Enabling users for FileVault 2 with a non-enabled admin user does not work in Mavericks

Over the past few months, I’ve told hundreds of people the following information about fdesetup in Mountain Lion:

“Once the Mac has been fully encrypted with FileVault 2, you can add additional users using fdesetup. To do so, you will need to provide both the username and password of either a previously enabled account or an admin account, as well as the password of the account you want to add.

There’s something that’s interesting to know about this method: the admin user in question does not themselves need to be enabled for FileVault 2. In my testing, I found that an admin user can authorize the enabling of other accounts even if the admin account wasn’t enabled. An admin account can also enable itself using this process, by being both the authorizing admin account and the account being enabled. This is similar to the System Preferences behavior, where an admin account could enable itself by logging in and clicking the lock in the FileVault preference pane.

Since a key has to be involved somewhere, I’ve got an inquiry open with Apple as to why this works but I haven’t heard back yet.”

I’ve now heard back. See below the jump for the details.

Building a Grand Unified Xcode 5.0.1 installer for Mavericks and Mountain Lion

Apple has released Xcode 5.0.1 through the Mac App Store for all Macs running 10.8.4 and higher. The command line tools can be installed separately through the Xcode preferences, in the Downloads section.

For my users who are developers, I wanted to include Xcode 5.0.1 in their new machine builds and also install the command line tools automatically without needing to enter an Apple ID. I also wanted to build this installer as a flat package, so I’m shifting from my previous method using Iceberg to using Packages to build the installer package. With a little help from the Mac App Store, I was able to do this. See below the jump for the details.