Managing Mavericks’ FileVault 2 with fdesetup

With the release of OS X Mavericks, Apple has added additional features to fdesetup, a valuable command-line tool for enabling, administering and disabling Apple’s FileVault 2 encryption. This tool gives Mac administrators the following command-line abilities:

• Enable or disable FileVault 2 encryption on a particular Mac
• Use a personal recovery key, an institutional recovery key, or both kinds of recovery key
• Enable one or multiple user accounts at the time of encryption
• Get a list of FileVault 2-enabled users on a particular machine
• Add additional users after FileVault has been enabled
• Remove users from the list of FileVault enabled accounts
• Add, change or remove individual and institutional recovery keys
• Report which recovery keys are in use
• Perform a one-time reboot that bypasses the FileVault pre-boot login
• Report on the status of FileVault 2 encryption or decryption

I’ll be taking you through all of the capabilities mentioned above, with a focus on showing exactly how they work. See below the jump for the details.