macOS Sequoia 15.2 - LMI Run at Boot?
I feel like I have to be doing something wrong, but I can't figure it out.
We got a new 2024 Mac Mini M4, and I'm working on configuring it to function basically the same as our old/existing 2019 iMac (which runs Ventura 13.7). I got LMI installed on the new Mini, I got all the permissions granted, etc. It works fine - but only after one of the Mac user accounts is logged into locally, and not immediately after system boot.
Immediately after system boot, my LMI admin portal still shows the Mac Mini as offline (even though I am physically looking at the machine being online). If I walk over to the Mini and log into any of the Mac user accounts, then the Mini immediately shows as online in my LMI admin portal, and I can remote control as normal.
If I then log out of all Mac user accounts (but otherwise leave the Mini powered on), it still shows as online in my LMI admin portal, and I can still access it for remote control.
But now if I reboot the Mini, after it finishes booting (and I tried waiting a few minutes), it shows as offline and can't be reached. I wasn't expecting the "switch on" button to do anything at this point, and indeed it doesn't seem to.
I tried:
- double-checking all Security & Privacy permissions, and they all seem to be granted.
- looking through LMI Control Panel to check for any settings seeming to be about boot behavior.
- uninstalling and reinstalling the LMI host software.
- checking for and installing all available software updates.
- checking for any LMI software updates (nope - host already on 13393)
- comparing /library/launchdaemons to the older iMac - they seem to match. using nano to examine the plist, runatload is set to true, as is keepalive.
- comparing /library/launchagents to the older iMac - the names of the plist files which are present seem to match, although when using nano to view their contents, it seems that they are a different format/structure (totally different content).
- googling and chatgpt'ing for help. I can't seem to find anyone else experiencing this issue.
Can anyone recommend anything I might be doing incorrectly? Or is there any chance that Sequoia 15.2 broke something which needs to be fixed now?
Thanks, Kate. I did hear from Support, and we emailed a few times. I believe I figured it out in the end, so I'm just sharing here in case anyone else runs into this issue in the future and comes across my post.
macOS FileVault came enabled by default on this new Mac. From what I've read, services do not start at boot until after a user who has permission to decrypt the drive logs in locally. Once I disabled FileVault, the issue described in my original post above was resolved.
I couldn't immediately find conclusive info regarding when FileVault started being enabled by default. But if you want reliable remote access to a Mac, it seems like you would want to disable FileVault. (It could work to keep it enabled, but then if the Mac ever rebooted, you'd lose remote access until you could log in locally again.)
And now that I google "logmein filevault", I see the following couple results:
- https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255052837?sortBy=rank
- https://community.logmein.com/discussions/pro/unable-to-connect-to-m1-mac/290811
