keychain breaks, can't find "login". Prob fix it with permissions. Note, NOT the case. Had to make an entire new user.

Also, with >30mbps connection, 850mb upgrade is taking ~4hrs. They must be getting slammed.

Edit : Boot args didnt fix. Trying carutul disable at recovery terminal.

Bash-3.2# csrutil diasable

Seems to work.

Edit n: seperate and unrelated, system does not seem to restart well. Eiter hangs or takes ages.

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That’s System Integrity Protection. Under it, system files cannot be deleted or modified, even with sudo. It protects down to the block level, so even if you try to bypass the file system and write to blocks composing system files directly you’ll get an error.

This can be disabled but I wouldn’t advise doing so unless you have a really good reason to.

Modifying /usr isn't THAT unusual.

The FHS defines /usr thus[0]:

> /usr is shareable, read-only data. That means that /usr should be shareable between various FHS-compliant hosts and must not be written to.

Pretty much all modern unices consider that /usr, aside from /usr/local (which the FHS defines as "for use by the system administrator when installing software locally. It needs to be safe from being overwritten when the system software is updated."[1]), is part of the operating system.

It is thus very much unusual to modify /usr[2], and in line with current practices to lock it down tightly.

/usr/local is not under SIP.

[0] http://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/FHS_3.0/fhs/ch04.html#pu...

[1] http://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/FHS_3.0/fhs/ch04s09.html

[2] in fact the FHS specifically notes[3]:

> Software placed in /usr may be overwritten by system upgrades. For this reason, local software must not be placed outside of /usr/local without good reason.

"we specify that the system can overwrite or remove anything you put there" is pretty much a dead ringer for "modifying this is unusual"

[3] http://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/FHS_3.0/fhs/ch04s09.html...

The FHS is, at best, only tangentially related to anything going on in a Mac OS X system.

It's not everything under /usr. For example, I can install things to /usr/local/bin without issue.

I'm glad game center.app is so well protected.

It ships on the system. Everything that ships on the system should be protected. Among other things, it prevents system updates from having problems when the apps they're trying to patch are missing.

The updater could just fall back to a non-delta update for anything that's been modified. That would help with other problems too, like storage corruption. SIP is supposed to be about security, not keeping updaters from doing a bit more work.

> Everything that ships on the system should be protected.

No. Not Game Center.app. Grand parent is right, this is bloatware that neither he, nor I, nor many others want. If I wanted a bloatware Windows box I would have bought one. There's no excuse for making this app non-removable.

It’s all a matter of opinion, but I’m not sure that “bloatware” is the appropriate term for bundled software that never runs unless it’s explicitly opened by the user, thus having negligible resource usage. Does that extra 4MB really bother you that much? Because that’s the only effect you’ll ever feel as a result of not deleting Game Center.

On the other hand, if we’re talking about the junk that your average Windows or Android device comes preinstalled with that is either configured to run at startup and/or modifies the stock UI (TouchWiz for example), yeah, that’s definitely bloatware and it’s reprehensible to make that unremovable. That isn’t what Apple is doing, however.

> Does that extra 4MB really bother you that much?

No, it doesn't, but what does bother me are the gigabyte+ apps that, like Game Center, Apple does not allow users to remove (without jumping through hoops that are probably both scary and technically challenging for most users).

Are you an Apple fan? Because I am (or was). I've been with Apple since the OS 7 days.

This lack of attention to detail is very uncharacteristic of the Apple I knew and loved.

The comparison to "what others are doing" is also very un-Apple like. Apple did not use others as a benchmark to decide what it should be doing, and the day it starts to do that is the day it's no longer Apple.

This. I used game center as an example. Just removing unused languages saved me over a GB. I also stopped a bunch of annoying background stuff from using the cpu, which is nice, because I need it to do shit like compute for me.

While the attention to detail is lacking, it is becoming even more walled off. I reapect that because the market wants all there stuff synced all the time. Howecer, i don't. I dont need my search results sent to apple so i can get recommendations, i font want every message i text to be an imessage so it goes through there servers as well as att. I am disappoinr.

What GB+ apps ship on the system that you think are appropriate to delete?

My apologies, I was mistaken. I had in mind apps like iMovie since, like Game Center, it's an app that Apple installs by default.

On 10.11, there are many apps that are not deleteable, but all of them seem to be under a gig (unless I'm missing something because I had, long ago, deleted an app and the OS update didn't restore it).

These include: Game Center, iBooks, Safari, iTunes, Photos, Contacts, Maps, Automator, Font Book, Dictionary, Notes, FaceTime, Chess, Reminders, Photo Booth, and perhaps a few other small-ish apps. These are less than 1 gig. I don't know why Apple did not choose to simply make whatever is so vital in the app bundle a system framework instead.

It's not a big deal to me if these small apps are non-deleteable. I assumed—incorrectly—that the big ones (iMovie, Garage Band, etc.) were non-deleteable as well.

Thank you. Many people have been quite rude about this, and frankly, I expected better. 1) woz fought jobs on user mods on the apple 2, and released a post a while back about switching bck to linux.

I used game center as an example. Of coure the launchctl list uses an insane amount of resources for apple stuff. I also deleted several other apps and a few other things. Shit, running monolingual alone saved me ~1.2GB.

So thanks. I agree as well. If possible I will turn it back on after.

How incredibly arrogant of you to declare this about a tiny <3MB app just because you personally don't use it. Your personal preferences are not the arbiter of what is and is not useful, and this app provides the sole interface to a system component (GameKit) so it is entirely appropriate to ship on the system. And declaring this minuscule app "bloatware" is so laughable as to be almost insulting, because it's clear that you're just struggling to find a reason to compare OS X to Windows.

I replied to both this and your other comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10330386

I take issue with bundling unimportant apps with system apps and libraries. I recognize this is a blurred line but I still think that Game Center is not important.

mv malware.app game\ center.app

what happens when you assume apps that came with the OS are legit?

> mv malware.app game\ center.app

You can't do that unless you turned it off in the first place. And if you did, you're on your own anyway.

you missed the point.. GP was sarcastically wondering why game center was protected.

Thanks. I will disable it. Not to be rude, as I appreciate the advice, but what would you consider:

> a really good reason?

I think access to my own filesystem is good enough. I admit when I looked at the reviews, I made sure there were no major issues before upgrade but missed this "sys integrity" thing.

Disabling it would increase the attack area for a malicious app that could somehow gain elevated access.

Since it is possible to disable, why not disable it as-needed rather than always?

> why not disable it as needed

i am. ;)

It is your filesystem, but these are system files. Is it really important to you to be able to muck around the OS? If it is, then you go find a way to disable the protections.

Windows also has the System Integrity Protection equivalent.

Yes. I am disabling/removing shitty bloatware and removing apple phone home gor privacy.

So you're compromising security to do it?

Game Center is ~4MB, and you'll never remove all the potential "phone home" hooks without rewriting the OS. Your approach is akin to taking wheels off a car to reduce weight so it goes faster.

I was simply asking if this was a GM issue or something else. I needed access to my filesystem to make some changes and was providing a bit of feedback to others upgrading. I didn't think this was stack overflow. I had internet disabled and was loading applications from my USB, that I keep for these purposes and running config scripts. I only had mobile anyway so it was difficult to find answers. I still do not know if SIP can be turned back on, but if it can (which would be reasonable) I faced little risk on fresh install with internet disabled. If possible, I will turn it back on after my env is set up.

I share your sentiment towards privacy, I guard mine fiercely as well.

If I may say so though, I think you're coming at this the wrong way.

Trying to disable every component in the OS that phones home simply doesn't scale, may I suggest you explore gateway firewall devices such as PFSense, or the free version of Sophos' UTM if you prefer a more polished UI?

I use a Sophos UTM at home and I can see (and block) every request that my Macs use to try to phone home, with HTTP, HTTPS or regular network traffic.

I also use the Always-On VPN on my phone to apply ad blocking at the firewall level which protects my phone as well.

Very much worth checking out. Gateway protections are the only way to go these days IMO.

Edit: Just to add, at first glance I find the SIP system to be rather anti-user, but people in this thread are right. It's valuable protection to have in place. If I used a Mac at home I would only disable this to make the changes I needed before turning it back on again.

Edit to clarify: I use a Mac, but only has a HTPC and not as a desktop or workstation, and all outbound traffic is blocked by default.

Thanks, this was a helpful response unlike the SOish answers which I found unneccesarily hostile. If you see my comment below I was fairly protected.

I will look into those suggestions. Do to the differences and additions in caputan little snitch does not work. I havent connected to internet yet whoch ice floor needs to be configured properly. Does SOPHOS UTM work well even as a free version. It is annoying when snitch lets traffic out after 3grs.

As sad as this will sound, I cant afford a VPN. I set one up myself using OpenDNS and tunnelblick, which I should probably spin back up. Any other security suggestions? I can only use free stuff ATM .

The only limitation on the free version of the utm that I found so far is that you can't have more than 10 IPs active, but nothing stops you from using nat to get around that.

The utm itself actually hosts and serves the VPN connection by the way. My phone connects directly to the VPN on my UTM. You'll see a speed hit because of the extra hop unless you put your utm in the cloud.

I hope that's helpful :)

With SIP off it's pretty easy to social engineer your way into the user's system, especially on dev machines - we all install all kinds of stuff that requires sudo, but until now sudo will let you at literally anything - including replacing core OS files with malware replacements, and most installers are pretty opaque (not that you have the time or inclination to closely examine all installers anyway).

The current state of affairs means that users - even non-technical ones - are routinely asked for their admin pwds in everyday use, but every time they enter it they are susceptible to be totally and utterly pwned.

Even expert users fall victim when they turn off system safeguards - XcodeGhost being only the most recent example, where only users who actively disabled Gatekeeper/codesign checking were susceptible.

It's kind of annoying for power users, but time and time again I think we've proven that power users aren't in any way immune to social engineering or simple blanket malware attack.

> but what would you consider:

> > a really good reason?

Honestly, as devs, we're more susceptible to this kind of attack than the average user, not less (e.g. see XcodeGhost). System integrity protection is great for us, yet I see a great deal of hubris when it's mentioned–as if we're somehow immune, or that we audit all the code we run.

I download all manner of tools for development work, and use sudo as and when necessary, and I'm thankful there's now an extra layer of security. If I needed to modify the filesystem (e.g. if I wanted to delete an app like another poster did), I'd disable SIP temporarily to do so, and I think that's fine, but I think it would be unwise to disable it permanently, especially on a whim. I would hope that modification of these sorts of files would be rare enough that it's not a big inconvenience anyway.

Could this be an issue for things like homebrew or ruby/rbenv? Reading about it, one might think 10.11 could have problems with someone trying to use anything but the system-shipped ruby version, or python, etc.

On the other hand, maybe this question is rather stupid as I really can't see Apple scaring away the developer community in such an unnecessary way.

> Could this be an issue for things like homebrew or ruby/rbenv?

/usr/local is not one of the SIP protected paths. The idea behind SIP is to protect system binaries from being surreptitiously patched by malicious parties, not to make the system totally useless.

> Reading about it, one might think 10.11 could have problems with someone trying to use anything but the system-shipped ruby version, or python, etc.

Aside from being really stupid from a customer standpoint, what would be the security benefit of doing this?

The thing you name don't touch any system files for specifically this kind of reason.

That’s probably because of System Integrity Protection. It can be disabled though:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Integrity_Protection

Might be related to Rootless?

"OS X adds a new feature called "Rootless" that keeps the root user found on Unix-based systems from being able to be run. This can cause some troubles for disk management and backup utilities, so they included a way to turn it off. Open the Terminal and type sudo nvram boot-args="kext-dev-mode=1 rootless=0";sudo reboot to disable rootless and reboot your Mac. Only disable rootless if you know what this feature is used for, and you are experienced with the OS X command line." [1]

[1] http://www.techradar.com/us/how-to/computing/apple/52-os-x-e...

Why do you want to delete Game Center?

Game Center is a nasty piece of work by Apple. It's ruined iOS 9 and I regret installing that on my iPad and iPhone 6. Now, when I enter a very simple solitaire-like game called Midnight Mahjongg, I get slow-animating, built-in-delayed GC upsells and requests to log in to GC, even though I hate and detest and loathe GC. And if I so much as accidentally go to Home screen and back into game, presto, GC upsell appears again. On iPad it appears for 5 times -- you have to cancel 5 times and then it gets quiet. Until the next day. On iPhone, 3 cancels is enough to shut it up. Until the next day.

Use the game the next day and the counters are reset: 5 more cancels on iPad, 3 cancels on iPhone.

GC is the worst thing Apple's done in years. And if they have brought that crap and its fascist ways to MacOSX, then I really am hesitant to install any more MacOSX updates.

Why not just sign into Game Center? It's a serious question. Once you enable Game Center it stops bothering you and as far as I can tell doesn't really do anything other than add you to leaderboards.

Because they're about principle and can't stand losing that few megabytes of space on an app they'll never run anyway.

"Edit n: seperate and unrelated, system does not seem to restart well. Eiter hangs or takes ages."

This is nothing new for OS X. Mavericks and the last couple of versions cannot restart / shut down properly. I'm sure Apple would say it's a feature not a bug.

Thanks for bringing this up, I just cancelled my download. There is no way I'm going to run an OS that attempts to limit my power to delete or modify applications. I think this may be the final straw for me and OSX.

I very recently had to attack GarageBand with a hex editor to disable app sandboxing so I could use third party VST plugins. I realize System Integrity Protection can be disabled by a kernel boot param, but this really, really, sticks in my craw.

You already couldn't modify most system applications or they would fail code-signing checks. This is merely preventing malware from modifying them.

By that logic malware presumably couldn't modify them either, right?

You can delete and modify non-system apps just fine, FWIW. I imagine Game Center.app is not locked down for some nefarious reason, but just because it falls under "system owned" list.

I think GarageBand also ships with the OS (or at least it used to) so I wouldn't be surprised if it's also on the "system owned" list. This pushes all my security vs. liberty buttons.

I just did a wipe and clean install and it does not install GarageBand.

It's not hard to disable. Restart holding down command R to get recovery mode, launch the terminal, type "csrutil disable". Sorted.

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