Remote Wipe + Catalina

[zinkotheclown]

Has anyone tried issuing a remote wipe command to a T2 Mac with Catalina (10.15.1)?

I was troubleshooting enrollment issues and I got tired of constantly re-installing the OS so I thought "Wouldn't it be faster if I just sent a remote wipe command"? In hindsight, that was a bad ideal.

Normally, the Mac reboots and asks you to put in the pin code you set up prior to pushing the command but in this case, the MacBook rebooted, did not ask for the pincode, and booted into the recovery partition.

Great...I can wipe the Mac. But here's where it gets interesting. After enrolling the Mac (2018 MacBook Air retina), a minute or two in, the Mac will reboot to the recovery partition, again without prompting for the pincode.

The Mac is now pretty much useless as it constantly reboots to the recovery partition.

Does anyone have any ideas on how I can undo this?

[donmontalvo]

Are you sure the computer wasn't already wiped (by the remote wipe command) when you booted into the macOS Recovery partition?

[flow]

Hi zinkotheclown,
I'm having the exact same issue with wiping and it seems to affect all MDMs. I got out of this loop by going to disk utilities when booting to recovery, erase the disk manually and rebooted to recovery again, where I was able to choose Mojave to install. After the installation process is done, the device does not reboot again. For the time being don't use the wipe command for T2 Macs with Catalina.
This bug is already known to apple and let's hope they'll fix this soon.
BR

[benvmp]

I encountered this behaviour too on 10.15.0 - MacBook reboots into recovery mode and does not ask for the pin code.

The wipe computer command failed with the status "NSPOSIXErrorDomain:-517" however I cancelled the command before digging further into the error message.

In recovery mode, if I reboot back to normal mode, then it gets as far as the desktop and then reboots back to recovery mode even though I cancelled the wipe command.

[zinkotheclown]

This what I got from Ben at Jamf:

We've opened a ticket with Apple regarding how macOS Catalina handles the "Wipe Computer" command. We're finding that the command results in a boot loop, but doesn't actually wipe the data.

We have had success getting around this by doing the following:

1: Reboot the computer into recovery mode

2: In recovery mode click on "Recovery Assistant" along the top > Select "Erase Mac"

3: Walk through the erase and install wizard

[donmontalvo]

We opened a ticket with Apple and were told their LAB test was successful (that --eraseinstall works). But we are seeing the same issue posted here. Will point Apple to this thread.

[jamf-bp3]

You can close this case. Apple has indicated that it is likely a hardware issue and has asked for the system to be returned.

[flow]

I doubt this is a hardware issue... I've tried it with several devices with the exact same behavior and obviously other people have the same problem. With Mojave everything works fine with the same devices. Logical conclusion is, that it's a software problem.

[h_stamerjohann]

Any updates this got addressed with macOS Catalina 10.15.2 upgrade (well a 3,46 GB sized update) and the T2 Firmware updates that usually goes along with ?

one thing that could be related, I've found here https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT210642

Enterprise content Fixes an issue where the user password might not be accepted at the login window after upgrading a Mac with an Apple T2 Security Chip to macOS Catalina

[flurble]

Had the same problem and was also told it was a hardware issue.

We had reinstalled Catalina and Mojave multiple times and wiped the disk each time.
It looks as though it is something to do with the activation lock forcing it into recovery.
During one of the times it was in recovery mode and I attempted to reinstall the OS again it came up with "Activate Mac, Your Mac is activated" After this the wipe was then actually performed and I needed to go back into disk utility to create a partition before the OS could be installed.
After this it started working correctly.

The MDM command to wipe the device only seems to make the device go in to recovery, it isnt until the activation happens that the wipe is actually performed.
Havent been able to determine what starts the activation process, maybe there is a way to force it via terminal from within recovery.

[canthony]

Hey guys, is there an update on this?

Just tried to wipe a device now, the command executed but the device is stuck in a boot loop just says the device restarted due to a problem.

It's also no longer showing in Jamf even though according to the documentation "Note: Wiping a computer does not remove the computer from Jamf Pro or change its inventory information."

It was an Early 2015 MacBook Air running Catalina 10.15.4.

[jMohs]

I keep a installer around with Mojave and one for Catalina and i trigger the reinstall form the currently installed os, altho an admin is needed to start the command it looks similar to this

/Applications/Install macOS Mojave.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall --eraseinstall --newvolumename "Macintosh HD" --agreetolicense

The erase part is optinal but thats how i wipe the devices clean. Takes like 15-20 minutes to complete
and for Catalina just chnage the Mojave to Catalina like this

/Applications/Install macOS Catalina.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall --eraseinstall --newvolumename "Macintosh HD" --agreetolicense

[Matthew_Day]

I'm new to JAMF, but I was having issues repeatedly wiping and reloading. It turned out that in Disk Utility selecting View -> All Devices (not the default) resolved my issues as it actually wiped the mac. Selecting erase mac without doing that left older partitions or areas that conflicted JAMF. Once I fully wiped, those issues went away.

[gabester]

Came across this thread because I was reading this thread about issues with Activiation Lock and wondered whether I'd done something wrong a few weeks ago, when, to quickly reimage a Mac running Catalina I thought Remote Wipe would be a good trick, thinking, "After all, Catalina and Big Sur are supposed to implement iOS-style disk partitioning so that the user's data is removed while the core OS is retained." Or so I - incorrectly - presumed!

Imagine my surprise when the remote wiped Mac - instead of booting up to a clean "select a country" prompt of a new Catalina install - began to boot to Internet recovery!

What's super frustrating about all the changes Apple's been making in recent years to macOS is it's no longer clear what the expected behavior is from any given state to the next.

From this thread it sounds like my experience was not unexpected, except perhaps that I could have gone to the Recovery Partition on the Mac instead of an Internet Recovery had I performed this same attempt a few months ago. Could it be that something changed so that after macOS 10.15.7 the entire disk is wiped forcing an Internet Recovery to alleviate the reboot loops t the Recovery partition mentioned above several times - or just that my memory is rusty and it was a simple recovery boot that happened and now I'm just muddying the (un)expected behavior waters further...?