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Scripting SSH off/on without needing a PPPC/TCC profile


Posted on September 2, 2020 by alanysiu

You used to be able to use /usr/sbin/systemsetup -f -setremotelogin off or /usr/sbin/systemsetup -f -setremotelogin on to script disabling or enabling SSH on macOS.

Now that macOS has Privacy Preferences Policy Control, which needs a profile delivered by a user-approved MDM, you may get this error: setremotelogin: Turning Remote Login on or off requires Full Disk Access privileges., which can be especially annoying if the script’s parent process isn’t code-signed (and thus can’t be used in a PPPC profile), as /usr/sbin/period isn’t, for example. (Read more at Use the systemsetup command-line utility on macOS Catalina 10.15.)

For now, a workaround for this is to simply load or unload the launch daemon that enables/disables SSH: /bin/launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist or /bin/launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist

P.S. Since these are things you’re scripting via something like Munki or Jamf, I’m assuming you’re testing the commands as root.


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